Writing for the Comic Page: From Scene to Script
Hero art: Lunora promotional artwork by Kev Liew and Sierra Ashevaili Rottman (provisional credit), courtesy of Otherworlds Inc. Editorial title treatment by Otherworlds Inc.
The Otherworlds Workshop · Making Comics · Guide 2
A character can carry a lifetime into a room. The comic still has to decide what we see when they enter.
Perhaps they pause beside an empty chair. Perhaps they speak too quickly, turn a photograph facedown, or leave the door open for someone who will never arrive. The history matters. The writer’s task is to find the part of it that becomes an experience on the page.
In Planning a Comic You Can Finish, we established the boundaries of a first release: its reader, format, workload, and team. Now that plan needs scenes an artist can interpret and a reader can follow.
This guide takes you from a scene’s purpose to its visible beats, panel descriptions, and lettering. Along the way, we will work through a short script, repair a weak version, and explore two Otherworlds lessons: how Lunora’s larger mythology relates to its comic script, and how H.S. Crow’s belief that every person is a story can deepen the perspective behind a scene.
By the end, you should have a short script, a scene-to-page breakdown, and a clear set of questions to test before finished drawing begins.
If you are arriving here first, choose a small scene with a definite ending and name its intended format. That is enough to begin.
1. Give the Scene a Purpose
Before deciding how many panels a page needs, decide what the scene changes.
A courier begins by treating a parcel as ordinary cargo. By the end, they have broken its seal because something inside knocked.
The change is small enough to describe plainly, but it contains a story: an instruction, a disturbance, and a choice. It also gives the writer something to evaluate. If the courier opens the box without hesitation or a meaningful reason, the scene may deliver the action while losing the decision.
Write four lines before scripting:
| Question | Courier example |
|---|---|
| What is true at the beginning? | The courier intends to deliver the parcel sealed. |
| What unsettles that state? | A sound suggests the parcel contains something alive. |
| What changes by the end? | The courier deliberately breaks the seal. |
| What should the reader carry forward? | Curiosity about the contents and concern about the consequences. |
This method also works for quieter scenes. A walk through a familiar town might change our understanding of someone’s loneliness. A meal might establish a fragile sense of safety. A conversation might leave the practical situation unchanged while revealing that two people understand it very differently.
The purpose does not have to be a fight, a revelation, or a cliffhanger. It does need to explain why this particular stretch of reading belongs in the comic.
Once you know that purpose, you can judge details by what they contribute. A beautiful paragraph about the courier’s childhood may belong elsewhere if the present scene cannot use it.
2. Decide Whose Experience Gives the Scene Its Weight
The same action can become a different story depending on whose uncertainty we share.
Follow the courier, and the sound inside the parcel may feel like a summons to compassion. Follow the sender, and the broken seal might suggest betrayal. Follow the being inside, and the entire sequence could begin with darkness, footsteps, and the first narrow line of light.
Perspective shapes more than the narrator’s voice. It influences what we notice first, what information remains unavailable, whose reaction receives space, and when an ordinary object becomes important.
On the page, ask:
- Whose understanding are we following at this moment?
- What can that person see or hear?
- What does the reader know that they do not?
- Which reaction deserves a panel of its own?
You can show the reader more than a character knows. A shadow behind the courier may create suspense precisely because the courier has not noticed it. Make that difference intentional. A surprise that depends on hiding information can collapse if the background reveals it too soon.
H.S. Crow: Every Person Is a Story
For H.S. Crow, writing is also a way of immortalizing the people he meets. His starting belief is simple: every person is a story, and perspective gives that story its gravity and direction.
That idea asks a writer to look beyond the function someone performs in a scene. A guard is keeping a door closed, but the door may mean something entirely different to the person standing on either side of it. One sees safety. Another sees the last obstacle between them and someone they love.
Our encounters with people can leave behind a rhythm of speech, an unexpected kindness, a contradiction, or a way of facing disappointment. Those impressions can become starting points for fiction. The work is in discovering what they mean to the character being created, rather than assuming one remembered moment explains a whole person.
A useful question is: What does this person believe they are protecting?
