Coiled Comics

Writing and Drawing

By Peter

The deal I have with Amanda is that I take care of writing, technology, and business, and she does the drawing. It’s not an even deal at all. She ends up spending far more time on the strip than I do. I try to stay three chapters ahead of her with the writing so that she knows where the story is going. I thought I’d share with you our process.

What I hand over to Amanda is a script. For example, the first part of the first chapter looked like this:

Panel

Josua, a boy of 12, is at home looking at a television set with a game controller in his hands. Joshua looks white, with dark hair and brown eyes. He is in the livingroom, which is slightly messy.

Caption: Redmond, Washington, USA.

Panel

The TV suddenly goes black.

Joshua: (thought) Crud. It’s that stupid breaker again.

Panel

Joshua is going down basement steps in darkness. He is holding a flashlight to light his way.

Joshua: (thought) I’ve seen Dad do this. You just need to flip a switch.

If you look at what Amanda drew, you’ll see she took huge liberties with my script. She has a much better sense than I do of how the words will work with the images, so she’ll take my words and rearrange them and sometimes cut them down to make more room for her art. Every so often, I’ll argue with her about a decision she’s made, but for the most part, her changes always make things work smoother.

Amanda first sends me a sketch of the page (or sometimes more than one page), and we’ll discuss various aspects. Then she’ll create a polished version, and I’ll ask for changes, which are usually minor. We try to stay four weeks ahead of the day we publish to the website so that we’ll have a buffer in case of emergencies.