#god damn victor hugo

[redshoes-blues]

Happy first day of Les Mis Letters! That has to be the longest sentence I’ve ever seen in my life

[carolinawrenn]

Okay, I know I just ragged on the Waterloo section of Les Mis, but this passage is an absolute banger.

[harrowscore]

TOP 5 non-anglophone books 📚 TOP 5 romcom movies 📽 TOP 5 experiences out in nature 🏔

top 5 non-anglophone books:

se questo è un uomo & its sequel, la tregua (if this is a man & the truce) by primo levi (italian)

the neapolitan novels aka l'amica geniale/my brilliant friend by elena ferrante (italian)

the phantom of the opera by gaston leroux (french)

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa (portuguese)

les misérables by victor hugo (french)

(damn this was hard! i've left out so many favorites)

top 5 romcom movies:

sabrina (the 1954 version is far superior but i really like the one starring harrison ford too)

the shop around the corner

the proposal

ninotchka (i don't care about the anticommunism propaganda, it was filmed in 1939 and tbh it made me laugh so hard i had tears in my eyes at some point)

it happened one night

top 5 experiences out in nature:

(oh god i live in a city and i don't touch enough grass - literally lmao - but i'll try)

everything about the beach. just... your feet in the warm sand, the water rushing over, the smell. everything,

walking in a gothic forest and breathing the fresh air

the snow! where i live it almost never snows, even in winter the weather is generally too warm

bird-watching + closing your eyes and listening to their singing

telling stories around a fire

thank you so much for the ask, dear! <3

[mummer]

grantaire tragically waking from his drunken slumber to devote his last breaths to the revolution so that he can die with enjolras. flips page. Hello im victor hugo and i fucking hate sewers. If theres anything in this world i hate it’s a god damn sewer. The fact that we waste human shit instead of using it as crop fertilizer well kitten it honestly makes me want to kill myself

[clairelsonao3]

Damn, almost missed this somehow lol (sorry, the numbers don't copy 😔)

OC you most struggled to make?

How many projects do you have going on right now? Are there any that you doubt you’ll ever finish?

What are all the “kinds” of writing/art you do? (short stories, poetry, screenplays, digital, painting, clay, etc.)

What are your favourite books?

Thanks for the asks, Anna! From this ask game.

OC you most struggled to make?

Probably one of the ones that appeared in one of the WIPs I've since scrapped (which explains why I scrapped them). My characters talk to me, and sadly, sometimes they say "Yeah, I don't wanna be in this book." 😂

Before I decided to continue with my current WIP, I had plans for a contemporary romance focused on royalty (and non-royalty) from a fictional country. I loved the male MC, but the female MC was just resisting me at every turn. I couldn't get a clear picture of her face, her background, her motivation, anything. So into the bin she went.

I also had another YA historical romance going for a while that I put on the back burner because the male MC wasn't working for some of the same reasons, although I'm still in love with the concept (it was Oliver Twist-inspired!).

How many projects do you have going on right now? Are there any that you doubt you’ll ever finish?

If you count "projects that exist in my brain," the number is probably infinite. I've had things I've wanted to write for 10 years or more( see above) but haven't for various reasons. In terms of official WIPs, I'd say 3, but only one is really active at the moment.

What are all the “kinds” of writing/art you do? (short stories, poetry, screenplays, digital, painting, clay, etc.)

At different points in my life, I've written short stories, poetry, flash fiction, screenplays, stage plays, and even songs. I thought learning as many forms of writing as I could would make me well-rounded (it really just made me exhausted). And that doesn't even take into account the nonfiction writing I do. At the moment, though, I'm more or less only working in long-form fiction (i.e. novels).

What are your favourite books?

