Every now and then, by the force of necessity, I need to resort to an "inner monologue" type of deal, where for about a page or several a character is just thinking to themselves in thought balloons. I'm worrying if this is something I should avoid because it is boring\breaks the "show don't tell" rule\something else, since it feels like began to crop out a bit too often in the story.
Nov '20
Nov '20
If you can make their thought process interesting like Joe pulls off in "You", then I don't see a problem. But putting in too much of dialogue can be off putting in a comic, yes.
I think a more "rambling" inner monologue is okay as long as the monologue fits in with the character and then world of the story. If the inner monologue starts drifting into the meaningless filler range, I tend not to be a fan.
hmm, depends on how cramped and overwhelming the page and individual speech bubbles feel.
Some comics I've seen have had a lot more text and still felt more leisurely than others with a lot less text but less free space, if that makes sense?
As someone with dyslexia though, text heavy pages can be very intimidating, especially if the speech bubbles are small, there isn't much space between the lines, and the font is small and not dyslexia friendly.
Sometimes I think, with huge info dumps of all text, opting out of speech bubbles at all is a great way to get around that cramped feeling. Wayfinders:Off Course did a very beautiful job of that when recapping their story:
Alternatively, Countdown to Countdown tends to use a lot of blank space on text heavy pages. I know some think blank white space is a bad thing in comics, but it really helps when done right!
My writing tends to be extremely rambly (wow, nobody would guess that from my forum posts hahahaha) so Errant is an experiment in cinematic storytelling without thought bubbles in an attempt to force me to reduce my reliance on them and focus more on the visual storytelling. It's tough, but I'd definitely say it's a good exercise! 
My Chapter 1 used to have a WAY bigger monologue from Mortimer (like, 6 pages long), until I got some help from Teasidesketches (unfortunately inactive for a long time now) to compress it and just have the information that the reader needs as soon as possible. With it in comic form now, I think it's nice to keep the text just as well spaced as normal dialogue is, and not stop the story for too long with it. Here's that sequence as an example!
The only page that's got heavy text and little going on is the final one, but that's because it's deliberately rambly as Mortimer isn't paying attention. Always keep in mind a reader is going to be seeing this one page at a time if they're a regular, don't go to a screeching halt.
There is a trick to make long inner monologues more visually interesting:
The pannel where the monologue starts has the person with a thought ballooon and for the next pannels, you can use imagery like symbolism, hypothetical scenarios or image flashbacks to back up the thoughts.
For moments like inner character monologues, I end up switching to narrative voice-over rather than thought bubbles. The perspective changes to Third-person limited, because the narrator is focusing more on one or two characters at a time and diving into their psyche. Here are some examples I have:
I find this to work better because it helps me transition from flashbacks to the present, as well as insert different types of symbols and scenarios, as @DiegoPalacios pointed out. Also, it helps me to work with Scott McCloud's ideas on Picture of Work:
I can either make my panels do what the narrative says -- as you can see with the family's reaction:
Or I can make my show differently from what the narrative says -- offering a different meaning to the words. Take this for example -- "No Worries: If Adoniem wanted his wife, Troy would gladly give her to him". With these words, you just think "oh, a husband is gonna leave his wife"
But when paired with this panel:
It becomes even deadlier.
If you find your characters thinking "too much", I think narrative voice-overs are really helpful. For me, it's offered a lot of ways to add meaning to words and alluded to a character's state of mind.
Sometimes I think it can be crucial, because how a character talks out loud vs inside their own head could be two completely different things. I like to know what's going on in there too sometimes.
And if the character is on their own they wouldn't speak out loud I guess. 
It really depends? One of the main characters in my novel has quite a bit of inner monologue but that is because he's always on the move (a military general) and doesn't speak out loud much (has trouble processing feelings/thoughts). So, I have him think quite a bit since he's trapped in his own mind somewhat. But I have his inner monologue happening while he's actually doing things so he's not just standing in a mirror looking at himself while he thinks lol.
Like I said, it really depends!
