this is a good example and one of my fave pages. the conversation was needed but a bit on the dull side , so making them walk down a short street helped loads.
One big thing that I try to consider is giving the scene an emotional purpose, in addition to its informative purpose.
I really liked something I read in Ryan North's Back to the Future analysis blog13 (which I actually super recommend (EDIT: I went back and read the whole blog again b/c it's great and here's the entry I was thinking of23)) where the characters had to introduce themselves to each other. It's small, but a boring bit of talking by definition -- you already know these characters' names -- but it's also required or else it's weird. He commented on one version of the exchange that emphasised the awkwardness of these characters meeting each other. That's good, he said, because you're getting something else out of the scene -- any time you have boring words that need to happen, try to at least get a character moment out of it. I think that's really good advice!
My comic opens on exposition -- Sev explaining how magic works -- but it's also a chance for us to meet this ridiculous guy talking about his latest "great idea" while his best friend watches with the kind of dubious amusement that implies she's seen a million of these stunts, and they never go well. I wanted the conversation to be just as much about who these characters are and how they feel about each other as it is about the information you're getting.
I feel like this applies even if you're showing flashback visuals or something. I tried flashback visuals to attempt to make both of Jonan's monologues interesting, but I think it worked on the first one18 much better than the second8, because the second is literally just an illustration of what he's saying -- it's honestly kinda redundant and doesn't give us anything other than information. Whereas the first one, in addition to telling us what happened, also shows us that Jonan's version of the story doesn't quite match what happened, which automatically tells us a lot about Jonan himself. There's a secondary emotional purpose there that you're picking up on that makes it way more interesting.
So I do my best to approach all "infodump" scenes that way -- make it a chance to learn something about the characters. Sometimes that's visual -- just seeing how the characters respond to it, with body language and expression -- and sometimes that's a storytelling choice, putting info in a position where it can be argued over or bring two characters closer together or show us something unexpected about the guy who knows the info.
I just shift the camera angles around in my comic Life of an Aspie25 and I change up the facial expressions in pages where the people conversing don't move. (thanks copy and paste tool) Plus it also helps trying to go for unique poses sometimes to break up the monotony of people just sitting or standing there.
I'd recommend stretching facial expressions and playing with body posture/movements? It'll make the page more fun to draw and also puts a little variation into the panels rather than just rehashing the same 2 facial expressions for the whole page. Here's an example of what I try with one of my more expressive characters (it's pretty old so please excuse those ugly speech bubbles)
vs something like
which is a pretty repetitive pattern for conversations in some popular comics i read on here :/ keeping facial expressions limited can just make things seem bland and give you the feeling you've already seen this exact page about 40 times in the comic before.
All right, here is a page of pure conversation I did. Did I do it right?
48
Ahh, I feel the body language in the conversation is pretty good, but I feel like the bubble placement and overall layout feels a bit cluttered. I had trouble following the dialogue throughout the page. I think you could really benefit with clearer gutters to divide the moments. The dark background fading into a black gutter line is really hard to make out.
Also, the bubbles might look cluttered to me because I'm viewing it from mobile. XD So I can't be sure.
Other than that, I feel you are on the right track! : >
What I've been trying to do in my recent pages is to give the conversation secondary action, which lets me move the characters around and gives the reader something else to look at/pay attention to while the conversation is happening. In one of the first scenes of Nocturne5, the conversation between Lexi and Brandi is happening while they're bartending, so the girls are filling drinks, talking with customers, etc. while the main dialogue is happening. I don't think I executed this as well as I would have liked, but it comes with practice. In CH2, I'm exploring this method in a few other scenes and hope to do so in a better light.
Funny enough, it's usually the action-y scenes that I'm worried about for this reason. They're necessary to move the story from point A to point B, but they just seem so boring? XD; All I want is for character X to stab character Y, but I have to actually show how the fight goes...
Though that's probably more of a writing concern than a visual concern.
Hahaha, 90% of my stories are conversation scenes.
Camera angle changes and secondary actions are all key in making them more dynamic. I also like to focus on objects sometimes, showing how the character interacts (or doesn't) with them which is also an extension of body language; like if they're fiddling with a paper clip they may be excited or nervous.
Yeah!! I don't think you have a problem with the conversation being uninteresting here -- honestly, I think as long as you show both characters acting and reacting in ways that make sense for their character and push the scene forward, this isn't the sort of convo that gets boring super easily. This isn't an infodump -- it's an argument, a conflict!
I agree with Jess, that the bubble placement is a bit difficult -- after "how do I even get a fighting experience," you have to skip over the nearby "and yet, I'm no closer" caption in order to get to "I learn faster than anyone" down at the bottom of the panel. Then that "I learn faster" balloon is overlapping the next panel, which tries to lead you down into the "how interesting" panel before you've gone over to read "and yet I'm no closer" and "did you just say demon."
