Q&A 10: Dialogue bubbles

Ross Webster writes:

"How do you maintain the balance between your dialog and what's going on in the panels so that neither overtakes the other? I ask because of all the webcomics I read yours are some of the most verbose yet it never feels Iike any of your dialog  takes away from the action (as opposed to say, Meredith Gran's Octopus Pie  which in long stretches there's often no dialog and the art does most of the talking [Not meant to be a criticism; both Gran's art and storytelling are excellent]). Often times I have problems with webcomics that emphasise dialog over action but I've never had this problem with anything in the Bobbinsverse."

The answer to this is both simple and complicated. Put simply, I have a number of words in a speech bubble that I don't want to exceed. Because I was more influenced by newspaper cartoons than comic books in my writing, I try to write as tightly as I can. The limited space for text in a small 1980s/1990s newspaper cartoon - even a relatively verbose one like Bloom County or Calvin & Hobbes - required it. If a character delivers a longer piece of dialogue, I tend to split it between 2+ balloons. I don't want more than 15 words in a balloon and if there are long words, it decreases that limit.

I don't know that the word count per page in my comics is so much higher than other webcomics of a similar vintage. My characters may talk to each other more. If something runs online, I have to think about the page as a single satisfying daily unit, even if it is eventually destined for print, so I am loath to write wordless sequences. Or even leave a panel wordless! I like to resolve things relatively quickly; perhaps I work my way through scenes faster than others might.

You mention Octopus Pie, I think Meredith introduced those lovely cinematic sequences when she began uploading stories in full, rather than running them as daily pages. The distinction is lost now, of course, when everything is presented as one archive. The singular merit of the daily, distinct page only lasts until the next page arrives. 

Octopus Pie is also a good example of a comic by someone whose visual storytelling talents far exceed mine. Meredith Gran is an experienced animator, teacher and illustrator who has studied with some phenomenal instructors... and was already prodigious I when I first encountered her high school-era work. She has the confidence and the skill to draw wordless sequences with enormous grace. 

My comics have never given me the space to explore that kind of approach. I can't burn four pages on mood setting when I only have 22. I need those pages! I have to set the mood other ways. When I filled out the Bad Machinery print editions with extra material, I finally put some wordless pages in.

(Aside: when I began writing comic books for other artists around 2015, typing scripts in Word rather than making notes on paper, the word count on my pages began to creep up, and when I noticed this, I made a concerted effort to get it back down. A lot of comic books are overwritten - it's a visual medium after all - and I live in fear of that.)

I'd like to be better at signposting things visually, but I'm not a visual thinker, so it's tricky for me and something I have to work on all the time.

Ultimately I'm a humourist (to use an old-fashioned term), so I'm trying to strike a balance  between character, plot and comedy.  I try to balance all three as best I can and dialogue is the best way I've found to do that.