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A review by rebeccacider
Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud
5.0
Read this for work, not because I have any (serious) pretensions of making comics. I loved it - it was a great followup to Understanding Comics and taught me a lot about how comics creators approach their craft.
I suspect that comics have a lot to teach fiction writers - just as novelists borrow cinematographic techniques, they could apply comics storytelling to narrative, characters, and worlds. For instance, I struggle at describing facial expressions and body language and have use artists' guides in the past to help me ground my characters in reality. On the more experimental end of things, applying the techniques behind comic panels could result in a narrative in which events are represented as a series of visual moments.
Finally, McCloud has helped me take manga seriously, which I regret to admit I have not always done in the past.
I suspect that comics have a lot to teach fiction writers - just as novelists borrow cinematographic techniques, they could apply comics storytelling to narrative, characters, and worlds. For instance, I struggle at describing facial expressions and body language and have use artists' guides in the past to help me ground my characters in reality. On the more experimental end of things, applying the techniques behind comic panels could result in a narrative in which events are represented as a series of visual moments.
Finally, McCloud has helped me take manga seriously, which I regret to admit I have not always done in the past.