Dialogue in Comics

 

Berry, H. (2021) Dialogue in comics, National Centre for Writing. Available at: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/article/dialogue-in-comics/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).

I've been thinking a lot about how I can develop my manuscript into a comic format. This will mean trimming out a lot of the information, but also potentially cutting down some of the dialogue. I wanted to understand how / why I need to do this, so I found this article...

Berry discusses how not only does a lot of dialogue look ugly on the page, it can take up vital real estate. The page should be a good balance between image and dialogue, but sometimes we don't need to use words to convey everything. A character's frustration could be portrayed in a series of panels. Expressions can be "zoomed in" on, colours can be used and the language of the lines can be adjusted. These are all fairly subtle tools that can be used to replace a lot of the text.

Berry also talks about how a character should never talk about how they are feeling. The illustrations and the writing shouldn't repeat each other. It's can be boring for the reader and again, is a waste of valuable page space.

Conversation / tonal beats are really important when planning how to portray dialogue. Berry suggests looking for the changes in tone in order to plan how it is presented on the page. If a character really has to say a lot, then how can it effectively be split up across the page. Conversely, Berry reminded me that silence can speak volumes. Sometimes it can be more effective to have no dialogue in a panel. 

Berry also makes the point that the words should be part of the drawing. They should work with the composition of the frame where possible.. so I should be careful about slapping the text over the image if it's absolutely not needed. It could also mean tucking the speech bubble behind important objects within the frame for example.