As an artist, I tend to think of my story visually, so I deliberately chose to write PS in a more cinematic style. You’ll notice that I never use narration, preferring to use visuals and character dialogue to move the story along. The only exception I have to that rule is the little ‘time-stamp’ I put at the beginning of each scene to denote when and where the scene is taking place. I also try to make the dialogue as interesting and readable as I can, but it still takes second place to the visuals. One of my rules of thumb is, ‘if you can't tell what's going on in a page before reading the dialogue, there is something wrong’. But, don't let that discourage you. There are many, many ways to write for comics. That's just my style

For PS, I’ve written out the entire story ahead of time. I initially wrote up a plot synopsis through the end of Act I before going back to write a script. Even then it wasn’t until after the opening scene with Frankie and Alfonse that I actually decided to script using a panel-by-panel format. While this is one a standard method of writing a comic book story, there are many different ways of writing a comic book story. If you want some expert advice on writing for comics, I recommend you read "Writers on Comics Scriptwriting" by Mark Salisbury. It has interviews with Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Warren Ellis and several others, and it also provides sample pages from their scripts. Also, if you haven't already read it, "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud is an excellant treatise on 'what is comics?' that really covers the essential interplay of words and pictures that make up the bizarre continuum that we call 'comics.'

Here are some of the things I keep in mind while I’m writing*:

1. A page means a page -- I've found that when you're writing the script, one page of script is roughly equivalent to one page of comic. Don't worry about going under, but once you go past the first page of script consider starting a new comic page, because your artist is going to have trouble squeezing everything in the page without it getting very cluttered.

2. Give yourself or your artist room to breathe -- This is a corollary to #1. Don't try to be economical and squeeze everything you can into every single page. This has been my personal problem. I sometimes to try have too much happen in a page and it ends up being a nightmare to draw.

3. How many panels? -- Try to keep your average panel count per page under seven. Six is optimal, but some scenes may require more. I tend to average around seven per page. It's possible to squeeze up to twice that on a page, but don't expect to have alot of detail or dialogue on it. It's all about striking a balance. Although, if you're Chris Ware then ignore this rule. =)

4. HAVE FUN! -- Don't forget you're doing comics because you love it. Nothing kills creativity like over thinking a problem. Just go with the flow and have fun with it. The more fun you have writing the story, the more fun a reader is going to have when they read it.

* I came up with these when a curious reader asked what I do when I write PS.