How to convey silence in a comic?

[Ringarune]

So I've come up on a panel in my comic Star Pace that requires me to show that there is silence present, but I can't come up with a way to do it that I'm happy with >^< if anyone has any suggestions for it id luv to hear them!

Here's the panel I wanted to convey the silence in (although its not done yet), specifically over the crowd of people

[nessiefynn]

Well you could just not put any text on the panel, which is what you have now. If you really want to exaggerate the silence, you could put a little speech bubble with "..." in it somewhere, as that's a pretty common shorthand for silence in comics.

[joannekwan]

The crowd's silent, right?
In that case I would just put one big "..." over their heads.

[Michelle]

Er, well, fortunately comics are silent by default until you put dialogue or sound effect text! So this panel already reads as having silence.

You could put a "..." bubble, but I feel like that's redundant. If you wanted to make it more uncomfortable you could put SFX like crickets chirping or an awkward cough.

[J.Z.Castillo]

LOL I will make a fourth and say the best way to let us know they are quiet is a big "..." over their heads. Besides, ellipsis marks always make me laugh

[shazzbaa]

Depends on the tone of your comic!

You could leave it as is, you could put a "..." over the crowd, you could write "~COMPLETE SILENCE~" in the background of the panel like a sound-effect if you want to be joke-y about it, but uh, that's obviously a more silly solution.

Another thing I might do is give the nervous speaker two or three ellipses, instead of the crowd -- like this kinda thing:

What ellipses do is establish a beat of silence -- essentially, they make time pass. If you leave the panel completely blank, you'll get a moment of silence, but it'll be a quick moment. I feel like putting a "..." over the crowd can read a little goofy, kinda like the "COMPLETE SILENCE" idea (which might work for the tone you want)! But giving the speaker a series of ellipses makes the silent panel stretch out -- her waiting for several beats in a wordless panel makes the panel long and the silence awkward.

[wotcomic]

I haven't got to the page yet, but I've actually got a heavy silence coming up, and my plan is to just compose the panel with a lot of empty space at the top. My hope is that by doing this the reader will feel the awkwardness of the silence through the big empty gap where normally there would be speech bubbles.

I'm not the biggest fan of using "..." but obviously it has been and is being used effectively, so that's of course also an option.

[HulkHoQuinn]

That three ellipses works really well. I would personally go with that.

[monotone_ink]

Along with what everyone else said with the ellipses stuff, making the panel bigger can emphasise that silence even more (maybe separating that part in the top left corner to make the picture more clear, maybe)

[lukas3]

Perhaps it's better to leave it like that. People will naturally assume that the crowd is silent and paying attention by their fixed attention on the woman.

[zetina]

i think you can also convey an awkward silence with the audience's faces. if they're all staring blankly at her with disinterested looks (the first row at least), you'd get the effect. draw in closed mouths to draw attention to the fact that no one is speaking.

extra idea.

[LeoKi]

Panel repetition can be effective to express a long silence - not just a copy, but varying the postures slightly unless everybody is petrified.