I wrote a script!

I did it! I wrote a comic book script. Just a small one.

I was going to write another blog post about how I'm gonna tackle this whole thing, and I still owe that one, but things got quiet at work, and in-between meetings I wanted something to do that was not starting a major thing.

So there's this comic book magazine in the UK called 2000AD, they have been going since 1977 and as they are weekly are on issues numbering about 1945-ish right now.  They feature all sorts of serials and one-offs, including the long-running Judge Dredd. They also have some short 4-page stories called "Future Shock". Their submission rules for writers are that however unknown or well-know you are, you have to write Future Shocks before you write anything else for them.  The great news is that they are quite well known for using this as an entry point into comic book writing.

A four-page comic is quite short, how hard can it be?  Well I worked on it at work and then in the evening at home, I have had a story idea floating around in mind for a Future Shock, about a computer scientist who is co-erced into making software to emulate Elvis Presley's voice, and a sequence of disappointments and refinements to make it sound real and authentic. Finally he implements an artificial personality meant to mimic Elvis's personality, in order to give the singing more "attitude". The shock (not a big one I admit) is that once it has a personality, the virtual Elvis refuses to sing the song it is given because it doesn't like it. It's called "Velvis" (which is short for Virtual Elvis).  There is of course a bit more to it than that, but that's a nutshell synopsis.

So here's the thing I want to talk about, how did I got from no script to script when I haven't done so before?

I've read several things about formatting a comic book script, and while there is no standardised format, in a nutshell you break it down into pages (of the finished comic), and then break it down into "panels" (comic book speak for the individual framed pictures). You describe what is shown in the panel, and follow this with the text for the speech bubbles, done in a sort of movie/TV script way, or for traditionalists, a bit like lines in a play.

What I didn't know was how to break my story down into pages, and how to decide on how many panels on each page. Instead I just started at panel 1 on page 1 and did one panel at a time until I had told the story.

The submissions guidelines at 2000AD encourage you to use 5-7 panels to a page, which is an average length of 14 panels. However, I knew also that first pages tend to have fewer panels, with a big picture to get you started.  Anyway, just writing it out, as it came, I ended up with 28 panels, which is a little bit big, but for what I was going to do that was perfect.

Because I started it at work I didn't have any of the style guides I had downloaded, so the second thing I did, once at home, was to reformat the script.

I then started breaking it down into pages, and at the same time trimming a few panels by merging the speech of more than one together, tightening up the script. I found it helped to visualise how it would be laid out on the page, how many panels on a line, how many lines.  I tried to make the page breaks at natural pause points in the story, which I seemed to manage OK.

By the time I was finished that pass I had basically also tried to tighten up the speech, removing unneeded words to make it tighter, and added quite a bit to the panel descriptions. It finished up at 21 panels, feeling (to my mind) like a nice, tight script. I have also written a synopsis at the front (the chances are only the synopsis will be read).

To finish the job, I need to write a cover letter and get some envelopes and stamps, and send it to 2000AD along with an SAE.

I HOPE they like it. It's my first script, I'm not kidding myself that I'll be a genius at this at the first try, if ever. But... you gotta start somewhere, and now that I've bitten the proverbial bullet, I should bit the next one an actually send it.

Anyway, I will, sometime soon, write the post about how I'm going to tackle this thing, but let's say that the first stage is to write a Future Shock for 2000AD. As it happens it is what I was going to do first so whew!

For my own purposes, and for the purposes of counting how many scripts I write (intending to give up at 100) I will be numbering my stories. This is...

01 VELVIS - Future Shock for 2000AD

I reserve the right to re-work it for a different publication, but in that case the new version might be 01a. Or something. I'm waffling, time to stop.