Laying Out the Page (1)

This post aims to teach you how to take the 1 PAGE = 1 SENTENCE approach I use for the Matryoshka Approach, and turn it into a page of comics-prose. It's a three-part process, and while this is how I do Fabled Kingdom", it's by no means the definitive way to mix prose and comics together.

This exercise will use the first 4 pages of Chapter 6 of "Fabled Kindgom". This assumes you've read all Chapters 1-5 of "Fabled Kingdom".

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The THREE STEPS

So, I will now take the first sentence, which is Celsia is woken up by Pylus and Quillon, and transform it into a comics-prose page. This takes three steps: (1) Laying it out in traditional comics panels, (2) Identifying the most important panels according to the WHO, WHERE, WHAT, and (3) Turning the remaining panels into paragraphs of prose.

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STEP 1: Laying it out in Traditional Comics Panels

Those who have experience with doing comics in the traditional format will probably have used this scripting format - it's basically traditional comics scripting. It's to take the gist of the page, and then list out each panel with a description of said panel, usually in point form. Since this is just the planning phase and nothing is concrete until the art is actually ON the page, it's best to keep things loose and simple.

I already know how I'm going to approach this scene, since I've already outlined it at the bottom of my Breaking it Up article. So here, I do it for the first page.


PAGE 1: Celsia is woken up by Pylus and Quillon

PANEL 1 - Pylus and Quillon are yelling in excitement. Quillon has just finished releasing an arrow from his bow.

PANEL 2 - A scene of the mountainside where they are camping out, showing all of them. Celsia has just woken up, and looks rather tired.

PANEL 3 - She sees Pylus and Quillon standing there, and Pylus is throwing a rock off the cliff

PANEL 4 - Quillon immediately shoots an arrow after the rock

PANEL 5 - Celsia wonders to herself in annoyance: are these two best friends now?


PAGE 2: She's cranky because she lost her jewels earlier

PANEL 1 - Celsia sits up in her bedroll, annoyed as she looks as those two guys.

PANEL 2 - She thinks of the jewels she was given by the rescued dwarves.

PANEL 3 - She thinks to herself that she's very careless to have lost the jewels like that, and is especially annoyed that Pylus still has all his jewels.

PANEL 4 - She notices Pylus looking at her.

PANEL 5 - He winks at her

PANEL 6 - She blushes in sudden surprise


PAGE 3: Pylus and Quillon stop their game and come over. They demand food.

PANEL 1 - She tries to wink back at Pylus, but he's already turned away

PANEL 2 - She sighs, and starts rolling up her sleeping bag

PANEL 3 - Pylus and Quillon finish their game, then come over and say hello to her.

PANEL 4 - Pylus asks Celsia for his breakfast, in an almost jeering, entitled sort of way.

PANEL 5 - Quillon does the same, though he's a bit more polite about it.


PAGE 4: She gets annoyed and stomps off. The boys are confused.

PANEL 1 - Celsia throws the food he was asking for into Pylus' face, and tells him to take a hike.

PANEL 2 - She then stomps off, leaving the boys confused

PANEL 3 - The boys shrug, and say they have no idea why she's so cranky

PANEL 4 - A voice calls to them

PANEL 5 - It's Celsia, telling them to look at something she's found

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Done! You may have noticed that these pages all have 5-6 panels at the most. That's a typical panel rate for a lot of manga - they usually range from 3-6 panels per page. Truth is, though we've got this all written out, things will chance once we go onto [[STEP 2: IDENTIFYING THE MOST IMPORTANT PANELS]]!