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When folks hire me to write a script, I don’t like to take shortcuts.

Genuine story is freakin’ complex. I get a solid page rate, and you can bet I’m going to leverage my experience and expertise at every single opportunity, and bring my client maximum value for the money they spend with me.

For this reason, I’m not partial to loose scripting.

Ok fine, simple can be hard. In fact, at the highest level, I’ll admit, you could have some genius level loose script that expresses story brilliantly. Leonardo da Vinci probably could have pulled it off, if he was into comics.

But let’s call a spade a spade, fact of the matter is, most writers go loose when the material covers content of lower narrative drive… another way of saying; material that’s less important (or less interesting to them), so it doesn’t matter how their artist conveys it.

This alone should be a red flag to the conscious writer.

Material that isn’t too important, should almost ALWAYS be cut, leaving more room for the material that is important.

No matter how you justify it, loose scripting passes a lot of the narrative work to the artist. Writing for the last 20+ years I reckon I’ve developed a pretty good eye for story. I personally, tend to run a tight ship and like to keep closer tabs on my narratives.

Don’t get me wrong, comics are absolutely a collaborative medium…

but the writer’s initial take on a script, is the stage 1 rocket fuel. The more you put in, the greater the chance to break orbit when you launch.

All that said, you may find yourself wanting or needing to write loose on a particular script.

Ultimately, writing loose means you outline instead of script. Listing core beats, instead of unpacking them with detail.

The easy and quintessential example, is the fight scene.

Pages 14-20

Thing One and Thing Two fight. Thing Two wins.

That’s about as “Marvel Method” as it gets.

Since I’ve already discussed fight scenes extensively here on Story to Script, let’s breakdown a different example.

Let’s write a 10,000 BC caveman/dinosaur comic. We’ll focus in on the bit where Rocko and his small tribe have to cross a vast expanse to get to the mysterious obelisk that can heal the members of his group ailing from an unknown, deadly disease.

At some point you might want to condense a description to cover an entire page or specific scene, which in this case, spans 3 panels. (This panel(s) description is actually modeled after a bit I recently edited on a client’s work.)

Panel 1, Panel 2, Panel 3

Rocko and his family travel miles in search of food and water. Beneath prehistoric birds soaring against azure skies, passing through desert savannas speckled with trees, boulders and scrawny shrubbery. The cavemen grow more tired in each panel. In the last of the sequence one of the tribe spot a tiny river in the distance.

As I pointed out the wrong way of writing loose at the beginning of the article, we can look at the inverse of that, to find the right way to script loose, or in other words;

We've got a thorough discussion on how to keep your beats in place even when writing loose, how to inject maximum narrative drive, and the importance of nailing visual details even when writing loose. Head over to the full access page to snag the rest of the article!

Article length: 1300 words (preview 400/wds)

[ Main site recommended reading: Visualizing Panels, Panel Descriptions, Visual Writing… there’s another one, but for the life of me I can’t remember which one it is, I’ll come back and update here when I remember.]

Panel 3:

Frank Castle shoots the Kingpin.

I see this kind of panel description all the time in comic scripts. I see folks, even established writer folks, defending it as legitimate loose scripting. I generally call it insufficient, lazy writing, but above all, I call it missed opportunity.

Remembering back to the Working Writer’s Guide to Comics; the four essential elements of every comic panel are:

• Emotion
• Comictography
• Mise-en-Scene
• Movement

All four of these are absent in the above panel description.

But even forgetting the four cornerstones of comic panels, we can simply ask “what is this panel telling us in the story, other than the action at hand (which we could only hope, has significant implications)?

Answer: literally, nothing.

Every panel in a comic is a chance to control and express the narrative of the story. While it is possible to do this with broad, loose strokes, the devil truly is in the details.

Hey, whaddya know, dialogue/narration can make a huge difference in expressing narrative throughout a comic… but for this article, let’s ditch dialogue and focus just on the panel descriptions.

Also keep in mind, much of the time you will express deep narrative movements through a sequences of panels. Sort of reverse engineering things backwards from the kind of panel descriptions above is a bit tricky… eh, screw it, let’s revisit this panel description anyway and see if we can’t improve it, actually expressing the narrative through added details;

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Strong dramatic moments are key building blocks in story.

Even in an action oriented spectacle, moments of high drama engage the reader and develop the empathetic bond to the characters. In a drama genre story, the drama itself drives the narrative. No matter how you crack it, it’s dang important to understand how to effectively convey drama in the scene.

While establishing and expressing drama relies on bringing together many (if not all) of the writing fundamentals, here are two not-so-obvious considerations that will inject your dramatic moments with “high-octane, crazy blood.” <For you non-Mad Max fans, that’s a good thing!>

First and primarily, time.

Second, consequences of actions/decisions.

Technically, drama is a loaded word in the creative writing world.

It can mean different things, at different moments, to different people. After all, “dramatic” is an adjective, meaning sudden, striking, exciting, impressive, etc. And such descriptors apply to so much of writing an engaging script.

Before we go on to define drama, let’s take a look at a close, important cousin, that sometimes masquerades as drama, I speak of course, of tension.

In the writer’s guide I define tension as “heightened emotional state derived from an immediate danger or threat.” The reason why tension often gets labeled drama is revealed in the first part of the sentence–heightened emotional state.

Heightened emotional state is the core of good drama.

