Writing for Comics With Peter David

By Peter David

Book Overview

A guide for those who want to write dynamic comics, Peter David teaches readers how to create comics from start to finish. He offers guidance for beginners, as well as advice for intermediate comic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581807309
• ISBN13: 9781581807301
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Impact
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

great book

Peter David is one of the best comic book writers ever. Any advice that he can give is worth a read or two.

Great Book

This is a masterful lesson on writing stories, period. I'm reading and rereading David's book and taking away something new each time.

An excellent primer on storytelling for the visual medium!

There are many books on storytelling, but none can match Peter David's book "Writing for Comics" with regards to writing for the sequential arts medium. Whether you are interested in writing a super-hero comic or a webcomic, there is excellent information to be had by reading this book. Peter David, the prolific writer behind a plethora of fiction books (both literary novel and comic books) writes a clear, concise, and occasionally humor-weaved primer on writing for comics. I found this book to be well written, interesting, and informative to read. Many examples from both past and present day comics are used to illustrate critical storytelling elements (climax, plot, theme, etc). In summary, this book does what it says in the title, and does it well. Highly recommended for writers and aspiring-writers alike.

Lively, bite-sized nuggets

I'm not sure what I was expecting with this book, but I had a great time reading it. Although its short sections and chapters made it easy to find a stopping place, its lively presentation and accompanying graphics made it hard for me to put down. If you want to start writing for comics, this book gives you the basics of theme, conflict, and characterization, as well as the limits of presenting them in a comic book format. Then it continues with practical advice about how to present your work to the industry professionals who would buy it. Finally, if you're just a Peter David fan, you get a bit of insight into his thought processes. I wouldn't recommend this as your only book to understand comics. Scott McCloud and Will Eisner have books that dissect and explain the mechanisms of quality comics. But for its narrower focus of how to create a comic book story, Peter David's work is as good as anything I've seen.

A good introduction to the art of storytelling

Writing for Comics with Peter David is one of those books that appealed to me on a number of levels: I like to write, I like reading comics and I like the writing of Peter David. So I got the book and found it to be quite good: well-written, educational and entertaining. Despite the title, for the most part this book is not limited to merely comic book writing, but instead uses comic books (in particular superhero comics) to illustrate the essentials of any sort of storytelling: plotting, conflict, characterization, theme, etc. Only in the last part of the book do we get material that is strictly limited to comic books: topics such as the placement of speech balloons or the use of sound effects. This is not an extremely detailed book, but David does cover all the basics of storytelling. As such, it is a good introductory text for anyone interested in writing genre fiction. I've read a lot of books about writing, and while this one doesn't offer much that is new (outside of the comics-only topics), it does present its subject matter in a different and interesting fashion. If you want to learn how to write, you need to read a lot. Not just books on writing, but books in general. Even if you read this book, you will not be a good comic book writer unless you are familiar with the field. But even if you don't intend to ever write, this book still does have its advantages: it gives you new ways to look into the things you read. And with David's adept humor, this is also a fun book. In short: this is a good book for more than just aspiring comic book writers.