PANELING, PACING, & LAYOUT IN COMICS & MANGA #1 by Rivkah

Working on Steady Beat Volume 2, I started to seriously focus on how I pace my stories. After penciling the last four
chapters, I even went back and reworked (almost redrew) the first two. There's a consistency now to the pacing that
makes it feel much more natural than perhaps the previous volume did. To me, at least. We'll see what the fans have to
say once it hits the shelves. ^_~

For me, the most important thing to keep in mind when working with pacing in your graphic novel is:

Variety.
Intentional, controlled variety.

There are many ways to control the pacing in your story. There's the writing itself. There's the art. And then there's the
actual layout of the page. Think of it like an advertisement; you want the reader to look somewhere specific on the page
first and then to intentionally lead their eye around the page for extra information. In the case of a comic page, you're
leading the reader from art to dialog to art to dialog again at a pace that controls the feel and flow behind the story.
People stutter when they talk. Characters have breaks in speech and uncomfortable silences. Sometimes we just want
the eye to linger on a page to experience the intensity of a particular emotion. Other times we want the reader to move
as quick and fast as possible in order to feel the character's urgency for speed or to feel the flow of frames as though
the action were moving in real time.

When we look at a single panel:

We recognize this as a single instance in time. When we look at two panels:

We recognize that the first and second panels are a sequence in time, the first panel occurring before the first.

But what about time within the panel itself?

The illusion of time is created by the time it takes for the eye to travel across the page. Think of your page as a series of
blocks of time like so:

The larger your panel:

The longer your eye will linger on that particular instance. The smaller your panel:

The shorter the moment will feel and the more quickly your reader will move on to other, more important panels.

So how do you know when to use larger and smaller panels? Well, let's take a few pages from Volume 2 of "Steady
Beat"*:

Now that you've read that, let's take out the art and dialog and just leave in the panels:

What's the "beat" like? Where do your eyes linger? Where do they quickly pass? Maybe you'll notice that last page is a
page all of the same panel size while the rest are of varying widths, heights, and even a variety of border vs. non-border.
What's the logic behind it all?

The first page of this sequence also happens to be the first page of chapter four ("Beat 9"):

In this scene, the first panel is of Leah obviously in her room, busy at her desk. Note that it is also the largest panel on
the page. Establishing shots should be the largest panel on the page. The setting sets the tone for the entire scene,
relaying to the reader mood, location, and where they should expect the story to go. Also, making a point of establishing
setting on the first page of a sequence of events makes it not so necessary to have to draw so many backgrounds in
subsequent panels. There are times I leave out backgrounds entirely if I feel the need is for an emotionally heightened
scene, but I don't do that without having an establishing shot first.

After the establishing shot, the scene moves on to show Leah apparently conducting an experiment on her cat,
Schrdinger (physics fans should feel the love). However, before showing exactly what's going on, notice how there's a
sort of "in-between" shot? You can see just a bit of what's going to happen next, but it doesn't give the full information
away:

Japanese manga does this a lot. Little in-between moments that help spread out the pacing of the story. It's a transition
from one moment to the next so that the pacing doesn't feel so jarring. Imagine walking into a room and suddenly being
thrown into a conversation. That doesn't typically happen, though, does it? When we walk into a room of people, we take
a good look at our surroundings, then we take an assessment of the situation, and THEN we join the conversation.

As these transition panels tend to be less important than the actual action or dialog in a scene, I make the panels
smaller.

So, in order of most important panel (1) to least (3), here's how the page would look:

Starting to see a pattern here?

Any change in mood, theme, tone, or setting usually asks for more time, more dominance on the page, and therefore

more space. If you take a look again at the sequence, try to pick out the major transitions or moments:

So then, what about borders? Why do some panels have borders while others bleed out onto the page? Well, there's two
explanations for this:

Will Eisner set a precedent in his paneling by going with an "A, B, A, B" approach. A rhythmic variation from bordered
panel to borderless and back again. It creates a sort of "beat" that helps maintain a constant interest in the storytelling.
Like the bass beat in dance music. There's no tune necessary for the melody itself, but somehow . . . it keeps you
tapping your feet and interested in the song. It's rhythmic and therefore unstoppable.

On the other hand, sometimes this approach doesn't quite work. What about something like the first page? If the last
panel were open, it'd bleed into the first panel. And how do I know to start with an open panel rather than a closed one?

Well, again, like the concept of larger panels creating a longer sense of time and importance, the absence of a panel
tacks on a little more time. Instead of traveling from panel border to panel border, The eye then travels across the
ENTIRE page, lending a sense of timelessness . . .

. . . like a moment lingering in the air. This is wonderful for emotionally heightened moments (like that kissing scene
you've been building up to or the moment Achilles is finally struck on the heel). Of course, there are lots of these little
moments in normal scenes as well, and establishing shots are one of those.

So we take the two theories and adjust: Instead of thinking of the panels as "A,B,A,B", we think in blocks of panels.
Here's how these pages would break down:

This is a technique utilized more in shonen manga than shoujo, but it's one I like nonetheless. It keeps that same steady

beat in pacing without being overly complex.

Which brings us to last rule of sizing panels on a page. Try not to make all your panels the same size, whether it's a
block of panels or individual. A page that looks like this:

Or even this:

Doesn't look nearly so appealing as this:

A little visual variety keeps the storytelling interesting. Remember that!

In tomorrows installment, were going to move on a bit and talk about layout. Or specifically, overall layout, including
how to utilize balloon position with art in order to direct the readers eye at a specific pace and direction across the
page.

*pages that don't actually give the plot of the book away, that is. ^_~

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PANELING, PACING, & LAYOUT IN COMICS & MANGA #2 by Rivkah

So okay, where did we leave off?

