How to write a comic script

A comic script is plain text. Three marks carry the whole structure: a page, a panel, and a line of dialogue. Everything below is the format in full, and you can write any of it straight into the editor.

Start a comic script

The three marks

# EXT. NIGHT MARKET - NIGHT: A page. One # starts a new comic page, written as a location slug. A bare # with no location works too, and the page shows as PAGE N.
## **PANEL 1:** Noi ducks under a table.: A panel, with its description after the label. The label is optional: a ## line on its own numbers itself.
NOI: Sorry! Borrowing your floor.: A balloon. Inside a panel, a caps cue and a colon opens dialogue, so NOI: is a balloon the way ## is a panel. The gap after the colon is a tab.

Dialogue needs no marker of its own. Because the cue has to be caps, a description that happens to carry a colon stays description.

Cues are not only for speech

Any caps cue opens a balloon, so sound effects and captions use the same shape:

## **PANEL 2:** Behind her, two GUARDS shove past a fruit stall.

SFX:	KRAK

GUARD 1 (BURST):	Stop her!

CAPTION:	Three minutes before the lanterns go out.

A parenthetical after the name carries delivery: (BURST), (small), (THOUGHT), (OFF). Write what the letterer needs to know and nothing more.

Panel types

Put a caps keyword at the start of the panel description, with placement notes in parentheses after it. These are a request to the artist, not an order.

Size and shape. SPLASH, BIG PANEL, WIDE, TALL PANEL, THIN PANEL, SLIVER, INSET, BORDERLESS, FULL BLEED, BROKEN BORDER
Time and register. FLASHBACK, MONTAGE, REPEAT PANEL, SILENT, DETAIL
Across two pages. Mark the page [SPREAD], then SPLASH SPREAD on the panel

# EXT. LIGHTHOUSE ROCK - NIGHT [SPREAD]

## **PANEL 1:** SPLASH SPREAD. FULL BLEED. The beam cuts the storm in half.

SFX:	VMMMMM

## **PANEL 2:** INSET (far right). BROKEN BORDER. Keo leans out of the frame.

KEO:	Still here! Both of us!

Panel keywords end in a period rather than a colon, so SPLASH and BIG PANEL are never mistaken for a cue.

Notes to yourself

A line in square brackets is a note. It shows in your script and stays out of the page count.

[9-panel grid page. Even beats, metronome pacing.]

Keys in the editor

These work while you are writing a comic script. They do nothing in a screenplay.

Tab: Types the tab that separates a cue from its line. Shift and Tab still move you out of the editor.
Alt + 1: Makes the line a page.
Alt + 2: Makes the line a panel.
Alt + 3: Makes the line a balloon, which means stripping the heading marks back off, since a cue is all a balloon needs.

The credits block

Lines at the top of the file, before the first page, become the cover. Anything that is not a known credit stays as prose.

Title: Night Market
Series: Vongfai
Issue: 1
Writer: Nor Sanavongsay
Artist:
Letterer:

Recognised credits are Series, Issue, Writer, Author, Artist, Illustrator, Penciller, Inker, Colorist, Letterer, Designer, Cover, Translator, Editor, Contact, Date, Draft, and Copyright. An empty one is left off the cover, so you can keep the stubs while the book fills up.