Dio question...

[Sonneilon]

Hey, I know a lot of you guys read dios. Which do you prefer when reading thru.

A ton of dialogue that moves the story forward and explains what's happening?

or

A ton of text boxes that explains what's happening?






I've noticed with comic books, they tend to be really wordy and a company like Dreamwave shoves most of their story into text boxes. Spawn was terrible like that too. Just curious.

[snakeeater]

I think I prefer the exposition to be in dialogue instead of text boxes. I love movies, and most of the time the story is told through dialogue, except for maybe an intro at the beginning, like Star Wars or The Terminator.

It's influenced me doing my dios too, because I pretty much try to tell the whole story through images and dialogue.

[frk525]

i prefer dialogue really. except if it's just a solely snake eyes story, then of course you need those text boxes. but i prefer the dialogue all the way

[Self-Modifier]

You may have noticed that sometimes I write very overblown expository captions, which is my little tribute to the overly verbose narrations of Chris Claremont's X-Men in the 80s. However, for the most part, I prefer the exposition to come from dialogue.

I've always found it kind of fun that characters in comics tend to state the obvious and say what they're doing as they do it. That's part of what I enjoy about Larry Hama's G.I. Joe-- You know, how everyone says the name of the character they're talking to when there's no need to do it. Stuff like that.

[Bayer]

[QUOTE=snakeeater]I think I prefer the exposition to be in dialogue instead of text boxes. I love movies, and most of the time the story is told through dialogue, except for maybe an intro at the beginning, like Star Wars or The Terminator.

It's influenced me doing my dios too, because I pretty much try to tell the whole story through images and dialogue.[/QUOTE]

Back in the dark ages before electricity, when I was in creative writing classes, I was told to use exposition through dialog and action rather than statement of what is going on.

[Sonneilon]

Bayer, at least you were TOLD something in your classes. My 'creative writing' classes were incredly restrictive and killed any creativity.

SelfMod, that's too funny. It's one thing to be told what's happening, it's another to see it. I often put the names in of who is talking to who just in case the reader doesn't know 'em. Course, when it's 1-1 interaction, it's not really needed. But yeah, the whole, explain what they are doing when it's obvious, kind of annoying. Course, Dreamwave NEEDED that cuz their art was so poor in Warlands that you didn't know what was happening.

Thanks. I know part of what drove me away from comics were the long text. When 1/2 the comic panel is text, it kills it for me. WHich is why when I do action scenes, I keep the 'babble' to a minimum. Surely guys won't do long monolagues in the middle of a fistfight. Unless it's Heavy Duty. ;)

[zweiman]

as everyone above stated, i too, prefer the exposition to be handled with dialog. i wrote my first dio script and tried to keep the exposition to as minimum as psooible and let the action and story speak for itself.

[Dersham]

Bayer that's hilarious that you're creative writing instructors told you to put exposition in the dialogue. My teachers would cringe at the thought of being told to do that. I think it's really all about the context Sonne, in some cases I feel that exposition can be useful so long as it isn't getting paragraph long. In that case I would think that something funky is up, but otherwise I personally prefer exposition to be in the boxes. Though its a wild idea to put a narrator into the panel and some have done it really well such as Frank Miller's Sin City. In Some cases Alan Moore's stuff such as V for Vendetta makes good use of it too. But then again also with Alan Moore's stuff we get graphic novels like Watchmen that have somehow manage to find balance using both. Though he never says anything too directly until the end. I like the idea of using graphic novels as a template for joedios but then thats just me.

[Sonneilon]

That's probably a good reference. I tend to use video games and movies for my dios.