Sunday, May 17, 2015

How I learned to write the novel that became my comic book series

The majority of my chapters in my Vampire Trilogy Novel “The Guardian, Revenant, and Dominion” started out as scripts.  I wrote the scenes and dialogue first, and then filled in the details later. At the time I was writing for an acting class on a weekly basis, and I tested out my own scripts and dialogue with the actors to see if it flowed and made sense. I actually started the novels out with one random scene, and pieced the novel together from there. I would randomly write chapters out of order depending on the scene I felt like writing that week. If I wanted an action dialogue, or a creepy scene, then I wrote depending on how I felt and how I wanted the actors to act out the scene. I would even travel to locations in order to get a feel for the atmosphere for the novel. (“Revenant” was written in Brooklyn, New York). I wrote the novel depending on the location I was in at the time.

Sample Scene from the Script and Novel

When I decided to turn the novel into a comic book series, the challenge was condensing about 90-200 pages of each story into 24 condensed pages. I had some favorite scenes but  I had to figure out which was ore crucial to the story. There was a lot that  had to be cut but in a way that still kept the focus of the story. Sometimes you have to emotionally detached yourself in order to make the story flow more when condensed down to just the main points, including the dialogue. I use the script method for each scene in the comic book, sent it to my artist, who turned each page into a storyboard.

Now, the sequels to the original novel are still written in script form, but for comic book format. I’m also incorporating a little bit of the graphic novel method, where one page will have a full-page scene and a longer dialogue will appear on the opposite page.

Please read my writing and self-publishing disclaimer here

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