Recently I was able to create the visual script for the remaining 16 or so pages of the fifth chapter of my in-progress graphic memoir.  Thought I'd share a few images.

In this first one you can see the underlying grid I use on all my pages.  It has two layers.  One is the six-panel grid which is the basic design spine for my book.  Of course, I do not follow it on every page, but it is the rhythm that underlies it all.  The other layer you are seeing is grid that breaks the page up into 12 even sections horizontally and vertically, with gutters.  This helps me to divide the pages away from the six-panel grid in an even way (I can easily find halves, quarters, thirds, sixths...).  And it helps guide me in drawing straight lines.

Anyhow, you see me roughly placing the words, which have already been written and edited a bit in a Scrivener document which is words only.   Anything could change at this point, but what I'm aiming for is a sort of movement from the upper left down toward the right.

Next is a different page, but one step further along in the process.  I have drawn in what I think are likely to be the panels. In my book, the narrator's vioce is external to and above the panels (totally cribbed that from Fun Home).

This next one (also a different page) is almost done but not quite.   That middle block of words is being said by a friend to me in the past (roughly 2003 or so), and though she is pictured on the page, she is pictured in 1996, so I don't quite know how to "balloon" that dialogue, or where to point it.  She is depicted in 2003 on the previous page, so maybe it will read clearly, or maybe I can point a tail in that general direction but I'm not sure yet.  I will have to look at the spread to see.

Plus, this is the sort of page that makes my head spin with nerves and my heart jump with joy.  The images in the first and second and start of third tiers are from 1996.  The dialogue is from roughly 2003), and the very last panel is from 2005 or so.    THIS is why comics is, I think, such a miraculous form for memoir!!!!!  You can't do time like that in purely prose (of course, I'm not sure I can coherently do it in comics, but I think it can be done...)

I also like the verbal and visual rhythm of "no" on this page's draft.  :-)

And there you have it... a glimpse into my drafting process.  NONE of this is final art, of course.  I'm just getting the story together and practicing various visual styles as I go.

More on Visual Scripting, And Scrivener Too!

Years ago I discovered the writing software Scrivener, and it changed my life.

from the Scrivener website, link below

Seriously.

Changed it so much that I require my novel writing students to buy it and use it.  And while at first they balk a bit (it does have a learning curve) within in week or two they are asking why the college doesn't require it of all students because "it would have changed my writing in all of my classes for the last four years!"

So imagine my joy when I discovered Jessica Abel's post about using Scrivener in combination with Visual Scripting (which I wrote about in my two previous posts).

Check out her post here.

You can learn more about Scrivener from many You Tube videos and from the developer's website here.

Visual Scripting, My First Attempts

In my last post, I talked about Jessica Abel's wonderful technique of visual scripting and how my experiments with it changed my comics for the better.

Below are a few shots showing the development of one page of my memoir.

I didn't have Adobe InDesign at the time I did this, so my work looks a little different than Abel's does, but I used all the same principles.  I am working on my iPad Pro, using Adobe Comp CC (free) and Procreate.

I did the visual scripting in Adobe Comp CC.  For this chapter, my foundational grid was a 3x3, nine-panel grid.  So I drew that in first, knowing I might adjust as I went.

You can see the start here:  boxes of different shapes indicate different kinds of words which will appear on the page.  I am typing them in to help determine the amount of space the words will take in each panel, even though I intend to handwrite the words later.

The red words describe what I think I will draw in each panel.

Remember, this is drafting.  Anything can change.  And most of it does.

Below, the script is evolving.  Do I need 9 panels or the 8 I had originally thought of?  If each panel is a distinct action... hmmm.... what, if anything, can I eliminate?  What needs the best focus?

Of course, significant revisions occurred...

Once I had it the way I wanted it (knowing, of course, that revisions can and will alway occur), I sent a .jpg of the visual script to Procreate.  There I imported it as a layer, and drew over it.  Below is my working draft.

Once I felt sure it was working, I began to color.

And that's how I have begun to use visual scripting in my work. 

I still do less formal drafting, of course, capturing ideas or quick sequences.  Testing out alternative versions of things.  I'm still a creator who simply has to draw or write a thing before I know it's going to work.  But once I have a fairly clear idea of how a scene is going to go, this visual scripting is the next best step for me!

Give it a try!

Visual Scripting by Jessica Abel

Have you heard of "Visual Scripting?"-- a method of drafting comics first developed by Alison Bechdel and then refined and written about my Jessica Abel?

I hadn't either until just a few months ago when a colleague in comics, Jesse Lambert, mentioned it to me.

It has changed my process of drafting comics completely.

You can read about Bechdel's process in Abel's book, Mastering Comics (one of two great books she co-authored about creating in this medium).

Or you can check out her several posts online about it as well.

Start here.   This website is the source for the images below.

Though Abel is telling us how to use InDesign (an Adobe page layout software) to do this), don't get hung up on the technology (it's expensive).  You can use this method to great effect on regular paper, or with a free app on an ipad called Adobe Comp CC. 

There's grids and color coding and nerdy stuff like that.  It was a little overwhelming at first. 

But especially for me, a writer, who struggles to turn on my visual brain, this has been amazing and worth the effort!

Then, you use words to script the words of the comics as well as to describe what you will draw, roughly planning out the visuals, but recording them quickly only with words, but in the actual space of the page.

I find this much much much more inspirational to my writer's brain than writing a normal script and then trying to translate it to a visual page.

This post also includes links to her template and a video.

I'll share more soon on my process with this method.