Yes, folks, September 25th is Comic Book Day!
“A day for good triumphing over evil, and for saving the damsel in distress, Comic Book Day is all about enjoying a good comic,” according to daysoftheyear.com.
The dialog in comic books has to be spot-on. It has to be clear, concise, exciting, and informative.
Dialog in comic books and in traditional books has three main purposes:
1. It moves the plot along by showing readers what is going on.
2. It reveals what kind of character is speaking. Is he evil? Is she lying? Is he trying to save the world . . . or save his reputation? Is she concerned about her sidekick—or her hair?
3. It creates tension, usually in the form of disagreements, arguments, and falsehoods, or through a character declaring he or she is going to do something when we wonder if they really can.
Now it’s your turn: Dig out the latest short story, play, or novel you read. Look at the dialog and figure out a way to change it into words that would go into comic book speech bubbles. You’ll have to shorten up what the characters in the book say, and you’ll have to make their dialog more exciting.
If you are artistic, draw the book’s characters and the speech bubbles, along with their dialog. If you are not artistic, simply draw a few speech bubbles and insert the characters’ new words into the bubbles.
Hobbit Day is September 22nd, and Tolkien Week is all this week. If you’d rather do the prompt on that topic, click here.
