Page 1:
Page 2:
So, this is what I am envisioning for a scene in one of my future chapters of my fanfiction. This is set during a party at Capsule Corporation after defeating Buu/Naraku. Kikyo confides in Goku. I am making her seem like she has some contempt because the DBZ gang brought her back from being in heaven after she defeated Naraku.
As usual, if anyone is interested in the fanfiction I have been writing off and on over the years, here’s the link: The Crossroads of Fate and Destiny
So, no thoughts on this?
I saw this yesterday but didn’t comment. It was too hard to read the text and I didn’t want to comment on something I didn’t fully understand.
If you want a certain result from your posts here, maybe change up the post title to reflect what you want to make happen.
For instance, you could title this one “Too much text? What do you think?” or “Need feedback on this comic page.”
You can also add the tag “critique-wanted.”
Sorry. In order to be able to give you a well-founded statement on this, one would have to read at least some of the history you have written so far, inform myself about the progress the story has made. But as I’m once again in a very bad way and can hardly follow what’s going on in the forum, I don’t have the energy at the moment.
But I agree with the panel shown here and its content, it seems to me to be well presented and coherent, which could change after reading the work you have completed so far.
Michelist
Alright. I’ll remember that. I can just change the title later. Right? I’m new to this site still.
Okay then. So, do you think this would be better presented if I put this into two pages because of how much text there is in the piece?
If you see a small pencil icon next to the title, that means you can edit it. If there is no pencil icon yet, it means you haven’t been active enough in the forum to get to that level.
If you decide to change it and can’t do it yourself, just message the moderators and we’ll help.
I just figured that out. Well, I guess I’ll change it back once I finalize this piece. But with the dialog bubble having so much text, it might be two pieces.
I find that too much text, yeah. First of all, just visually I felt reluctant to read all of that, and secondly, what she’s saying seems important to the story, so it should be given more weight.
What I would try is to make an entire page or even double page with the text spread out, that is not displaying the actual scene we are seeing here, but that is illustrating the feelings symbolically, or picturing some elements of the past she’s talking about, a bit dreamlike or flashback-like. I hope you get what I mean?
The text part in comics is really a good tool to control the pacing of the story. Like in video and movies you can have fast action scenes which take place in matter of minutes and then you have slower scenes like romantic scene etc. Comics have text and panel sizing to control the flow of time.
Read the dialog aloud and see how long it takes and now compare the size of the panel you have for that dialog. The reader will stay on that panel for the time required to read that dialog is that panel important, does that panel have any other element which will keep the reader on it. The flow of time should be controlled by maintaining balance between the dialog length and the panel
In your page the second panel has big text so I as a reader will stay on this panel very long, the action in this panel is a character standing and talking I personally think that this is too short action compared to the time required to talk the dialog. So may be draw the character stopping and looking back at goku and speaking, the panel can be horizontal with more background visible. Now I know that the character has stopped to complete the talk.
Another example take three panel strip attached below
(I took a screenshot of this strip from a youtube video talking about controlling time )
If you see the action shown is a bullet passing through. But now see the amount of text , so do you think there is much time for anyone to think that much while a bullet is passing. Unless the character has super powers of accelerated thought.
So things like these matter and these things control how engrossed and believable your story is for your reader.
For example of pacing look at some of the work of alan moore, may be check out V for vendetta.
Addendum: It’s also a bit of a pacing issue. The way the text is written I imagine she should be saying it a bit haltingly to sort her thoughts and find the right words, not in one rushed or practiced outpour like the one speech bubble suggests. Speech bubbles are not just a container for text, but part of the artwork and storytelling.
This is a great channel:
That’s a great example. Well, I think I will make another page to spread out the text. Maybe so that Goku can have more reactions to what Kikyo is saying too. Thank you. 
What you all said makes a ton of sense. Yeah. I sort of rushed this one. But you’ve given me some good tips. With this, I could give Goku more reactions as to what Kikyo is saying to him as I spread out the text. You think with how I give Goku more varied reactions to what she is saying will bring also more weight to what she is saying? Thank you for all of your suggestions.
Okay. I did some edits. I made two pages out of my original piece. Tell me what you think.
Anyone?
For my taste, it is okay. It was even in the first version okay for me, maybe because I’m reading long texts day by day since childhood. I was able to read ~1000 to 1500 printed book-pages per day.
Michelist
That’s good to know. I just wanted to make it not seem as crammed for reading. Okay. I think I will consider this piece finalized. 
That’s pretty irrelevant. Comics are primarily a visual medium, and thus closer to movies than books. Think for example a typical denouement at the end of a Poirot novel where he explains everything and how that is usually adapted on screen. He still gets his long speech, but it’s accompanied by shots of the audience reaction, flashbacks, and even his own varying expressions, and some words can be cut since they get replaced by visuals. That’s what you want in a comic, too.
But even in writing, I wouldn’t write an emotionally impactful longer piece of dialog uninterrupted. What I said upthread about pacing still applies. It’s just that in writing, you change the pacing of dialog by writing different kinds of words: narrative. In comics and movies, your narrative is images.
Personally, I still find the current speech bubbles a bit long, but at a certain point it’s a matter of taste.
But more importantly, @Lindorxz are you planning to leave the text in the bubbles left-aligned? Becaus the usual way is to center the text.
I could. But making it fit is pretty difficult. I don’t know if I could center it all.
You should be able to fit more text by centering, since the you can use more of the space in the left curve of the bubble by making the middle lines longer. You should of course place all the line breaks very carefully manually to achieve the optimal line length for each line that makes the best use of bubble space. Typesetting for comics is a bit different than for plain rext.
