The Basics of COMICS-PROSE - Part 1

COMICS-PROSE can look complicated, but the truth is, it works on ONE very simple and basic principle. On this one principle, an infinite number of page-layout variations can occur. Every single COMICS-PROSE story I've done works on this principle.

In this section, I will start by analysing 6 pages from Fabled Kingdom: Chapter 3, pg1-6. If you take a look at these pages, you'll see that each one has a different page layout.



After you've looked at the pages, I will break down these pages into TWO basic building blocks.

• Building block #1 is a block of COMICS.
• Building block #2 is a block of PROSE.

The pages are divided into separate pages, but even now, you can see that COMICS-PROSE consists mostly of chunks of comic panels, followed by chunks of prose paragraphs, followed by chunks of comic panels again.

In other words, it's a form of storytelling that ALTERNATES BETWEEN comics and prose at various points in the story.

And that's about it.

The complexity lies in WHEN you switch over. You have to make that judgement yourself. As I've already mentioned in the 5 Golden Rules of COMICS-PROSE, a good place to start will be Rule#3.

"If it's important, do it in comics".

There are only TWO ways that a chunk of comics and a chunk of prose fit together in COMICS-PROSE:



You may have noticed that when a comic chunk and a prose chunk are both L-shaped, the comic panel always appear to the LEFT of the prose paragraph. That's because English reads from left to right, and so you will always start with a comic panel on the left.

If you stitch these 6 pages I've showed you together in a SINGLE page, this simplified tetris-like layout becomes even more apparent.

(And no, you don't have to do COMICS-PROSE in a page-by-page layout. You can have it go straight down a page like in webtoons. It makes it hard to collect into a print book though, so that's something to consider).

But wait! What about these side panels, the ones next to the prose paragraphs? The ones that you just labelled "prose" even though they're pictures? [[CLICK ON HERE]] to read Part 2 and find out!