After another week of editing, I reached a part of the script I had been dreading. Last week, I had talked about editing panel descriptions and dialogue, and how I could spot the panel descriptions that needed the most work. Usually, a good sign a panel description needs work is its simplicity, a short "Subject verb object" structure. These descriptions were written when I knew what was supposed to happen on a page, but couldn't quite visualize the specifics. And as I'm editing, rereading the story as I go, the narrative flow carries my mind through the scenes and I can then see what happens panel by panel in greater detail.

However, there were two pages I knew were the weakest of the entire script. In the outline for Issue 1, there are about three sentences describing all that is said and done on these pages. Surely three sentences of notes can fit on two comic pages, right?

The first attempt at these two pages gave me enough material for four pages.

The problem arose with moving characters in and out of the scene organically. Ignoring the presence of certain characters while the focus shifted onto other characters wouldn't have made sense narratively either. One character isn't just going to watch two other characters talking, and a newly introduced character is going to have some degree of interaction with everyone in the scene. Especially if they have significant relationships (not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of the impact we have on one another's lives) with everyone in the scene.

The solution was to create a barrier between two of these three characters. Character A can see and interact with Characters B and C, but Characters B and C can't see/interact with one another. This instantly eliminated a conversation between Characters B and C, and allowed me to come up with a better way to remove Character B from the scene. This allowed me to focus the scene on Characters A and C, as I had originally planned. I was able to write a line of dialogue which defined one of the characters well, dialogue I really enjoyed. Plus, it kept the page count down, which in a 48 page book might not seem like much. But even in a book this size, I didn't want one wasted page.

Tune in next week for another update!