Sadly, not the actual book that we are in -- Amazon doesn't offer it...

So late last year, I was chatting with my buddy and colleague, Tommy Roddy — he’s the creator of Pride High, a series of comics about gay teen superheroes in high school… (C’mon, y’know you’re curious — click it! ) — and he turned me on to this guide that comes out once a year which offers readers excerpts from a bunch of gay comics. It’s created by the folks at Prism Comics and serves as a kind of a who’s who and what’s what for the gays in both mainstream and independent Western comics.

Anyway, I reached out to them, one thing led to another and now there’s an excerpt from “A Shot in the Dark” in the current issue! Just picked it up from my Local Comic Book Store twenty minutes ago and everything. How cool is that!

Of course, there’s also a bunch of other gay comics in there (including an excerpt from “Roulette” by yaoi creator Tina Anderson) — so if you like the guy-on-guy action (and can handle a little girl-on-girl action) it’s definitely worth a look.

You can read more about it here:

Prism Comics: Your LGBT Guide to Comics 2008 in Comic Shops Now!

Oh, and if you’re a Prism reader who’s looking to read the complete, full-color version of “A Shot in the Dark”, just fill out the form on the Free Comic page — a download link will be emailed to you right away.

(UPDATE: THERE’S A NEW, MORE USER-FRIENDLY WAY TO GET THE COMIC THAN REGISTERING. SEE BELOW OR JUST FILL OUT THE FORM OVER ON THE FREE COMIC PAGE.)

So let me tell you, we’ve been awful busy lately putting together the book — super busy, crazy busy, so busy, in fact, that I haven’t had a chance to mention yet that the first story in the book. “A Shot in the Dark,” is completely finished and ready for public consumption. Well, all that is going to change right now. I’ll be posting its final pages up here (like I’ve done with its in-production pages ) sometime soon, but in the meantime, I’d like to give out a preview PDF of this complete full-color yaoi comic to those readers who’ve registered their email address with this blog. Just as a special treat.

Now, like I said, I’m going to post it up here anyway — so if you’re squeamish about registering, don’t sweat it, you’ll be able to read it here soon enough — but I promised to offer special promotions to registered members and until I have something to sell, giving members first dibs at a free yaoi comic seems like a nice way to say “thank you.”

UPDATE (8/5/07): So I’ve now sent out the download link to all registered members of this blog. I had to use a new email address — yaoi911@gmail.com at gmail — because my web provider has a very strict anti-spam policy and wouldn’t let me send out more than a few emails at a time. This, I suppose, is a good thing — and I support them in their anti-spamming goals. And it got me thinking that sending emails out to my registered users probably isn’t the best policy.

Even though I’d like to be able to communicate (and give free comics!) to the community of Registered Members, seeing as we are living in the Age of Spam, the last thing I want to do is send email to folks who don’t want it. Instead, if you want the link to the comic, you should sign up for the Announce List which you can see over there in the right sidebar (“Send me a free full color yaoi comic!”). (Or, alternatively, just fill out the form on the Free Comic page — it’s the same thing.)

Using an announce list, I can be absolutely certain that everyone I send an email to — be it with a link to a free comic or a special members-only discount on the ones for sale — honestly will want to get one from me. Living and learning here, friends…

So, to make this clear: If you want the comic, you should click on Free Comic and fill out the form there. Kay?

I hope you enjoy the comic. And I’d sure love to hear what you think about it. Please use the comments section of this post to let us know!

Here are the finished inks for the first comic in our upcoming book of yaoi short stories: Yaoi 911™. It’s called “A Shot in the Dark” and was penciled by Karla Diaz C. and inked by Winona Nelson. In its 16 comic book pages, a Junior Apprentice must save his now helpless boyfriend, a Senior Apprentice, from a tremendously powerful and crafty demon after a summoning goes terribly wrong.

If you’d like to follow along with the script, you can download a copy here. And if you are interested in learning how these pages were made, click here.

Please note that some of these pictures are not safe for work and are not for children. If you are under 18 years of age, please do not click to read the complete article or read any further.

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

So those are the final inks — keep tuning in to Yaoi 911™ to see this story come together before your very eyes as these pages get colored, lettered and finally transformed into a PDF comic with no watermarking — tailor-made for your downloading pleasure.


Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it emailed right to you — for free!

