How to Write a Comic: From Script to Page

I built this scene myself. It isn't a memory, and on this blog I don't sell memories I haven't got.

Wednesday 28 October, Lucca. Picture the queue at the gates: shoes soaking up the damp from the city walls, the smell of printed paper mixing with the fried food from the stalls. In front of you there's a bloke with a folder under his arm. Inside, ten A4 sheets of dense text: his company's operations manual. He's got an idea and he tells you straight out: ‘I'll turn it into a comic. I'll stick these sentences in speech bubbles and get some nice drawings done.’

That bloke doesn't exist. But there are a thousand of him. And they all make the same mistake.

Reconstructed scene, image generated with AI

They think a comic is a text with pictures on top. It isn't. A comic is a text that has learnt to keep quiet.

I reckon a corporate comic should be judged by what it takes out, not by what it adds. If, by the end, the manual is still all there, just in colour, you've wasted the illustrator's fee. This guide is here to stop that happening, and to do it we'll write a proper comic, four pages, from idea to finished page.

Why I'm writing about it now: Lucca, a little man in a bowler hat and the numbers

28 October isn't just any date for Italian comics. On that day in 1917, the Corriere dei Piccoli ran the first page of Sergio Tofano's Signor Bonaventura: eight panels with captions in verse. A hundred and nine years later, on 28 October 2026, the gates open at Lucca Comics & Games, which turns sixty.

The figures for the 2025 edition, as declared by the organisers, are over 280,000 tickets sold and more than 750,000 attendances overall. For 2026 the Comics area is announcing over 80 publishers and more than 400 guests.

The market, though, tells a less triumphant story than the gates do. According to the AIE Observatory data presented at Lucca in 2025, in the first nine months of the year bookshops, online and supermarkets sold 6.28 million copies of comics, worth €59.5 million: almost triple 2019. But over the last three years the curve has been heading down: minus 15.9% in 2023, minus 9.5% in 2024, minus 2.8% in 2025. One Italian in four has read a comic in the past year.

A detail for anyone thinking about strips: the strip, the format of Lupo Alberto, now accounts for 1.2% of sales and is down 30.2%. The comic is a mainstream language, not a product that sells itself. Which is why it pays to know how to write one before deciding to use one.

The AIE figures on comics for 2026 aren't out yet. The AIE usually presents them at Lucca itself. Until then, the latest useful figure for the book market as a whole is the 3.2% rise in value over the first nine months of 2026.

Two characters keep us company. Berto and Bobby don't exist: they're archetypes, and I say so often. Berto is the Campanian businessman with his firm between Santa Maria Capua Vetere and Capua, who doesn't trust digital fads. Bobby is the British owner of a back-of-the-shop outfit in Southwark, a stone's throw from Borough Market, who acts on instinct before he's understood a thing. One gets it wrong slowly, the other gets it wrong fast. As a comic engine, it works a treat.

The vocabulary of the trade: Italy and the English-speaking world

Before writing a single line, we need to agree on the names of the tools. A carpenter doesn't ask his apprentice to pass him ‘that thingy’. Anyone writing for an illustrator has to say what they want in panels, not in vibes.

Diagram generated with AI, labels revised by Umberto Mazza

The white between the panels is time passing

Of all the terms in the table, one is worth the rest put together: the gutter. That millimetre of white paper between two panels isn't wasted space. It's time.

Panel one: a glass on the edge of the table, a hand reaching for it. Panel two: smashed bits on the floor. The sound of the glass happened in the white, and the reader made it happen, not you. If you write it in a caption (‘the glass fell and broke’) you nick their job and bore them.

Illustration generated with AI.

It works with shot scale too. From a close-up of a broken seal to a wide shot of a horrified face takes two panels, and the brain does the rest. It's the same grammar you'll find in shot scale in photography and video: what to include, what to leave out of frame.

From idea to page: seven steps

A comic's production line is layered, like a ragù that needs its hours. Skip a step and you'll taste it later.

