Peace and Joy, page 6

[rowyn]

One of the things I enjoyed most about doing a comic over writing a story was drawing panels without dialogue or narration. I like the first panel on this page, where Joy and Peace are looking at each other and nothing else is happening. Joy looks astonished and Peace looks rather sad and regretful, to me. I liked having Joy reach out to comfort Will -- that seemed fitting for her.

In novels, I often want to have people pause or hesitate in my dialogue, to let the import of the last words sink in. But the silence has more weight in graphic form, where you can see the pause and imagine the stillness, that moment of Oh. In pure text, I'll feel more constrained, feeling like I'm making it artificially slow if I spend a lot of words describing expressions or actions as a way of delaying the next bit of dialogue.

This uses pretty much the same gag as page 4 but I prefer this variant on it.

Comments

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

I've found that the most effective way to do dialog pauses in novels is for the narrator to start describing the face of the person doing the pausing, and to have the previous lines of dialog appear during that description.

Still, you're right. It's easier to do, and often more effective in a graphic format.

--Howard

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Silence:

They looked at each other.

Will's words hung in the air between them.

At last, Peace said, "Dying?"

[krud42.livejournal.com]

I like meaningful pauses in every medium (except perhaps origami).