We live in a visual culture—it’s not just films and TV shows; YouTube and TikTok, Facebook and Instagram all rely on visuals. Comics, however, are a mix of both—it’s a visual and textual medium. While the visual element is crucial to the story, comics make no sense without the text; they’re intrinsically joined together.
There are a few lessons anyone working with the written word can learn from comics.
Visual is key
The visual elements can do wonders for your writing. Depending on what you’re working on—a report, a blog post, or a deck—different visual elements might work best. Whatever text you’re writing, images, photos, graphs, and icons, etc., usually work in your favor.
Text and image balance
Comics also teach us how important the balance between the image and the text is. Think of the most boring presentation you’ve ever seen—most likely, it was slide after slide full of text, or images with absolutely no context. Losing your reader’s attention is the last thing you want. To combat that, it’s crucial to consider the text you’re creating as a whole.
Conciseness
In comics, the writer needs to convey a lot of information in the very limited space of a speech bubble. By reading comic books, you can observe how concise the writing is. In dialogs and captions, every word matters. Make sure this applies to your writing as well.
And when you’re done with your manuscript, remember to contact us for final edits.