1. Logline. One sentence that tells the story.
2. Synopsis. A summary of a few pages: what happens from start to finish, without worrying about dialogue.
3. Page-by-page breakdown. This is where you decide the pacing. What happens on page 1? And on page 2? Get this split wrong and lovely drawings won't save you.
4. Script. Panel by panel, with dialogue and captions.
5. Thumbnails. The artist tries out the grid and composition in miniature. This is when you find out whether you've asked for too much.
6. Pencils and inks. The final drawing and the ink.
7. Colour, lettering and layout. Colour where there is any, and lettering always.

The writer comes in first but never quite leaves: they have to stay until the lettering, because that's where your dialogue gets cut to fit the balloons.

Three ways to write the script

There's no right method. There's the one that holds up the trust between you and whoever's drawing.

The full script: everything on the page

This is the complete script: every panel described, final dialogue. The extreme case is Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: Gibbons recalled that the script for the first issue ran to 101 typed pages, with no gaps between the descriptions. The comic is built on a grid of nine panels per page.

And yet Moore often ended his descriptions with an opening: if it doesn't work, do whatever works best. Even the most obsessive full script leaves a door ajar.

The Marvel Method: pictures before words

Stan Lee didn't have time to write full scripts for every title. He gave a plot outline, the artist built the story, and only afterwards, over the finished pages, did the dialogue and captions arrive. Quick, full of energy, and a source of credit disputes: the best known involve Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as this analysis of the documentary on Lee reconstructs.

The practical lesson for anyone working with a freelancer: if the artist builds the story, put it in writing in the contract.

The method I use: the lean full script

I describe the essentials of each panel (place, light, who's there, what they're doing), write the dialogue and leave the acting to the artist. It isn't a school's method: it's my own choice, halfway between the two extremes. If you've got an artist you've worked with for a while, you can dare to say less in the descriptions. If it's your first time together, write more.

Four pages: ‘The Wrong Crate’

The logline: Berto is convinced the courier has delivered someone else's crate. On page 4 he finds out who got it wrong.

The mechanism is that of 2000 AD's Future Shocks: self-contained four-page stories with a twist ending. Four pages to set up, build and flip.

The backstory, which the reader only discovers at the end: in March Berto and Bobby agreed to swap two crates of samples, each to test the other's market. Berto sends London Vietri ceramics and San Leucio silks. Bobby sends Santa Maria Capua Vetere craft gin and tweed fabrics. Berto has forgotten all about it.

The style choices are declared. Berto's page is conceived in black and white, on a three-row grid: my own choice, inspired by the steady rhythm of the Bonelli albums. Bobby's page is in saturated colour, at the pace of a gag from a humour magazine. The dialogue is in English.

Page 1 — Berto (6 panels)

PAGE 1 (6 panels, 3 rows)

ROW 1

PANEL 1
Wide shot. Dawn in the industrial estate between Santa Maria Capua Vetere and Capua.
Wet tarmac, low warehouses, the shutter of Berto's storeroom raised
halfway. In the foreground the back of a courier van, doors open.
CAPTION: Industrial estate, between Santa Maria Capua Vetere and Capua. 6.40am.

PANEL 2
Close-up of Berto, inside the office. Glasses pushed up on his forehead, stubble,
a crumpled delivery note in his hand. In the background, the desk:
under the coffee cup there's a yellow sticky note written in marker, illegible.
BERTO: This isn't my crate.

ROW 2

PANEL 3
Waist-up shot. Berto in front of a rough wooden crate, neatly sealed.
On the side, British customs stamps. He's holding a crowbar.
DRIVER (off-panel): The note says it's yours. Will you sign for it or not?
BERTO: I'll sign. But if I find bricks in there, I'm reporting the courier. Right down to the third generation.

PANEL 4
Detail of Berto's pen signing. The driver, seen from behind, walks off
towards the van.
SOUND EFFECT: SCRITCH.