Perhaps the impatient clerk is protecting the few minutes they have left to reach home. Perhaps the person who keeps making jokes is protecting a room from noticing their fear. These are possibilities a writer can explore, not conclusions we can make about strangers. On the comic page, the chosen possibility needs evidence: a clock checked twice, a joke abandoned halfway through, a hand that stays on the door after everyone else has left.
For a short exercise, invent two people on opposite sides of a closed gate. Write three sentences from each person’s understanding of the situation. Then script the moment without a caption explaining who is right. Choose the expressions, objects, and words that let the reader feel what is at stake for both.
This is where Crow’s idea becomes a practical storytelling tool. Perspective can give a minor character an inner life and change the pressure behind a simple action. The gate remains closed. What that closure means has deepened.
3. Separate Meaning, Visible Information, and Lettering
A script has several kinds of information, and they do different jobs.
Meaning is what you want the scene to communicate: the courier chooses compassion over obedience.
Visible information is what the artist can put on the page: an intact seal, a hesitant hand, a cut ribbon, a lid still closed.
Lettering is the text the reader will encounter: dialogue, captions, sound effects, and any readable labels or signs the team needs to place.
Keep these distinct enough that a collaborator can tell what must appear in the finished comic. Blambot’s Comic Script Basics gives a useful practitioner example, separating panel descriptions from lettering items and identifying those items for production.
Consider this instruction:
Mara realizes that the promise she made no longer matters.
That may help explain the scene to an artist, but it leaves the representation unresolved. Does Mara remove a ring? Fold a letter away? Continue wearing the ring while saying something she knows is false?
Each choice creates a different meaning. Choose the evidence that belongs to your character.
A caption is also an available choice. Comics can use interior language beautifully. The question is whether the words add an experience the image cannot provide on its own. A calm caption beside a shaking hand might reveal the distance between a character’s account and their behavior.
Avoid making an artist guess which abstract instruction is essential, and avoid assuming that removing narration automatically improves a scene.
4. Find the Beats and Give Them Room
A beat, as we use the term here, is a meaningful step in the reader’s experience: noticing, attempting, resisting, discovering, deciding, or reacting.
For the courier, the sequence might be:
- The delivery instruction is established.
- Something inside the parcel makes a sound.
- The courier considers acting against the instruction.
- The seal is broken.
- The contents are revealed.
- The courier does something that shows a changed responsibility.
These are story decisions before they are panel counts. Some may share an image. Others may need several images because the hesitation or discovery deserves attention.
Jim Zub describes a page-by-page planning method that helps him see how much space each part of a story receives. You can use a simple version: write a sentence beside each planned page stating what happens and what the reader leaves it knowing.
For our exercise:
| Page | Main purpose | Ending state |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Make the courier’s decision understandable | The seal is broken; the contents remain concealed. |
| 2 | Reveal the vulnerability inside and show a response | The courier begins caring for the creature. |
If the first page spends most of its space describing the building, the decision may become rushed. If the second spends every panel displaying the creature, we may never see the courier’s response. The breakdown exposes those imbalances while they are still easy to change.
Test the actual reading format
For a printed comic, a reveal may depend on what is visible before and after a page turn. Check a folded paper dummy or the intended spread arrangement. Story-page numbering alone can be misleading when covers, introductory pages, or reading direction change the arrangement.
A single-page digital viewer and a vertical scroll present information differently. For scroll, test how the sequence enters the screen at a readable size; a gap does not guarantee that every reader experiences the same pause.
This guide establishes the intended sequence. Guide 4 will examine thumbnails, layouts, and reading flow more closely.
5. Write Panel Descriptions That Give the Artist Something to Work With
A useful panel description identifies the information that makes that image necessary.
That usually means some combination of who is present, where they are, what is happening, what the reader must notice, and any continuity detail that cannot change.
Here is a description that asks too much of one ordinary image:
The courier hears a knock, remembers the warning, gets scared, opens the parcel, sees the creature, and decides to protect it.
The problem is the succession of states. The parcel begins closed and ends open. The creature begins hidden and ends visible. The decision happens internally without a specified expression.
You could solve this through several panels, a deliberately designed montage, or another visual treatment. What matters is acknowledging the sequence and choosing how it will be communicated.
