Friday, February 5, 2021

Graphic Novel Manuscript Formatting

Graphic novels are seeing increased readership, recognition, and editorial interest - which is wonderful! Check out all the graphic novels honored in the 2021 ALA Youth Media Awards.

For author/illustrators who are writing and drawing their own works, they have the opportunity to craft as they go, using whatever format suits their style best.

But for authors who want to submit a manuscript for someone else to illustrate, formatting the manuscript still seems to be a question with no definitive answer. Having said that, these resources for formatting a graphic novel manuscript might be helpful:

1) Dark Horse Comics offers a free "script guide" PDF here.

A screen shot of the first page of Dark Horse Comics' script guide


2) Check out this post from author/illustrator Matthew Holm (who with his sister Jenni does the Baby Mouse graphic novels), Graphic novel manuscript formatting

3) Scrivener has a "comic script format" - developed by Anthony Johnston, who writes about it here. Thanks to Maria for the heads-up on this one!

Do you have a graphic novel manuscript format resource to share? Add in in comments. 

Thanks!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

1 comment:

Melissa Stewart said...

Two resources I've found useful are The Art of Comic Book Writing by Mark Kneece and Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels by Michael Bendis. I also recommend following Eric Hand on Twitter as well as his hashtag #handpicked_GN