ROW 3

PANEL 5
From above, Berto's POV. The lid has popped off. On the straw, three bottles
of gin with a spotless label, and swatches of heavy tweed.
(no text)

PANEL 6
Berto in profile, a bottle in his hand, eyebrows raised.
BERTO: …and what parallel universe did this come from?

A note for anyone reading as an artist: the yellow note in panel 2 is the story's honest clue. You don't explain it, you just draw it.

Illustrative page generated with AI from my script; it isn't the work of a professional artist.

Page 2 — Bobby (5 panels)

PAGE 2 (5 panels, in colour, saturated colours)

PANEL 1
Exterior. Bobby's gin and tweed shop in Southwark, near Borough Market.
Fine drizzle, dark bricks, a hand-painted sign.
CAPTION: Southwark, London. 8.15am.

PANEL 2
Interior, back room. Bobby in an apron, a mug of tea in one hand and a crowbar
in the other, in front of a crate with Italian labels.
BOBBY: An Italian crate. Lovely.

PANEL 3
Close-up. Bobby holds a Vietri ceramic plate up to the light,
lemon yellow and cobalt blue, wrapped in newspaper.
BOBBY: I'll sell this for thirty-eight quid.

PANEL 4
Forty minutes later. The counter and the window: the ceramics next to the bottles
of gin, each with a pen-written tag. Bobby sticks one on with a sharp tap.
SOUND EFFECT: TAK!
CAPTION: Forty minutes later.

PANEL 5
The phone rings on the counter. On the display: BERTO. Bobby looks at it, smiles,
wipes his hands on his apron.
BOBBY: Here we go.

Illustrative page generated with AI from my script.

Page 3 — the phone call (6 panels)

PAGE 3 (6 panels, split screen: Berto on the left, Bobby on the right)

PANEL 1
Berto in the storeroom with the phone to his ear. Bobby in the shop with the receiver.
BERTO: They've delivered someone else's crate to me. Send my things back, today.

PANEL 2
Bobby, unbothered, nods towards the window behind him.
BOBBY: Your ceramics? They've been in the window for forty minutes.

PANEL 3
Close-up of Berto. Glasses sliding from his forehead down to his nose.
(no text)

PANEL 4
Bobby, waist-up, leaning on the counter.
BOBBY: And the gin? Have you tried it?

PANEL 5
Berto, indignant, clutching the bottle.
BERTO: Tried it?! It turned up by mistake!

PANEL 6
Bobby, in close-up, with a half smile.
BOBBY: Look on your desk, Berto.

Illustrative page generated with AI from my script

Page 4 — the page turn (5 panels)

PAGE 4 (left-hand page, 5 panels; the first takes up half the page)

PANEL 1 (large)
From above, Berto's desk. The coffee cup has been moved. Underneath, the yellow note,
now legible, written in marker in block capitals:
‘14 MARCH — CRATE SWAP WITH BOBBY. GIN AND TWEED TO ME. CERAMICS AND SILKS TO HIM.’
CAPTION: Berto's desk. Since March.

PANEL 2
Berto, from above, hands on the note. Silent.
(no text)

PANEL 3
Bobby on the phone, the window with the ceramics behind him.
BOBBY: You wrote it yourself, in March. The courier's got nothing to do with it.

PANEL 4
Berto sitting down, a little glass of gin in his hand, the bottle label in view.
BERTO: …well, at least the gin's good.

PANEL 5
Outside, the courier driver leaning on the van, cup of coffee in hand, grinning from ear to ear.
DRIVER: I only delivered the note.

Illustration generated with AI. The text on the note was added in post-production.

Why page 4 sits where it does

The twist is in the first panel of a left-hand page, and that's no accident. A rule of the trade taught to people writing for print says that when the reader opens a double spread, they catch the right-hand page in a flash too. A reveal on the last panel of an odd-numbered page therefore risks being spoilt by peripheral vision. The surprise has to go after the page turn: you've got to make the reader turn the sheet to find it.