For a clearer single panel:
The courier’s thumb parts the cut seal. The lid remains down. Keep the broken seal readable; the contents must still be concealed.
The artist now knows the required information and the boundary of the reveal.
Distinguish essential information from suggested staging
Use a brief note when the distinction matters:
Essential: The reader sees the broken seal but cannot see inside the parcel.
Suggested staging: A close view of the courier’s hands.
The artist may find a better angle or composition. Explaining the purpose gives them something to preserve while improving the presentation. Zub discusses this balance between specific direction and artist interpretation in his scripting tutorial.
Be precise when later action depends on geography: which side of the door a person occupies, who can see the object, or where a dropped key lands. Be less prescriptive when several visual solutions would work equally well.
Description length should follow the problem. A new environment may need reference and context. A repeated gesture in an established room may need very little.
6. Let Words Earn Their Space
Dialogue occupies part of the composition. So do captions and sound effects. A line that seems brief in a document can become a major shape beside a face or a small action.
Begin by asking what each line contributes.
“I am opening the box” adds little if the image clearly shows someone doing exactly that. “You never heard this” changes the relationship between the speaker, the listener, and the action.
Voice also depends on what a person chooses to say. Compare these original alternatives for the same warning:
“The sender said to keep it sealed.”
“If that seal breaks, I lose this route.”
“Please. Put the knife down.”
The first foregrounds an instruction. The second exposes a personal consequence. The third brings the relationship into focus. Any could belong in a different version of the scene.
Zub’s dialogue discussion describes shaping speech around character, revising it, and reading it aloud. Try that test, then test the words beside a rough image. A line can sound natural and still demand more space than the panel can give it.
Use word counts as a signal
Dark Horse’s script guide suggests approximately 25 words per balloon and 50 per panel. Those are publisher guidelines, not a universal measure of good comics.
For your own page, inspect the intended lettering size, panel area, visual detail, and reading rhythm. If the text hides the hand gesture carrying the scene, a technically compliant word count has not solved the problem.
You may need to shorten a line, divide an exchange, give the conversation more space, or choose a different image. Ask what the reader needs from both words and art before deciding what to remove.
Make the lettering order explicit
List the words in their intended reading order and identify the speaker or text type. Mark off-panel speech, captions, or special delivery when relevant. Keep instructions such as “quietly, afraid of waking the creature” separate from the actual words to be lettered.
For our sample, lettering numbers restart on each story page. This is our chosen convention, not a requirement for every project. Agree the system with the team and use it consistently.
7. Worked Example: From a Sealed Parcel to a Readable Sequence
Teaching example: This scene was created for the guide. It is not a scene from Lunora or another published Otherworlds story.
Our premise is deliberately contained: one courier, one room, one parcel, and a decision that changes the courier’s relationship to the thing being delivered.
The first attempt
One panel: The courier hears a knock, remembers the warning, opens the box, sees a frightened creature, and decides to help it.
Courier: “Something is alive in here. I should not open this, but I cannot leave it suffering. I will take care of it.”
This version states the conclusion before the scene gives it weight. It also calls the creature frightened without specifying behavior and asks a single image to contain several incompatible moments.
The revision will separate the decision from the reveal, establish the warning as readable physical evidence, and express care through an action.
Revised script
Project: The Parcel — teaching exercise
Version: 1.0
Format: Two comic pages; confirm placement in the intended reading arrangement before relying on a page-turn reveal.
Scene purpose: The courier crosses from carrying an unknown object to accepting responsibility for a vulnerable creature.
Continuity: The seal stays intact through Page 1, Panel 3. The contents remain concealed throughout Page 1.
Artist latitude: Panel shapes, angles, and acting may change while preserving the information sequence.
Lettering: Numbers restart on each story page. “No lettering” is an instruction and does not appear in the art.
Page 1 — Four panels
Panel 1
At a worktable in a quiet room, a courier holds a small wooden parcel. Establish the closed room door in the background. A knife rests on the table. A paper tag hangs beside the intact seal, positioned so its words can be read.
1. TAG: Deliver sealed.
Panel 2
The courier’s fingers have paused against the box. Their attention is on the sound coming from inside. The lid remains closed.