See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Curious about what the art from one of our other stories looks like? See for yourself at Yaoi Art: “Artifice” Pencils! (Age 18 and over, please!)!
• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Interested in seeing how these inks were made? Take a look at Yaoi Art: From Pencils to Inks!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Then click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!

In previous articles, I’ve been discussing the process of creating a graphic novel using, as an example, the first comic in our upcoming Yaoi 911™ short story collection, “A Shot in the Dark.”

I’ve covered writing and formatting the script as well as using thumbnail sketches as an aid to creating final pencils. Traditionally, the next step in the process would be to ink those pencils. So, let’s talk about what that means, look at how the process has changed in the digital age and, of course, show you examples of cute boys covered in digital ink.

(If you’d just like to look at the art, all inked pages for “A Shot in the Dark” can be found here.)

Please note that some of these pictures are not safe for work and are not for children. If you are under 18 years of age, please do not click to read the complete article or read any further.

The Rise of the Inker

The separation of tasks between a “penciler” and an “inker” is much more American comics style than Japanese and to understand why this separation of roles occurred, we need to look at a little history.

In the early days of American comics (and for some time after), if you wanted to print something, the lines had to be fairly dark and that meant replacing all the pencil work with ink using either a dip pen or a brush. At first, artists would ink their own pencils, but as the comics industry progressed in the United States, the process was soon divided up. Artists found that they were able to pencil more books if someone else did the ink finishing, which meant more money for them and, perhaps more impactfully, less expense and more profit for the publisher: a popular artist was able to put their name on a number of books each month — helping sales — while lesser names could make the work inked and print-ready. Thus the role of inker (and eventually the roles of letterer and colorist and other members of the comic book assembly line process) was born.

It’s easy to think of inking as a mere technical skill, as no more than “tracing” the pencils. But as you will see from our examples, excellent inking is, in fact, excellent art and thus requires an excellent artist. There are many creative and artistic choices an inker has to make while interpreting and refining the pencilwork, so it is far more accurate to think of them as “finishers” than as the “mere tracers” they have often been accused of being.

Why would an inker need to have strong art chops? Well, some pencilwork is fairly sketchy and in that case, the inker obviously has to make a fair number of creative choices. But even with relatively detailed pencilwork, like Karla’s, translating those panels into final production pages still means making important creative decisions such as

• what tool to use to apply the ink (dip pen, mechanical pen, marker or brush)
• what line-weight to use while inking (line-weight being the thickness used while drawing each individual line)
• whether to “improve” anatomy or make other changes to the lineart
• as well as how to best to realize the overall effect the original artist was going for now that the work must essentially be completely recreated.

And they have to balance all these choices and considerations with the desires of an editor, their boss, who often has no art training.

It is certainly no easy task and you can see why many inkers are offended to be referred to as “mere tracers.”

The Inker’s Role

As finishers, the inker’s technical responsibilities are to increase clarity and enhance the sense of three-dimensionality (on what is a 2D medium — paper). But, as is the case for every member of the creative team, the inker’s primary responsibility is to the story and its readers.

Obviously, removing the temporary penciled construction lines and darkening the remaining object lines — the work most people think of when they think of inking — both enhance clarity. But for things to be truly clear, panel contents must be also be readable — that is, a fire hydrant must look like a fire hydrant, not a tree stump; a bicep must look like a bicep, not a tumor. This requires a strong knowledge of anatomy and rendering as well as a good sense of what best serves the story: Is that head three times normal size because the penciler was not paying attention to anatomy or was it a deliberate expressionistic choice to represent the character’s emotional state? Should lines in a bookcase be left wavy and uneven to keep the sense of dynamism in the linework or cleaned up and straightened for a more realistic effect? Sometimes the penciler or editor is available to answer these questions for the inker, but not always — and these are choices only a skilled artist should make.

But why exactly is clarity — and thus the inker’s job — so important to the story? Because confusion about what an object actually is will stop a reader dead in her tracks. Sure, sometimes you want a reader to take a moment or two to understand exactly what is happening in a panel — perhaps allowing that reader the intellectual challenge and pleasure of discovery — but most of the time, you’d like her to forget she is engaged in the process of reading at all! You want her caught up in your narrative.

Clarity in the art is essential to visual storytelling because by avoiding confusion, it also avoids distraction. It lets the reader become immersed in the world and characters of the creators. And for creators like myself, that immersion is the Holy Grail.

