Reddit reviews The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics

Best place to start. The man teaches writing for comics at an art school and most of his notes are online for free. Enjoy. Great advice.

EDIT: Alan Moore wrote a book on writing (it's an essay in book form really) that is helpful. That can be found here. There's also a DC Writing Guide. In terms of format, if you know about three act structure and such (a knowledge of screenwriting would be VERY helpful) you are on your way. A pdf. template for writing in comic scripts can be found at the BBC's writers room (cool writing resource all around) and at Darkhorse Comic's submission page. Finally, there is a free (from what I can tell) cloud based writing page called Five Sprockets which has templates for writing screenplays and comics.

I was at WonderCon this year and "Publishing Your First Comic Book" (not necessarily self-publishing) was one of the panels I sat in on. Here's my notes (as terse as they are):

• Have a strong characters and a good back story
  
• You have to really like your idea. Commit to it, but be critical as well.
  
• Develop your own voice. The more 'you' you bring to the idea the more unique it will be. Don't imitate. Be unique, but make it relate-able.
  
• You'll need to develop your cover, and at least 6 pages of art (with letters and inked). Maybe include some character design. Then do your 'Treatment' (full story issue by issue - keep it short, no one wants 60 issues from someone they have never heard of, 4 issues is a good number), introduce the team. Then pitch to publishers. Expect rejection.
  
• You may need to publish the first issue. (This will help you pitch it better) Have good names behind you if possible (the artists). Find good artists at conventions. Find an artist that really works with the style you're looking for.
  
• Develop a one page pitch. Characters and themes. Also have the 5-6 page doc that's the treatment. Send the one pager with the comic and mention more information is available if they are interested.
  
• Boom or action (no recollection what this meant, sorry. Maybe someone else does)
  
• Comixology is a place to do self publish and present to a traditional publisher. Maybe do the comic as a podcast as well (they're big right now and they need content).
  
• The publisher is betting on you too (not just the story). Tell them why you're a good candidate. Now is a great time to try to break in if you're a woman (which it doesn't sound like from your username).
  
• Twitter, tumbler, Facebook is a good way to connect to artists.
  
• Check the publisher site. Most times they want email.
  
• If you see someone at a con, get their business card, then give it a week or two before you follow up with them. (Having a known artist for ink/pencils will help a publisher pick up your comic.)
  
  From another panel on "Writing Great Dialog", at the same Con, here's a few relevant tips:
  
  
• Don't have soloquies that go on (particularly in comic books). (Look at Lilly and the unicorn book/comic strip.)
  
• If you're a writer you're probably an introvert. Instead you're really a salesperson (selling your story). Take an improv class. Become comfortable around people.
  
• Dialogue that is explaining something about a characters is not something to lead with, you have to bury the info. There's three levels of dialogue:
  
  

1. Direct
   
2. Speaking to a tangential topic (i.e. in Die Hard, "that's a nice suit")
   
3. You speak but never connect it to the action. (in Red Tide, there's dialogue about horses which is really about privilege and race)
   You want to stay in 1 not 3.
   
   

• In a fight you don't dance around in dialogue. You can have dialogue but keep it short and relevant. (Spiderman is a nervous talker)
  
• Characters that are ciphers (non emotional) are not interesting. You can't create a lot of personality for them. They are mostly used as villains. Give them a tick that comes out occasionally. This can be used to help expose the disguise.
  
  Last bit of advice from the Con:
  
  
• Diamond books - this is direct market - they use a monthly book called "Previews" to sell to comic book stores. You will need to write the marketing copy. The comic book stores will order what they think they can sell (one copy, maybe two for an unknown). When it's sold through Previews, you get cash in pocket. There are no returns.
  
• Book channel/market - this sells to Barnes and Noble and Amazon type stores. They may order a lot of books, but they can be returned to you, and you'll have to refund the money for the ones that get returned.
  
• Build your audience. Twitter, YouTube, Patreon. Engage your fans. Get the book sellers and libraries involved. You will need good in store and in market support.
  
  Best of luck to you. I was thinking of doing a comic book, but once I started to read The DC Comics guide to writing comics and Stan Lee's how to write comics I realized that I'm not a visual story teller and bailed. Good luck to you!
  
  (Edited because the formatting didn't come through for all the bulleted lists)

Any of Scott McCloud's books. Making Comics is good for the technical side, Understanding Comics (the 1st of his series) is also good to break down WHY comics are important.

(One can probably skip his second book, it mostly examines webcomics and since it was printed is fairly outddated now thanks to various internet technologies advancing as it all does)

DC Comics has also published a series of "How-To" books which are good to thumb through , I personally own all of them but the Writing one-

-[DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics] (http://www.amazon.com/DC-Comics-Guide-Writing/dp/0823010279/ref=pd_sim_b_4)

-DC Comics Guide To Pencilling Comics

-DC Comics Guide To Inking Comics

-DC Comics Guide To Coloring and Lettering Comics

-DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics

Since you mentioned the line thickness/thinness- um, the inking one would probably be a good one to start with. It'll show at least American/western methods of going about things, minus anything digital because the book was written before digital was big in the process. The Digital Drawing book somewhat helps on that issue but with programs like Painter, you can pretty much emulate any traditional tool fairly easily. If you have a particular style in mind you want, post it up and perhaps I can help determine what tools were probably used to make it???

Denny O'Neil wrote a book that discusses most of what you need to know. It's mostly a style guide for the most part, but there's a ton of good stuff in it.

Okay! Well, I happen to be a screenwriter, so I had Final Draft anyway. It's not a requirement, but it does have templates for various scripting methods, so, if you happen to have it lying around, it's fun to use. Celtx also works, but I don't like it as much. A cocktail napkin works because there's no official method.

The book I referred to a lot was The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics (link for reference only), but there's a few books out there. My library even had some, so maybe hit up your library. They should be in the writing books section.

I looked online for tips, too, and came across a website that I can't remember that says that one writer writes everything out as a screenplay first, then converts it to a comic script. That's how I ultimately chose to go about it because it's easier for me to visualize the page that way. Plus, by the time I actually get to writing the comic script, I'm already editing and such. That might not work for everyone, though.

Dark Horse has on their website how they accept submissions. They're the only big name that still accepts submissions, so if you plan on submitting, it might be good to learn their way of doing it.

There's no official way, though, like I said. If you stick with the Dark Horse method and somehow DC wants you to write one of their titles now, there's really not that much difference - just tweak some things. And if you can draw as well as write, your script can look vastly different. I have to describe every last detail - artists can do rough sketches.

Not to plug my webcomic, and I do feel bad for it, but it's Mistress Deathspike. Only reason I'm sharing it is because I'm going to share the first three scripts with you, how I wrote them, and then you can see how the artist interpreted it into the final product. It's just an example. You can hate my comic, I'm okay with that.

Anyway, script 1, script 2, script 3.

I hope you find this useful.

The single best resource I've found for comic writing is Denny O'Neil's
dc comics guide to writing.

Personally, I set objectives and let the organically come out over a set number of pages. Example: I need to add A, B, and C over the next 22 pages. This gives you enough wiggle room to make changes along the way.

I host the Comic Book Creator Podcast that you can check out for more tips.