In our story, page 3 ends on a line (‘Look on your desk, Berto’) with no explanation. The yellow note has been there since panel 2 of page 1: anyone with a good eye has spotted it. The page turn works like a film cut.

How much fits on a page: the numbers from 2000 AD, Commando and Watchmen

The printed page has a precise visual capacity. Wood has a memory: force it and it snaps. Fill the page past that limit and you make it unreadable.

2000 AD's guidelines for writers are an honest reference, because they say outright that they're a rule of thumb. They talk about no more than 25 words per balloon, no more than three balloons or captions per panel, an average of 5-7 panels per page. Another line from the same page applies to anyone writing: ‘Never use two words (or panels) where one will do’. For a Future Shock, the same guidelines ask for a four-page script and a one-page synopsis. Mind you, the page also states that unsolicited submissions are suspended at times. Check the site before you send anything.

But that average isn't a law. Commando, DC Thomson's war series, has been published since 1961 with one complete story per issue. According to an author who writes for it, a standard script runs to 135 panels, which roughly matches an American 22-page story at six panels a page. Watchmen kept to a fixed grid of nine panels. Three different rhythms, with three different pages.

What I take from this table is the conclusion: the right number of panels depends on the format and the rhythm you've chosen, not on an average. Drop below what the format can bear and the reading goes by too fast. Go above it and the characters turn into ants and the balloons can't breathe.

The same logic applies to dialogue: keep it short because space is tight, and let it say less than it feels. That isn't a brevity trick, it's the school of dialogue that doesn't tell the truth: subtext takes up very few millimetres.

Formats compared: Italy and the United Kingdom

The sources for each row are in the Sources block: for Bonaventura and Lupo Alberto, for the Bonelli format, for Commando and 2000 AD.

Illustration generated with AI. Berto and Bobby are fictional characters

A geographical comparison, because it's my vantage point. In Italy the popular tradition is monthly, regular, black and white, built to last decades. In the United Kingdom the Future Shock school teaches you to fit into four pages, and the Commando one to tell a tale in a single issue. Berto works slowly and by subtraction, and for him I'd write a steady, rhythmic page. Bobby makes up his mind in ten seconds, and for him it's a colour gag in five panels.

When the comic goes corporate

Advertising and comics have been keeping company for nearly a century. A few examples with names attached, because ‘typical brand mistakes’ without names teach nothing.

Two more risks, mundane and recurring. The first: getting the tone wrong and making it look childish. The second: not writing down straight away who owns the rights to the pages for web and social media, and how they get paid. With the Marvel Method we've seen where ambiguity leads.

For an SME, a comic doesn't sell cold. It earns its keep where a text gets lost: user guides, welcoming new starters, procedures. If that's you, start with the instruction booklet nobody reads and ask yourself what, in that text, a drawing says better.

The GENI.A case: Otto, the superhero kid

This is a real case, and I'll tell you from the outset what I know and what I don't.

GENI.A (Genitorialità e Autismo, ie. Parenthood and Autism) is a project set up by Cooperativa Sociale Mondo in Cammino and INSIEME srl Impresa Sociale. It was delivered with funding from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Minister for Disabilities, and from the Campania Region, under a Public Notice, for Social Area N.18, which covers Casoria, Arzano and Casavatore. It was aimed at parents of children on the autism spectrum and included Parent Training with psychologists and psychotherapists, public meetings, Family Workshops and an advice desk.

I looked after the graphics and illustrations for EmmeU Creative Studio, including those of Otto, the mascot: a superhero kid who represents neurodiversity. He has curly brown hair, a teal-blue suit with an orange infinity symbol on the chest, an orange infinity mask, a red cape and blue headphones. He's a 2D cartoon, with a black outline.

Otto, mascot of the GENI.A project. Illustration by Umberto Mazza for EmmeU Creative Studio

I'm not a clinician. The content of the guide isn't mine, and I won't be recounting it here. What I can talk about is the look.