Think about it when was the last time you read or saw a really good dramatic scene where the characters involved were indifferent? I’m gonna guess, no time recently. 

So for this article and for your future writing, consider the following definition of drama;

How to define drama and a couple of key tips to exploit it in your writing round out this one. Sign up for full access and don't forget you'll get access to the bigger Drama genre series article! 

Take a moment and think back to your first love. Try to recall what you loved about her or him. No really, close your eyes and try to pull up the memories.

Whether your first love was a brief encounter or a long, enduring relationship, you won’t be able to recall every single moment and every single thing about that person you so adored… especially, if your experience was many years ago.

Story is no different.

After a person reads a story (even immediately after), people don’t remember the entire story.

They remember the feeling of the emotional journey… and key moments.

When you write.

Write so people fall in love with your work.

If you develop your story proper, it will be deep and complex, engaging the reader’s emotions on multiple levels and fronts. However, like cleaning up, putting on your best duds, and best cologne, you can make the emotional impact of your story nigh irresistible by focusing on two areas; the emotional center, literally, the heart of the story and the heartbeat of the entire narrative.

The Heart of the Story

While you may remember many “special moments” with someone you love, there will almost always be one that stands out above the others. Something that defines your mental image of who that person was, what they meant to you, and the feelings you had for them.

This moment is the heart of your story.

The first critical step in developing the Heart of your Story is, identifying it.

Because we experience stories primarily through characters, 99.98% of the time, the heart of your story will be anchored to your protagonist. It’s not about the rebels defeating the empire by blowing up the Death Star… it’s about Luke finally tapping his power and making the impossible torpedo shot.

The heart of the story is often found in the climax of the story.

(Though this is not necessarily the case.)

• You may find it when the Protagonist overcomes the All is Lost moment…
• Or at the completion of the Character’s arc…
• The recognition of their New Belief….
• Or the moment of their Big Choice…

In Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan, the heart of the story isn’t in the climatic battle with the MAF (Khan), but in engineering, when Spock makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the ship.

In E.T., the heart of the story comes before the climatic g-men chase scene, when E.T. and Elliot separate and E.T. dies, only to come back to life reinvigorated OR, ~maybe~ in the denouement when E.T. Leaves, “I’ll always be right here.” (We’ll talk more about being unsure of the heart of the story in a second.)

In reality, the one scene that holds the Heart of the Story can be found anywhere… and that’s why it’s important to identify it.

In a novel or screenplay, the heart of the story can often manifest longer—as an extended beat or even full scene.

In comics, it’s important to identify the ONE PANEL that carries that beat or scene.

So once you have it, what do you do with it?

Simple.

Genuine story delivers a thesis about how we writers see the world. Our underlying message is our Master Theme. At its most fundamental level, genuine story is new understanding revealed through change.

The most effective vehicle of this new understanding is the character arc.

A flawed character’s struggle to reach his true potential, framed in the context of a Master Theme—our thesis of the world—reveals that thesis to be true or false.

Change being the key basis by which we judge the results of the struggle.

In most cases, if the character changes for the better–reaches his true potential–the Master Theme rings true. If not, if the character is set in his ways, unable to change, the character has failed. <Though the validity of the argument of the Master Theme can be expressed either way, depending on the author’s approach.>

The character arc is the most effective means to engage a reader because people relate to people more than we relate to anything else.

The empathetic bond to a well written character, allows us to tap into the entire human experience, comprehending and relating to fiction on multiple levels. Every piece of the experience supports and emphasizes the underlying Master Theme–the sum of the parts equal more than the whole.

Whenever you start discussing genuine story and the necessity of complete, well-executed character arcs, there is always a voice to the contrary side; “character arcs are not required” they claim, quickly reciting famous/successful character that don’t appear to arc: James Bond, Captain Kirk, Indiana Jones, John McClane, well pretty much most action heroes… and as it turns out, most serial superheroes (more on this in a second).

When folks are working on a stand alone graphic novel, or even a mini-series, 99% of the time my advice is make the characters arc—this is how you really engage and make a meaningful story.

From a business perspective, I’m of the mindset that it’s better to deliver a hit story, prove the market, then have to work backwards to figure out how to proceed.

This is a much better situation to be in, rather than delivering a story without character arcs; something that misses the mark, doesn’t engage, leaving you with something more easily continued, but less likely to do so.

As I mention in Storycraft for Comics, serial comics are really a special medium. Not many other places in fiction where a story runs for 20-30 years or more. TV sometimes and it’s no wonder TV writing and serial comic writing share some things in common.

There’s a good argument to be made, the best way to approach a serial comic is to leave the hero stuck in the middle of his arc. Always making progress… always struggling… but never finding resolution.

There’s also something to be said for the characters that have already completed their arcs.

When you look at characters like Bond, Kirk, Jones and McClane, these characters are rarely “rookie” characters—they usually come to the table with extensive histories and experience, even if it’s not directly revealed in the narrative at hand.

What you’re seeing is a character who’s completed his arc and already existing from their “full potential.”  

Actually, come to think of it, remember when Picard was shot and the weapon screwed with his artificial heart, giving way for Q to send him back in time to his cadet days. Turns out Picard used to be a womanizing, hot-head—flawed, SOB. Through his backstory, mostly not revealed in typical Next-gen episodes, he overcame his flaws and became the iconic Starfleet captain he would forever be known as.

So most of the characters who appear to have no arc, really, already completed their arc earlier in their story.