What is it about visual storytelling?

[akitsukino]

I am having a good time with my novel so far, but I do feel a little guilty because i know the only reason I'm writing it as a novel is because I punked out of making it a comic. Drawing had just been making so mad, and frustrated, and tired (and hungry!? Does anyone else get hungry when they draw? What is that about ?!), but I still wanted to get the story out.

I was watching a cowboy show a little while ago (cable was out). I always kind of liked those old timey tv shows from the 50s and 60s because of how melodramatic and intense they could be. I was watching the story unfold and I was a bit surprised at how gripped I was by the whole thing. I wondered how invested I would'e been in this story if I was reading it as a novel.

I think one of the interesting thing about film is that exact moment so when you're so unbelievably immersed and involved that you completely forget you're watching a movie. Novels have occasionally made me feel this way, but not often. I made a thread about the differennce between comics, books,and movies and something people said that I found interesting was that they couldn't always feel for a character when they didn't have a visual.

What do you think it is that's so special about visual storytelling? Let me know below.

[30knight]

for me, it's probably as you said, just how cinematic and involving they can be! i think there are benefits to non visual story telling too, like, you can tell someone a story in a very unique voice and as a reader you can see something from a perspcttive you don't normally get! but i guess it's the opposite to that which makes visual story telling so appealing for me. i LOVE expressions, i LOVE body language, in life there are so many things we see that you can't communicate through writing alone and comics give that opportunity :,D

[JeanGuillet]

Visual storytelling is a lot more work, for sure! A picture is worth a thousand words. For me, I did the novel first, and then had to face up to the fact that it was (this is pre-Tapas novels) nearly impossible to get anyone to look at an original novel that wasn't traditionally published. I spiraled over the course of about a week from doing some illustrations here and there to doing a full blown webcomic, and i've been spiralling deeper into this now for years with art upgrades and stuff. So glad I wrote the novel first because visual storytelling is it's own thing, a different art from plot and character and theme and the traditional novel things. I've found that doing things visually has sharpened my vision of the novel beyond measure, made me pay far more attention to detail than I had before. it's also made me sort of let go of ownership of the whole thing more, just follow the logic, follow the visuals -- so much so that I can forget that it's actually supposed to be me at the helm of this ship. The me who wrote the novel feels like a different me, one with a broader vision, but less clarity. It's not just about having the visuals of a character, it's about having the right one...and for me I've been extremely happy with how those visuals developed over the course of the years I've been doing the comic. I enjoy being invested in the visual aspect of this, I feel like it's a great complement to the structure of the novel. And it's a 300k novel gonna end up as one ginormous omnibus. Move aside gone with the wind, THIS is a doorstopper. But it's accessible through the visuals. It's a light read, not a heavy one, and it doesn't lose the depth or the theme. Been a fascinating experience to stand on both sides of this as a writer and an artist. You need both, but the visuals are so powerful that writing becomes the silent partner and the work just soars.

[joannekwan]

I think it's because in a visual medium, the audience is being told what to see. It's easier to make a grand shot look grand with cinematography/panel composition.

Whereas for written works, you rely on the audience's imagination to bring the visuals. You can describe the scene all you want, but the reader is still interpreting the picture in their own way.

[punkarsenic]

when ppl talk abt like, Why Visual Storytelling or Why Comics, i always think of this short comic by comic art ed:

course its focused on education, but that core idea in the dog vs dog bit - that communication is strengthened when communicated both visually and verbally - is at the heart of why visual storytelling comes out on top.

theres also the fact that images are recieved information; immediately accessible to the reader, taken in instinctively (and processed instinctively when it comes to the effects of certain poses, colours, lighting arrangements) - whereas words alone require 'decoding.' when you look at a page of text, you arent immediately being communicated to, but need to work through it to unlock the meaning. theres just smth abt the immediacy of comics.

theres also smth to be said abt the potential for spontaneity - in prose, if you want two things to happen simultaneously you need to carefully balance them in the passage, but in a comic you just distinguish them visually and both events can be taken in simultaneously by the reader. lots of potential in that.

[BlueWorldComics]

Show > Tell. It's possible to do that with the written word, but much easier (both for the writer and reader) to do it visually. After all "show" in inherently sight-based.