2. SFX — INSIDE PARCEL: tok tok
Panel 3
The courier looks toward the closed room door. One hand rests beside the knife. Keep the parcel and intact seal visible enough to maintain the situation. The important impression is a moment of consideration before acting.
No lettering.
Panel 4
The seal has been cut. The courier’s thumb parts its two ends; the knife now lies beside the parcel. The lid is still down. Emphasize the broken seal without showing the contents.
No lettering.
Page 2 — Four panels
Panel 1
The lid is open. Inside, a small furred creature with oversized ears presses itself into the far corner among packing cloth. Its posture should communicate withdrawal from the newly opened space. The courier’s hand remains outside the box.
No lettering.
Panel 2
The courier holds a shallow cup of water just outside the opening. Their free hand rests away from the creature. Allow room between the offered cup and the animal; it has not approached yet.
1. COURIER — SOFTLY: Take your time.
Panel 3
The creature has reached the near edge of the parcel and is drinking from the cup. The courier remains still. Keep enough of the box visible to make the change in the creature’s position clear.
No lettering.
Panel 4
A wider view: the courier has pulled a chair beside the open parcel. The water is within reach of the creature. The cut seal lies on the table in the foreground. The courier is settling in to stay rather than preparing to leave.
No lettering.
Why the revision changes the scene
The tag establishes the rule before it is broken. The look toward the door introduces hesitation without requiring a speech about it. The cut seal records an action the courier cannot quietly undo.
We omit the actual knife stroke between the last two panels of Page 1. The surrounding evidence is intended to let the reader infer it. That is a choice to test: if the cut is unclear in roughs, show the action more explicitly or adjust the continuity.
On Page 2, the creature’s movement from the back of the box toward the water provides visible change. The final chair gives the decision duration. Care becomes something the courier is prepared to spend time doing.
This version deliberately leaves the sender’s intentions unresolved. If a later scene requires the reader to know the sender is dangerous, that information will need its own evidence. A sealed parcel alone does not establish villainy.
The script is a teaching proposal. Its staging still needs thumbnails and a reader check; the finished art may reveal a clearer solution.
From Our Worlds: Giving Lunora’s Mythology a Place in the Script
Otherworlds Field Note · Studio lesson
As discussed in our planning guide, Lunora’s movement from prose toward comics involved a comic script alongside a master document preserving the larger world of Caligo. Those documents serve different readers and different needs.
At the scripting stage, the practical question becomes: Where does this piece of information belong?
A world fact may belong in a continuity note because the team needs to respect it. A discovery may need visible evidence because the audience must notice it. An account of the past may belong in dialogue because the person telling it is selective, mistaken, or trying to persuade someone.
These choices affect how a reader encounters the mythology.
| Destination | What belongs there | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Continuity document or reference | A rule the creators must preserve | Does the audience need to learn this now, or only see its consequences? |
| Panel description | Evidence the artist must make visible | What must be recognizable for the scene to work? |
| Dialogue or caption | Words the reader needs to encounter | Who is presenting this information, and what does their perspective add? |
| Later scene | Material that the present sequence cannot use well | What future decision or discovery will make this meaningful? |
Imagine, as a separate teaching example, a city where one doorway must never be used. A lore note could preserve the reason. The current scene might need only worn paving that bends around that door and a local resident pulling a visitor away from it.
If the visitor asks why and receives two conflicting answers, the mythology begins to include perspective. The reader learns both that a boundary exists and that people understand it differently.
That doorway is an invented demonstration, not a claim about Lunora’s canon. It illustrates the scripting choice a large world creates: which part should become evidence, which part should become testimony, and which part should remain beyond the present scene.
The official Lunora site introduces a story shaped by conflicting histories, gods, and a generational lie. For writers building similarly layered worlds, the useful lesson is to let the script determine the order of discovery. The archive can know more than any one character does.
8. Agree on a Script Format Your Team Can Use
Comic scripts vary. Zub describes several approaches; Blambot shows a format that helps a letterer navigate the work. Dark Horse supplies its own specifications. Start with your collaborators’ or destination’s requirements, then choose a clear arrangement.
For this workshop, the useful minimum is:
- Project title, writer, version, and date.
- Story-page labels and identifiable panels.
- Drawing instructions separated from reader-facing text.
