A Quote by Mark Waid

In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft.

Mark Waid

Quote Topics

Average Character Comic Conveying Couple Craft Cute Demonstration Does Every Figuring Five Four Full Gag Hundred Know Lousy Maybe Most Need Nothing Page Panel Plot Reveal Shots Something Story Tell Writer

Quote Author

Mark Waid
American - Writer
Born: March 21, 1962

I changed the layout of comic books in general. When I came in, layout design wasn't really part of what you did. It was all just panels, panels, panels. So when I came in, I thought, 'Nah, let's change that,' and I designed the page.

Neal Adams

When you're writing TV or movies your vernacular is time, it's all based on rhythms, a character takes a beat or two characters have a moment, like everything is about time. And when you're writing a comic, everything is about space. It's how many panels to put on a page, when should you do a full page splash, what is the detail that you see in any particular image.

Eric Kripke

As a writer, if you have something on a page, you can start moving it around and get something you like. But if you have a blank page, it's just gonna be a blank page.

Craig Finn

Yes, the fear of its blankness. At the same time, I kind of loved it. Mallarmé was trying to make the page a blank page. But if you're going to make the page a blank page, it's not just the absence of something, it has to become something else. It has to be material, it has to be this thing. I wanted to turn a page into a thing.

Vito Acconci

Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.

Joan Didion

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

Brian K. Vaughan

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Anthony Bourdain

Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

Alan Dean Foster

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

Edward Abbey

I find the idea of the recap page to be something of a waste. It's the page nobody ever reads and it's even worse because it doesn't tell you who anybody really is.

Chris Claremont

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

Pat Conroy

When I'm writing comics, I'm also visualizing how the story will look on the page - not even always art-wise, but panel-wise, like how a moment will be enhanced dramatically by simply turning a page and getting a reveal. It requires thinking about story in a way I never had to consider when I was writing prose.

Marjorie Liu

When something arrives, you have no idea what's in it, which is good. And then, it's is the story leaps off the page at you and how your character functions within it. There could be just one scene and if it's wonderful, it doesn't matter how much you're working on it because you just want to be in it. It's really about what your character's day to day world looks like, and if you feel like that's something that's complete, and that you'd like to inhabit for awhile. You'll know by a couple of scenes in. If the character grabs you, you run with it.

Tim Roth

The only place where you can really surprise or shock the reader, or make someone laugh, is on the lower righthand corner - the very last panel - so as you turn the page, the payoff is in the upper lefthand panel. To pace every story so that there's a setup and a payoff at the page turn was a huge challenge; it's a part of the medium and you really have to learn what can be done in the medium.