And of course, another way an inker can enhance this sense of immersion is by adding a sense of depth to the linework. Creating the illusion of light falling realistically on objects makes the art (and thus the story) seem more “real.” As the vast majority of Japanese comics is typically printed black and white, most manga fans are well aware how much texture and three-dimensionality can be created using nothing but black ink and white paper — the inker actually has many techniques at her disposal to create dimensional and lighting effects such as cross-hatching, variance in the line-weight and, especially in manga, the use of screentones.

Again, each of these techniques creates a different effect for the reader and understanding how these effects impact the storytelling is essential. Too little shading and everything looks “flat” — too much and it just looks like a busy mess.

Digital Ink

Modern technology is, of course, changing inking as much as any other part of the comics process, so now we have the possibility of “digital inking.” Thus instead of using a pen and India ink, an artist can use a Wacom tablet and a program like Corel Painter or Adobe Illustrator to create final linework. (Many creators are also very enthusiastic about using Manga Studio for their inks.)

Using these applications to “ink” has the advantage of being

• non-destructive (fixing a screw-up is only an Undo command away!)
• more precise (you can zoom-in nearly infinitely)
• allows you to directly create digital files from your work (which are now expected by the printer)
• and, if you use vector art, allows the possibility of creating work that is resolution-independent (which means that the same linework files can be used in a small manga book as well as a huge convention poster with no loss of quality)

(For an interesting, if slightly dated tutorial on using vector graphics this way, check out John Rauch’s “Digital Inking in Illustrator 10.”)

What We Did

In the case of “A Shot in the Dark,” both Winona and I felt that creating our “inks” in Photoshop using vector art would, in the end, give us the best quality and most flexibility; it would create the cleanest possible lines when printed as well as offer me the opportunity to use the art for a variety of purposes after the book was published.

As it was always our plan to color this work, Winona made the choice to ink Karla’s pencils using a “dead line” (that is, a perfectly even and consistent line-weight with no variance within an individual line — although different lines might, of course, have different thicknesses), and with minimal shading, so it wouldn’t distract from the depth effects she planned to use with her colors.

Thus her main task at this stage was to enhance clarity — the shading and three-dimensional rendering would, for the most part, come later.

So, let’s take a look at some of the ways she did that.

Examples From “A Shot in the Dark”

For most pages, enhancing clarity in the inks mainly involves a general clean-up of the line work — especially when the pencils are as tight and well-done as Karla’s. For an example of this, take a look at the changes in Page One, paying particular attention to the last panel.

Page 1

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

Overall, Winona’s inks look pretty close to Karla’s final pencils. In that last panel, you might have seen that the lines in the bookshelves and dresser have been evened out. You might have also noticed that the Demon’s legs have been shortened to be in better proportion to his body. Mostly likely, though, the biggest change that caught your eye — after noticing that we decided to fill the panel gutters with black — was that all the magic and shading have been removed — and this is because, as I said, they’ll be added at the coloring stage.

But even doing just a light clean-up, changes were still made here for the sake of story clarity as well. Continuity errors (like the tilt in Aman’s head in Panel 1 and Panel 4) have been fixed and the door is much more clearly a door in this panel. (Minor alterations, yes, but I believe they do have an effect on the overall realism of the scene for the reader, if only on a subconscious level.)

Now, sometimes, for the sake of the story, an editor will actually ask for specific changes to the art at the inking stage. For Page 3, upon reflection, I felt that the Demon’s expression in Panel 2 wasn’t snarky enough for his “Fee Fie Foe Fum” line, and asked Winona to sneer it up a bit. In Panel 6, Ben’s eyes felt a bit cartoony to me and I had Winona dial them back. Being a skilled artist, she had no problem accommodating me:

Page 3

Sometimes it’s the poses and gestures that an editor decides to change at this stage and Page 7 offers a good example of this. In the first panel, I felt it wasn’t clear that Ben was actually leaping to his feet and that he looked a little awkward in that pose. Winona fixed this with a simple reposition of his right leg.

Page 7

(In addition, you might have noticed that we moved the hologram back behind Ethan’s feet to add to the illusion of depth, so even without shading considerations, enhancing the three-dimensionality of the work at this stage is still important.)