- Speaker and text-type labels, with an agreed lettering order.
- Necessary reference links and continuity notes.
- Essential story information distinguished from optional staging.
- Unresolved questions and the person responsible for deciding them.
If you are writing and drawing alone, rough layouts with dialogue may communicate more efficiently than a formal full script. Use the amount of documentation that helps you work and return to the scene later. If another person must draw, letter, edit, or translate it, check that the information they need is accessible outside your own memory.
When the script changes after art has begun, identify the affected page, panel, and lettering item. Explain the story reason and ask which approved work the change affects. A “small” dialogue change can require a different expression, balloon, or composition.
9. Read the Script as Its Next Collaborator
Before handing it over, try three passes.
The artist’s pass: Can you identify what must be drawn without inventing essential missing information? Are positions and props consistent? Have you specified several successive actions as though they were one image?
The letterer’s pass: Can you distinguish every printed word from an instruction? Is the speaker clear? Is the order workable? Does the text have room at the intended reading size?
The reader’s pass: Can someone follow the important change from a rough sequence without being coached through your intentions?
The third pass needs something visible. Simple boxes, stick figures, and provisional balloons can expose a missing transition before rendering begins. Those roughs are a test here; fuller layout development follows later in the series.
Ask a reader what they think happened before telling them what you intended. If they misunderstand, inspect the evidence. They cannot read the continuity document behind your page.
| Symptom | First repair to test |
|---|---|
| The reader misses the choice | Give the decisive object, gesture, or reaction clearer emphasis. |
| A character seems to change position impossibly | Establish geography or include the missing transition. |
| The dialogue overwhelms the acting | Try fewer words, more space, or a different division of the exchange. |
| The reveal arrives too early | Inspect what is visible in the actual spread or viewport. |
| The scene is clear but emotionally flat | Revisit whose experience matters and what they believe they may lose. |
These are starting tests, not automatic diagnoses. Keep the version that communicates the scene most effectively, even when it differs from your first mental picture.
Your Scene-to-Script Exercise
Choose a two-page scene in which a person makes a small decision with a consequence. You can use the parcel premise or your own bounded situation.
- State the beginning and ending conditions in one sentence each.
- Name the perspective we follow and one thing that person does not know.
- List the visible beats without polishing dialogue.
- Give each page a purpose and a clear ending state.
- Write the panel descriptions, then the reader-facing words in order.
- Mark the information that is essential and the staging that is flexible.
- Make rough boxes and balloon shapes at a useful reading size.
- Ask someone to describe the sequence, revise one weak point, and record why it changed.
For the perspective variation, retell one part from another participant’s experience. Keep the event itself consistent. Change what we can see, what we learn first, or whose reaction receives space.
Compare the two versions. Which one serves the story you want to tell? What does the other version reveal about a character you had treated as incidental?
Before You Move Into Visual Development
Your script is ready for the next stage when:
- The scene has an identifiable purpose and change.
- The important sequence can be understood from its proposed images and words.
- The team can distinguish lettering from production instructions.
- Essential continuity and references are available.
- Page or scroll assumptions have been tested in the intended format.
- At least one rough sequence has exposed what needs clarification.
- Remaining questions have a clear next action.
A character’s whole life will never fit inside a panel. It does not have to. One carefully chosen action can make us feel that a life continues beyond it.
That is the responsibility behind the script: to choose what another person will encounter, and to leave enough truth in those choices for the world to feel inhabited.
Next in The Otherworlds Workshop: Designing Characters and Worlds for Repeated Use—building the visual references your story and collaborators actually need.
Sources and Further Reading
- Dark Horse Comics, Script Format and Specifications, undated. Publisher-specific guidance.
- Nate Piekos / Blambot, Comic Script Basics, undated.
- Jim Zub, Rambling About How I Write Comics — Part Three, July 9, 2012.
- Jim Zub, Rambling About How I Write Comics — Part Four, July 24, 2012; format update October 2013.
- Jim Zub, Rambling About How I Write Comics — Part Five, July 30, 2012.
- Lunora official site.
Craft sources checked October 4, 2026. The worked scene and exercises are original teaching material. They demonstrate choices for readers to test, rather than a mandatory script format.
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