Guides
How I write comic scripts and screenplays, in the plain-text formats this editor reads.
Each one covers a piece of the job: the marks, the habits behind them, and what the artist and the letterer do with what you wrote.
- How to write a comic script
- The whole format: pages, panels, balloons, sound effects, captions, panel keywords, spreads, notes and the cover. Start here if you haven’t written one before.
- A complete comic script
- Three finished pages to read, download and write over. The script and the formatted pages, side by side.
- Comic lettering: balloon order and reading order
- How balloons get their numbers, what decides the order they’re read in, and the directions a letterer needs from you.
- How many panels fit on a comic page, and how long an issue runs
- Panels per page, pages per issue, and how much dialogue a panel carries. How an issue gets planned before it gets written.
- Fountain screenplay format
- Scene headings, characters, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions, dual dialogue and the title page. Every mark, with what it produces.
- A complete screenplay
- Three finished pages to read, download and write over. The Fountain source and the formatted script, side by side.
- Comic script and screenplay, side by side
- The same beat written both ways, and what shifts between them: the unit of time, who reads it, how much of the framing is yours.
- Writing a script in plain text
- What Markdown and Fountain are, what the file extensions mean, and where the screenplay conventions came from.