The tone is the most important content choice: celebratory, not pathologising, with neurodiversity treated as a natural variation. You can see it from the titles of two chapters of the guide alone: ‘Cos'è l'autismo?’ (What is autism?) and ‘Correggere o accogliere?’ (Correct or embrace?). The second is a question with a stance built in. I reckon that's the right way to use a comic in a guide for families: a mascot isn't there to ‘simplify’, it's there to give a stance a face, and to make that stance readable on a page.

When I started work on the guide, the idea was to find images that would explain certain points and make them clearer. A near-impossible mission. I moved from images to illustrations, and that's where the idea came: a single character, a mascot who could represent the whole project.

There are always doubts when you start creative work. With a delicate subject like GENI.A, and disability, there's another one on top: the fear of offending the sensibilities of people who live with those difficulties every day. I thought it over, put the fear aside and Otto was born. First as the guide's protagonist, then as the mascot of the whole project. Bit by bit he became part of the family that grew up around GENI.A, and when the project ended, many people told me that one of the things they'd miss most was him.

I'm not giving you figures or copies, and not because I'm hiding anything. The project involved three municipalities in the Naples hinterland, and what counts is something else: Otto stayed in the hearts of the participants and the staff. For a corporate comic the same rule applies as for a text: you don't judge it by a percentage, you judge it by how much the people who read it carry it around with them.

If you're interested in the subject from the photographic side, I wrote about it in a guide to photographing disability.

Translating a balloon from another language

Berto and Bobby speak two languages, and the white inside a balloon doesn't stretch. It's a real problem for anyone making a comic in two languages.

There's no percentage that works for every text, and I'm wary of anyone who gives one. The direction changes from sentence to sentence. Take ‘Mate, this is absolutely mental’: in Italian it comes out as ‘Ma è una follia’, which is shorter. Take ‘Sorted’: in Italian it becomes ‘Tutto a posto, ci penso io’, three times longer.

So don't trust rules: measure. Take the twenty longest lines in your script, get them translated and compare the characters. Then tell the artist before they start drawing how much room to leave in the balloons. The same principle applies to a website: a two-language site isn't a translated site, and a two-language comic isn't a comic with two columns of text.

PAGE N (number of panels, format, colour or black and white)

PANEL N
Shot (wide, waist-up, close-up, detail, from above).
Place and light. Who's there, what they're doing, what they're holding.
One detail that reveals more than a sentence.
CHARACTER: line (25 words at most).
CAPTION: only if the drawing can't say it.
SOUND EFFECT: if needed.

After Lucca: where to start

If you're going to Lucca, look for three places: the Comics area, where publishers display their albums, the Self Area, where you'll find independent outfits and self-published work, and the Lucca Legacy exhibition at Palazzo Guinigi, open since 3 October. Then pick up an album, open it at page four and see where the last panel on the right ends.

If Lucca feels a bit far, Campania has its own event. Comicon in Naples closed 2025 with 183,000 visitors, 4.6% up on 2024, with over 70% coming from outside the city. The 2026 edition ran from 30 April to 3 May; for the next one the dates given are 29 April to 2 May 2027. The comics audience is out there, and it travels. If you're going with a camera, I've written a technical guide to costume portraits on what goes on between the stands and outside the gates: cosplay and historical reenactments, from light to pose.

And if you've got a manual nobody reads, on Monday morning do just one thing: underline the ten sentences you can't lose. The comic starts from those, the rest is paper. I draw them for a living too, so I'll declare an interest: Insight Adv produces graphics and illustrations for clients, as in the GENI.A case. If you fancy a chat, drop me a line from the contacts page on the site.

My position doesn't change right up to the last panel: a corporate comic is judged by what you had the nerve to cut. Berto and Bobby, each on their own side of the continent, have learnt that the courier wasn't the problem.

The images in this article are generated with artificial intelligence from my own prompts. On what to declare, in Italy and in the United Kingdom, I've written here.