Consenus on Dialogue and Caption Heavy Comics?

[erudenedure]

I took a screenwriting class back in college; a lot of lessons roll over into my storytelling and, subsequently, my comic.

One thing I remember from the class is keeping dialogue to 3 lines. When holding a conversation, people usually have about 1 to 3 short to medium sentences. Find the most succinct way to get whatever the dialogue's intention is across to the reader.

For comics, this usually translates to 2 short/medium sentences to 3 short sentences per bubble. There's reasons to break this rule, but I'm just saying on average this seems to be the case.

Flipping through My Hero Academia and The Walking Dead, it really does seem like 3 sentences is the max count for one speech bubble. (This means if there's two conjoined word bubbles, you can have 5-6 sentences and so on.) Even thoughts tend to be grouped in 1 to 3 sentences.

[IdiotWithPencil]

my god and I though death note had it bad D-8

[BlueWorldComics]

Then I have an extremely vital question to ask you: why comics?

According to all the forum topics I've seen, including one I recently made with a poll, the story is more important to most people than the visuals. I agree with the consensus.

I don't have to stare at the intricate line detail in order to enjoy a comic. I should be able to get all of the information I need from a quick scan of the panel.

Think Peanuts, Garfield, Sarah Scribbles, Cyanide and Happiness. These comics don't exactly leave you with a whole lot to look at. And yes, these are all comedies... Not the point lol (I would consider my comic a bridge between comedy strips and action/adventure strips like Prince Valiant or the Superman and Spider-Man weeklies)

That absolutely ignores what I said. The number of panels alone means nothing. It's what IN those panels.

Feels like you're trying to debate me on this. Not my intention.

I'll come clean, this topic is about MY COMIC. Shocking I know lol
I didn't want everyone to come in here and feel like they have to review my comic so I made a more general topic to discuss the subject.

I honestly feel like when you are thinking of text heavy comics, you can't get @ar-ninetysix 's example out of your head. You're thinking walls of text and big dialogue balloons covering up the art. With the dialogue and captions being pure exposition and padding.

I'm thinking more Tarantino or Kevin Smith movies.

[Mari]

I loooove dialogue heavy comics. Absolutely my jam.

Though, it needs to be natural sounding. So if there's a ton of pauses and filler words, I'm here for it.

I know I'm like the smallest of minorities in this but whatever.

That's what I like and that's that. I feel like it's a little dumb to debate over something that is so clearly down to tastes.

[colinmooredraws]

I'll come clean, this topic is about MY COMIC. Shocking I know lolI didn't want everyone to come in here and feel like they have to review my comic so I made a more general topic to discuss the subject.

That's rather dishonest. I've been trying to have a conversation about the merits and guidelines of how much text should be in comics in general. You can't post a poll that's asking for opinions, then get mad when someone doesn't share your view and addresses the topic you posted not your thinly veiled attempt to promo your comic.

[BlueWorldComics]

Lol, really, dude? None of that happened. I corrected your use of the loaded phrase "too much", which you graciously adjusted your response to. I then explained why I brought up the panel count because you didn't seem to understand it. Then I answered your question. Where did you get the impression I'm mad?

And what exactly about this topic (including the very blatantly plugging of my comic) wasn't clearly an attempt to get consensus information related to my comic?

You are really making this conversation unnecessarily hostile, so let's just call it, eh? No hard feelings.

[DualDragons]

Well, depends on the amount of dialogue and narration. Back in 2017 when I practiced my story with just a pencil, I had the idea of adding narration to every panel
That wasn't very smart of me.

It also depends on your genre. Obviously a romance comic is going to have more dialogue than a shounen manga.

[joannekwan]

Obviously a romance comic is going to have more dialogue than a shounen manga.

Clearly not as proven by the Hunter X Hunter page above

[BlueWorldComics]

Worst I've seen since Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark... Cerebus had actual essays in it...

[AceRagz]

Cerebus had a lot of problems towards the end but Reads was one of the low points for sure. I mean crap that was less an essay and more of a textbook hidden within a comic.

[DualDragons]

Okay i'll admit i haven't seen that much dialogue in an shounen manga, like ever .

That's worse than what 17 year old me did.

[GabiWolf]

It depends on the dialogue. I prefer comics over novels, and I like comic that have a lot of meat. That usually means a certain amount of dialogue.

I really enjoyed Death Note and it is a manga I recommend to people that have that think manga is childish or cute. It has a lot of dialogue, but really great art too. I even read the accompanying prologue novel that went with it.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I love dialogue-heavy comics.

Now, there are conditions:

• Info given in dialogue has to be necessary (no point adding extra dialogue if the story works well without it);

• Only if info can only be given through dialogue (cannot be shown or would take many, many pages to be shown);

• Well distributed in comic (that ugly text page up in this thread is incredibly offputting);

• Has to be natural: it's normal to have two lovers extensively discussing feelings or generals extensively discussing strategy, but not so much to have two individuals discussing at length the modern history of their country, acting as if both think the other one does not have previous knowledge about it. I see that too much.

As for the idea that if it's too dialogue-heavy for a comic, it should be a novel, I'm not ok with that at all, there is a huge gap between 'images+lot of text' and 'just text'. It also asks for fairly different skills.
I would be more inclined to advise that if illustrated novels were more popular, but they are not. Illustrated novels are a good compromisr, though.

[xabelmind]

Digital comic authors with a lot to write use to forget that screen reading needs of a different text format than physical comic reading

If your text can't be read easily without having to zoom in each panel, then you're working in the wrong format or posting in the wrong space.

Readers should only have to zoom to see up close details of the drawings, but not to read.

But that's my opinion as someone who's been more than a year learning about the differences between physical comic and webcomic, so maybe I'm paranoic

Edit: A way to solve this is:

• Check that you're using a letter that can be read even in phone without zooming in.
• Change the format of the 6-7 panels page to a long format page. Still 6-7 panels, but displayed all along, so the panels are bigger.

[BlueWorldComics]

Specifically about my comic? Or is this just general advice for something 'like' my comic?

[xabelmind]

General, I also post in physical comic format and only can do 6-7 panels/week.

But I see others forget about the details I mentioned up there

[Freemints30]

keep in mind Dave Sim's had basically a mental break down in Cerebus's later run, soooo those essays are more a product of a broken mind.

[claiborneart]

@BlueWorldComics if you're worried about the text/image balance in your own comic, I would recommend reading Making Comics by Scott McCloud. Chapter three is exclusively about the role of text in comics, and the ways it relates with pictures to create a full story.
In addition, the book itself is a great example of creating a word-focused comic without overwhelming the reader; and seeing how McCloud manages to make an instructional manual interesting and engaging to read is a learning guide of its own.

I agree. I don't spend that much time looking at the pictures. I get the information I need and move on.

While image-word priority and focus does come down to taste, disregarding an entire half of comic's structure only hurts your story. It might be worthwhile to consider how much of the story is told through images in comics, even in dialogue-heavy comics.

[BlueWorldComics]

I agree. I don't spend that much time looking at the pictures. I get the information I need and move on.

While image-word priority and focus does come down to taste, disregarding an entire half of comic's structure only hurts your story. It might be worthwhile to consider how much of the story is told through images in comics, even in dialogue-heavy comics.

This was more in relation to reading comics, not writing them.

And it's not so much that I am worried about it necessarily. I just want to know the consensus.

[bakasama25]

Ah an example of a mangaka with artistic freedom. Togashi got a pretty good deal going with Shounen Jump with creative freedom and rather less taxing schedule. Sometimes I do think an editor might have a little more power to deal with certain excesses like this.