Occasionally, the changes to the art are more significant. In Panel 2 of Page 9, I felt our leads (particularly Ethan) were looking a little androgynous for this comic and believed the anatomy of the kiss could be improved. Similarly, I felt that Ben’s eyes in Panel 4 also needed to be cleaned up. This is an important romantic scene, after all, and strong, compelling anatomy and poses are very important. I think you’ll agree with me that Winona found great solutions to both requests without making it feel like we’ve suddenly turned the page on a complete different comic.

(This one is an 18+ page, so if you’re under 18, please just take our word for it and don’t click on these thumbnails…)

Page 9

Now that’s what I call a kiss!

You might also have noticed that even though, for the most part, texture has been removed in the inks, Winona actually added some nice detail in the sheets and pillows in both Panels 1 and 3. Again, it’s touches like that which really add to the feeling of realism…

Panels 1 and 3 of Page 11 offer some more examples where the anatomy was improved while keeping within the style of the comic.

Page 11

Here again the look of the eyes are brought more in line with the rest of the story without losing the impact of the emotional expressions.

Trying to improve good art is a fine line to walk — particularly when given such detailed pencils to begin with — but I hope you’ll agree with me when I say that I think Winona did a really great job.

It’s Starting To Really Feel Like It’s Coming Together

Honestly, I had expected the inking stage to be fairly boring, but this part of the process actually turned out to be quite exciting for me — I got to see pencils I was very happy with being transformed into inked art I was thrilled with. There was a very special synergy that came out of Karla and Winona working together that I think made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And shortly after, when I started to receive the colored pages, I had the euphoric experience of seeing one of my scripts more perfectly realized than I’ve ever felt watching one of my films.

But that’s a story for a future article…

Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it emailed right to you — for free!

See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to learn how to begin creating your own graphic novel? Start with the first article in our series: How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• Already finished your script? Then it’s time to learn How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Curious to see how the pencils you saw above were actually made? Be sure to read Yaoi Art: From Thumbnails Sketches to Final Pencils!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? We’ve got you covered there, too. Click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!

I finally have some pics to share with you with some hot guy-on-guy action! (Alright, fine, sweet guy-on-guy action, but still, the shirts come off… )

(UPDATE: And now I have even sexier pencils to show for our next comic, “Artifice”!)

Here are the finished pencils for the first comic in our upcoming book of yaoi short stories Yaoi 911™ called “A Shot in the Dark” and drawn by the very talented Karla Diaz C. In its 16 comic book pages, a Junior Apprentice must save his now helpless boyfriend, a Senior Apprentice, from a tremendously powerful and crafty demon after a summoning goes terribly awry. If you’d like to follow along with the script, you can download a copy here. If you are interested in learning about how these pages were made, click here. And if you’d like to see what the pages look like inked, click here.

Please note that some of these pictures are not safe for work and are not for children. If you are under 18 years of age, please do not click to read the complete article or read any further.

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, use your arrow keys to go forward and back and hit ESC to quit.)

You might have noticed that some panels on pages 7, 8 and 9 seem to be missing something — the “hologram images” which the Demon is ripping from Ethan’s mind. They will be composited (superimposed) over pages 7, 8 and 9 using Photoshop during the finishing stage so we can give them that magical look. Here’s what they look like without the backgrounds:

And when composited together, they will look something like this (except that they will be in full color and a whole lot cooler)…

So those are the finished pencils — keep tuning in to Yaoi 911™ to see the finished comic come together before your eyes as these pages get inked, colored and lettered.


Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Wondering what the pencils from one of our other stories looks like? See for yourself at Yaoi Art: “Artifice” Pencils!
• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Interested in seeing how these pencils were made? Take a look at Yaoi Art: From Thumbnails Sketches to Final Pencils!
• Curious about the next step? Learn about digital inking in Yaoi Art: From Pencils to Inks!

The process of creating a graphic novel goes through many stages. First you write a script. Then, working with an artist, you come up with character designs. The next step is for the artist to create “thumbnail sketches” for each page. (And based on those, she creates the finished pencils.)

Thumbnail sketches are rough drawings of each page meant to show the intended panel layout and what the artist envisions drawing in each of those panels. (The writer’s equivalent for this would be the “rough draft.”) Creating these sketches, while being a fair chunk of work at first, saves a lot of time when it comes to creating the finished pages and is essential to ensure that the writer and the artist are communicating effectively about what is needed. (You don’t want to find out that a crucial plot point or panel is missing from the art after the artist has spent ten hours carefully drawing a finished penciled page!) In addition, because of the much smaller time commitment involved, it gives the artist permission to take big chances with the art — and in taking those risks, truly outstanding art can be created.

