Guide · 5 min read
How to write comic dialogue that fits in the bubble
The craft of comic dialogue: word budgets per bubble, reading order, silence as a tool, and letting pictures do the describing.
The bubble budget
A comfortable speech bubble holds eight to twelve words. Two bubbles per panel is conversation; three is an argument; four is a wall. If a line will not fit, it is two lines or it is narration. Cutting dialogue is the single fastest way to make a comic read professionally.
Let the picture talk first
Never write what the panel already shows. If she is soaked in rain, nobody needs to say it is raining; the line should be about what the rain means: 'You waited.' Dialogue carries feeling and information the art cannot, and nothing else.
Silence is a beat
The most powerful panel in most short comics has no words at all: the look after the confession, the empty chair, the dog watching the door. When generating, ask for a quiet panel explicitly: 'the last panel is silent.'
Voice in one line
- Give each character one verbal habit: short answers, questions, over-formality.
- Read bubbles aloud in order; if you stumble, the reader will.
- End pages on a line that makes turning inevitable.
In Comikaze, dialogue is generated from your story but any page can be redrawn with a note like 'she answers with one word only'.