In our last installment (which you should read before even starting this one) , I went over mostly panel size and borders,
discussing how the panel itself can affect the flow of your story. Today I'm going to go over dialog balloons
and their affect on story flow and pacing.

Ballooning is probably one of the most overlooked and least appreciated fields in the art of comic-making*. What a lot of
people don't realize is that it isn't so much the shape of the balloons that's important; it's the layout of the balloons. Take
for example Mr. Stickman, here:

He standing there, happy as can be. So let's give him a little dialog:

We know what he's saying in this panel, but . . . don't you think it could be better? Well, this is where the placement of
your balloons comes in. Humor me for a moment and say aloud as though you were saying to a friend:

Everybody: "Gee. What a nice day it is. Not a cloud in the sky."

Notice the little pauses between sentences? Notice the lengthier pause between "What a nice day it is" and "Not a cloud
in the sky?" Exact intonation will, of course, vary according to where you live and your dialect, but the basic speech
pattern remains the same.

When we speak, there are natural pauses when we take a breath or lag behind/jump ahead in thought. Our timing
changes according to the color of our emotions. When we're upset, our speech speeds up. When we're tired or cautious,
it slows down. Sometimes we repeat words when we're particularly hesitant to voice our thoughts. The "I . . . I love you."
is pretty common in shoujo.

So how do we show these pause in speech? Well, let's go back to our little stickman here, but break up the dialog
balloons to better reflect the pattern of his speech:

When our eye travels across the page, it interprets any distance from one balloon to the next as a pause in speech.

When that space is filled with art, the eye will linger on the art and lengthen the pause even more.

Rather than leaving the character to the left or right of the panel and simply spacing the dialog balloons further apart, I
often center the character on the panel and "settle" balloons around them to create these longer pauses. In that same
scene with Leah playing the mischievous mad scientist with her cat, the first page last panel exactly shows this concept:

A question preceded by a statement usually has a pause before it, hence the placement of "Eh, Schrdinger?" to the
right and "Perrrfect! Now to make you disappear!" to the left.

Using this same panel, let's move on to the next concept of dialog/balloon layout: Positioning

The majority of us being English-speakers, our natural reaction when reading a page is to start at the top left-hand
corner and then make our way across the page reading right and down. Of course, many of us were raised on Japanese
manga and can read as easily from right to left as left to right, but there is still that natural disposition to automatically
start reading in the direction of one's native language. A few hundred books can't break the training of hundreds of
thousands of ads, newspapers, blogs, websites, books, homework, and instruction materials written left-to-right in
English.**

To demonstrate, here's the flow of the previous panel with dialog balloons:

Now what would happen if we were to flip the panel?

Well, here's the flow of the entire page:

And here's how the flow of the entire page with the last panel flipped splits up:

The eye doesn't know if it's supposed to read the TOP dialog balloon first or the LEFT dialog balloon first. In doing so,
we confuse the reader who has to go back and read the balloons again to make certain they read them in the right order.
This is bad, bad, bad, very bad. The flow of balloons and dialog and art should flow in as smooth a path as possible,
entering at the top left hand corner of the page and exiting at the bottom right corner.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean EVERY panel has to real left to right, top to bottom. Quite to the contrary! On page
138 of "Steady Beat," I had a lot of dialog to fit onto the page (actually, this whole chapter had a lot of dialog in general),
but I didn't want the layout to look dull or boring. I wanted the art and dialog to flow as smooth and natural as possible.

Now, just sticking to the "left to right, up to down" policy, the page would look something like this***:

Unfortunately, this layout creates an overly-long pause between "E . . ." and ". . . F." To shorten the length of the pause, I
moved "E . . . a little more to the left and ". . . F" to the right:

I also moved "I . . ." in order to make sure the reader's eyes were directed more over Elijah, the speaker, than Leah. It's
okay to make little adjustments like that for the sake of layout and design or to keep from obscuring the art too much.
But IMHO, it's especially important the reader also knows who's speaking in the panel, and I'll often move balloons to
indicate that.

Which brings us more directly to how art and dialog balloons interact with one another.

Naturally, you want your dialog balloons to be closest to the speaker on the page, especially if there is more than one
person in the panel. It's very disconcerting to have the character on one side of the page and the dialog balloon all the
way across.

It looks a bit like a floating, decapitated head, all lonely on the right side of the page.

Other than position of balloons being an indicator of who's speaking, dialog balloons can also serve to lead the reader
through the art. When reading graphic literature, as beautiful as the art may be, it takes longer to read a balloon than it
does to take a picture. Sadly, if you pile all of your balloons at the top of the page like so:

The reader is going to take less time to look at the art and skip right to the next balloon. Some people may overlook the
art entirely, therefore missing important emotional clues on the face or in body language that would help them better
interpret the tone of the dialog.

When you lay out the balloons and art on your page, try and visualize a connected line from the start of the page all the
way to the end without breaking, making sure the balloons and art lead smoothly into one another. Here are a couple of
examples that I hope you can learn from:

Dialog balloons are living, breathing, dynamic objects. Instead of just throwing them on the page, realize that they're a
very part of the design and makeup of your story. There'd be no personality to the characters, no tone, no mood, no
pace, and no direction without them.

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In our next and last installment of this little series on paneling, pacing, and layout. I'll be covering the few things I didn't
get to in the two previous posts such as doubled balloons, using sound FX for directing the eye, offsetting art in a panel
or page, and knowing when to utilize same-sized sets of panels for special effects.

-Rivkah

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*Why aren't there any books on these things?

**And no, this essay isn't about publishing comics for a right-to-left audience. It's about writing comics for an Englishspeaking audience.

***Dialog taken out so that I don't give away too much of the plot. ;P

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