You can figure out what order you're supposed to read them in, but having to stop and think about which balloon is next is something you wanna avoid! But yeah, those kinda flow-of-the-eye tweaks are the biggest things I'd look at going forward!
Something else I've seen but probably isn't a good idea unless its related to the story somehow is having a character who's not part of the conversation doing something in the background, whether funny or not. Doing that takes attention from the conversation though, which is why you only want to do it if it's important to the plot or character development
Hm some advice I got from an interview (i think?) I listened to of Lora Innes who does the amazing webcomic The Dreamer–plan out the conversation scene, then try to see if the emotional beats still come across well without the text. Of course the text holds the important information, but it's a good way to gauge how the characters themselves are reacting to the conversation–is one character calm and collected, while the other is irritated and angry? Does one character want something from the other character? Or maybe they're both good friends and in agreement about something. Like people have said before, the body language and facial expressions can give a good sense of this!
I don't know exactly how qualified I am to answer this question (considering my comic is dialogue-free), but I thought that I could give some general advice.
Make sure what they are saying is actually interesting, I know this seems kind of obvious but content in dialogue is really important. Make sure what the characters are saying makes sense. Try to take meaningless or repetitive rhetoric out, speaking of which that transitions me into my next tip.
Pace the dialogue appropriately. I've seen waaaaaaay too many comics that have technically good art, good atmosphere, and probably a good story, that I've just glossed over because there was too much to read this for example34. I know that makes me sound lazy, but you'll find that walls of text fitted into a three to four panel section really isn't appealing. There is a whole section on Tapastic for novels, I go to the comics section because I'm too lazy to read and I like pretty pictures. On the other hand, you shouldn't make the conversation too spread out. Unless you do it right and on purpose, dialogue spread thin seems like it takes forever to get to the point.
Use expressions and body language to tell part of the story. Though the main focus of a conversation scene is... well the conversation, you can still use visuals to make it interesting. Make the characters emote, unless it's in-character for someone to be completely rigid (like if they were a robot or whatever), they would probably be doing something. While they're talking they could be: fiddling with a watch, looking away in boredom, leaning on the arm of a chair, chewing on the end of a pen, millions of different things that add character and life to an interaction.
Uhh.... yeah. I'm done. I think
A lot of helpful tips here, awesome! Personally I've been working through a very dialogue heavy scene for the next chapter of my comic No-Good Heroes, and I mostly stuck the rule that they would be doing something, even if it's something very mundane like, pouring a cup of coffee, or exploring the environment (if it's a place they've never been before).
Avoid heavy dialogue unless it's moving the story forward or informing the reader about the character in an interesting sub-textual way. You should remove all forms of "info-dumping" from your story and find a more creative way to deliver this information to your readers.
Background details and characters, humor. And shorter sentences with bigger letters! Also I prefer when speech balloons have enough space for text, like it's written naturally and not "jammed". Even when the text is short but it looks jammed, I avoid reading the dialogues that are designed like this, because it seems like there's too much text. Also the font should be easy to read. Another thing I'd advise to avoid is too much of slang and swearing, I don't have anything against such vocabulary, but in most cases it's annoying to read.
What I usually do is avoid representative panels, like the example you posted. Try to redraw character in different positions. Also, avoid dumping all the dialogue in one bubble, split it up into several panels. And the major one, let people talk with their hands. Don't just have characters standing with their arms plastered to their sides.
This might be a tangent to the original topic, but on the writing side... my big thing with conversation is to solve as much of the pacing in the dialog as possible. I like to condense my text, and try to reveal as much as I can without actually saying it.
For example, if Bob says "Why are you going into town? It's only Tuesday." one might be tempted to fill his pal Amos' dialog with some kind of exposition, like "I'm getting horseshoes. Our blacksmith has taken ill, so I've gotta head into town if I'm gonna get the old mare... blah blah blah". Boring.
Why not cut out the blacksmith and instead do some characterization? For instance...
Bob "Now where are you headed off to? It's only Tuesday"
Amos "Don't you worry, I'm only going for horseshoes, Bob. The tavern don't open until sundown, and I'll be back long before that. You can count on me."
Bob "Yeah, well. You'd better be."
And then maybe revise down to...
Bob "It's Tuesday, Amos. Why're you saddlin' up?"
Amos "Just goin' for horseshoes, Bob. Tavern don't open 'til sundown, an' I'll be back long before."
Bob "You'd better be."
And so on. Now... I haven't said anything about their occupation, their history or their problems, but there are several implications in play. I think that's more fun.
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