Now to show you some examples!

(Click below the fold to look at example Thumbnail Sketches from our first Yaoi comic “A Shot in the Dark” — and their corresponding finished penciled pages as well!)

A Nearly Perfect Translation

To give you an example of what a thumbnail sketch looks like (and how they translate into finished pages), take a look at how page 14 of “A Shot in the Dark” went from script to thumbnail to finished page. (If you want to read the dialogue in a more comfortable fashion, you can download a PDF of the script.) Notice how once the thumbnail sketch was finalized, the transition to the final penciled page was very smooth — the layout and contents of each panel are nearly identical.

Page 14:

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site.

In the thumbnail sketch, you can see how Karla used the alphabetical letters from my script to indicate what dialogue should go where. (In How to Write A Full Script, I talked about using these letters in the script as a time-saving technique for the artist.)

Notice also how, just from the thumbnail sketch she sent, I actually had a very good idea what the final page was going to look like. Even though this sketch is rough, I could see that the final art would do a great job of telling our story and showing us these cute guys in a tender moment.

For another example of a nearly seamless translation, take a look at

Page Five:

Again, overall, the sketch and the final pencil match up very well. But Panel 4 is quite different and that shows how creating great art for a Yaoi comic involves a number of revisions, large and small. Many of these improvements will come from the artist as she is creating the final pages, but even though the script is done, creating the finished work is still a collaboration.

After I receive the Thumbnail Sketches from an artist, I spend a lot of time writing up notes, carefully detailing what worked really well and what things I thought might be improved upon. In the case of this page I was concerned that the “screen direction” (to use a film term) between the panels might be confusing for the reader — that it might be unclear exactly where the characters were and what was happening. You can see it was also something Karla and I were working on while the Thumbnail Sketches were being revised:

First and Second Revision for Page Five Thumbnail Sketch:

In addition, you can see how at this stage we were also addressing “acting” (I felt that an expression for “contempt” was more appropriate than “fury” in the last panel, considering Ben’s snarky line) as well as discovering nice additions to the look for the characters (such as giving the Demon claws in Panel 3.)

The Joy of Finished Pencils

Now, it’s amazing how much information a simple sketch can convey — but it was always a special pleasure [magic, actually] to see that sketch transformed into a final penciled page. Really, seeing the final pencils gave me the same rush as seeing one of my film scripts turned into an actual film. And working on revisions at this stage was just as fun for me as working with flesh-and-blood actors as a director.

In the end, I felt that Karla came up with a nice solution to the screen direction problem by using an overhead shot in Panel 4 — no confusion where our characters are in relation to each other here! (And I love the great expression of contempt in Ben’s eyes in the last panel…)

Page Five – The Final Penciled Page

For some more examples showing how the art develops from thumbnails to finished pages (and a chance to look at more of Karla’s fantastic pencils), take a look at these pages:

Page Two:

Page Four:

Here again, you can see how the art changed quite a bit from the thumbnails that I approved. Knowing when to continue revising at a particular stage and when to move on to the next stage can be tricky, but for me, once I see that the thumbnails are telling the story clearly and engagingly — and that no important details have been missed — it’s time to take it to the next level. Usually that means an artist will have it by the second revision of the thumbnail, almost always by the third.

The thumbnails Karla sent me are an excellent example of balancing speed in creation with enough detail to enable me to give coherent feedback. And as you can see, the end result was more than worth the time we spent at this stage.

Would you like to see more cool Yaoi Art and tutorials like this? Subscribe and get it delivered right to you hot off the press!

See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• Want to learn how to find an artist to turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Curious to see how the final pencils for this comic turned out? Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Pencils! (Age 18 and over, please!)

Here is the complete script for the first comic in our Yaoi graphic novel — “A Shot in the Dark.” In its 16 comic book pages, a Junior Apprentice must save his now helpless boyfriend, a Senior Apprentice, from a tremendously powerful and crafty demon after a summoning goes terribly awry.

This script may be freely distributed so long as it is done so in its entirety with no alterations, including the header text.

You can download the PDF here:

A Shot in the Dark (PDF)

Or you can read it right at this site by clicking on the thumbnail pages below:

(Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site)

Enjoy reading scripts like these? Subscribe and get them (and other cool Yaoi posts) delivered right to you!


See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Read How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Want to see what these pages look like fully drawn? Check out Yaoi Art: A Shot in the Dark Inks!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Take a look at our Reviews!

So, you want to create a Yaoi short story (or graphic novel!) Where to begin?

While you might have a bunch of cool images in mind (perhaps of cute boys fighting monsters and then making out…), it all starts with words on paper — a script. And in my humble opinion, that should be the king of comic book scripts — the full script.

What’s a full script?

A “full script” is a comic book script that tries to include everything an artist would need to visualize each page that you (the writer) have in your head. There are lots of different ways writers work. Some will write pages and pages of description. Others will write a quick outline — sometimes without even dialogue! — and leave it to the artist to fill in the details (in which case, I think the artist really deserves a writing credit…)

The more detailed writer will prefer the “full script.” It not only includes the actual words needed (word balloons, captions, sound effects, etc. — the “lettering”) but also how many panels are on that page and exactly what you see in each of those panels. (Sometimes it might include how you’d like to see those panels laid out on the page, but by my lights, unless you have something really special in mind, those choices are usually better left in the hands of the artist.) For an example of a full script, look at the first five pages of the first comic in our upcoming Yaoi story collection, “A Shot in the Dark.” (The complete script can be downloaded here.)

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. You can also use your arrow keys and the ESC key.

Take a look at the layout. Up top, I list the Page Number and how many panels are on the page, so the artist can see that at a glance. The Page Number refers to the comic book page, which might be a quite different number that the document page of your script — for example, the first page of this comic actually spans over three pages of script. I have set up my Word template so the header up top always refers to the correct Comic Book Page no matter what the document page is.

The page is then broken down by panels with the description of the panel contents preceding the lettering. The actual content of this lettering section is in CAPS, because it is tradition to letter word balloons in comics in caps. (Have you ever noticed that?) It is also indented — to distinguish it from the descriptive text as well as force you to keep in mind the limited real estate available for lettering if you don’t want to bury your art with words, words, words.

I also have chosen to use the letters of the alphabet to distinguish each distinct section of lettering — that way, when the artist creates the page thumbnails, they can quickly indicate to me where they envision each bit of text appearing in each panel without mixing them up with panel numbers. (Click here to see what a page thumbnail looks like and how this works.)

Now, notice how there’s a ton of description on the first comic book page, but by the second comic book page, we’re mostly into dialogue with the description becoming much more sparse. Similar to a film script, you want to lay out the entire environment for each scene up front, so the artist doesn’t have to hunt through the whole script to find the details of the room (or forest or whatever). Ideally, you include that information in the first panel (or at least the first page), even if those panels don’t actually show the entire room. I also try to include information on how I think each character should look when they are introduced. Later, I’ll expand on these descriptions when I create my Character Notes to give to the artist.

I follow a few other filmmaking conventions in the script as well. For example, you’ll see the abbreviations MS and WS, which are short for Medium Shot and Wide Shot, shot framing terms. (I also use SFX as short for “Sound Effects” — the “BOOM!” you might see written in special type on the comic page. And I use O.S. or O.P. as short for “off-screen” or “off-panel” for dialog when you can see the word balloon but not the character.)

I find that using these conventions forms a convenient language for communicating with my artist how I see the subjects in the panel being framed. But more than that, I highly recommend an understanding of filmmaking shot flow as a way to help you get a better idea how to create good pacing in your comics. An excellent book to start with is Film Directing: Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen — it’s all about creating compelling visual storytelling through storyboards and what you learn in that book directly applies to creating comic stories that flow very well.

The full script is certainly more work to create than an outline or a dialogue-only comic book script, but as a Yaoi creator, you’ve made a choice to tell your story in a visual and often collaborative medium. What your readers see in each panel is as important as what they read in the word balloons. Creating a full script is the best way to translate that cool yaoi story in your head into words that others can use to see that same story in their heads.

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Learn More!

• Want to learn how to find an artist to turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel.
• Want to see how an artist uses your script to take it to the next step — “page thumbnails”? Find out in Yaoi Art: From Thumbnails Sketches to Final Pencils!
• Want to see what these pages look like fully drawn? Check out Yaoi Art: A Shot in the Dark Inks!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Take a look at our Reviews!