Thank god the question was "books," plural! Here's a selection off the top of my head:

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Magus - John Fowles

Dreamland - Kevin Baker

Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow (also Loon Lake by same)

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett

Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Avi

The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin

Troubling a Star - Madeleine L'Engle

The Secret Garden and A Little Princess - F.H. Burnett

The Chronicles of Narnia (favorite being The Magician's Nephew) - C.S. Lewis

This list should not be considered exhaustive 😂

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Gotham 3x20

I really love when rogues who are fully the fuck in Arkham just cause problems on purpose. like just for the drama. Mad Hatter here. Two-Face in the Harley Quinn series. etc.

okay!!!! fuck them owls!!!! peace and love on planet earth like the twelve richest people in Gotham just got MURDERED lmao

SPECIAL GUEST STAR JADA PINKETT SMITH???

uh oh girlies Lee has had an evil costume change. she's wearing dark eyeshadow! she even straightened her hair!!!

genuinely so funny that having a crush on Jim is like. canonically tied to becoming a cartoonishly unhinged psychokiller. Barbara. Lee. Oswald.

unironically obsessed with Oswald having a friend group made entirely of bitchy teenage girls. and Mr. Freeze.

HUGO STRANGE???

oh wait I knew that

anyway the thing with Oswald and Ed is that they're just constantly like. OKAY I'M GONNA KILL YOU NOW and then finding an excuse to hesitate and let the other one wiggle away. they don't want to kill each other at all. this is flirting. for them.

I miss Jerome :(

hold on Lee is such a funny bitch for this

this is so sexy I love this for her. she and Barbara should fuck raw about it.

what do you guys think Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen are doing right now. remember when they were characters. god, remember Harvey Dent? god, remember Victor Zsasz? damn he was hot.

so cool and normal that Harvey just. turns Alfred loose to waterboard suspects.

having said that as much as I criticize Alfred I can't pretend that I wouldn't also be reduced to a barbarian rage in order to protect this particularly small and sweet Bruce Wayne.

Jim and Harvey say their wedding vows like every three episodes I swear to CHRIST

if there's literally anyone on gods green earth who watched Gotham and can genuinely say Jim was your favorite character please reach out I just want to pick your brain

god he's acting with his teeth again

FISH MOONEY???

I think Fish should pop Ed's head off and use his corpse as a martini glass. frankly.

god where's Adam West when you need him

hello everyone I once again find myself with too much free time and not enough self preservation

and you know what that means

Gotham 3x17

told myself I wouldn't start drinking until the despair set in but it started setting in before the recap ended

Barbara's really dangling this court of owls shit in front of riddleboy like a dog owner waving a peanut butter treat in front of a particularly noxious labradoodle

placing my bets on a Deuce Wayne heroic sacrifice right now. nobody in fiction gets nosebleeds if they're not getting ready to die dramatically

this cunt is so obsessed with his brand I hate him. there was one (1) fun riddler episode and it's never happening again. he got an ugly haircut and got cocky. get a proper fade dipshit. this is some Grant O'Brien getting a haircut inmediately before his headshots energy.

I hope Lee gets Jim sent back to prison tbh get him girlboss. rip out his throat.

actually crazy that Lucius isn't in this episode. have to assume he requested indefinite paid leave after getting sexually harassed by the Riddler last time.

Cory Michael Smith is trying so hard I'm in pain. he acts with his teeth when Ed gets spicy it's insane to watch.

if I had a nickel for every time a Selina Kyle got thrown out of a window to keep her from revealing someone's secret only to get resurrected by cats, etc

relating to Jim for the first time in my life by also yearning for Ed's original characterization.

GOD THE TALON MASKS ARE SO UGLY I HATE IT HERE

it's so funny how literally every act in every nightclub in Gotham sucks no matter how good the club is supposed to be

cannot properly emphasize the degree to which the court of owls masks look like they were stolen from a spirit halloween by an intern during the november first shoplifting blitz

[hamletthedane]

Sure when Herodotus writes about world wars including oracles, cyclopses, mysticism, and divine intervention, he’s the “father of history” and “our link to the past” but when *I* do it I’m “failing my major classes” and “shouldn’t be studying this subject”

[icantthinkofasmartusername]

Hyacinth is like super gay dude

Bear with me in this... In Greek mythology, there is a story about Apollo and his lover, Hyacinth (Hyacinthus if you be a fancy boi). Now in les mis, what is Enjolras’s nickname... Apollo. Hyacinth is described as having dark curly hair (there is a whole bunch of stuff about flowers too which is kinda interesting but also doesn’t make much sense). There is a weird love triangle thing going on (or a love pentagon, depending on the source) and long story short he gets smacked in the head by a discus and dies (anyone who plays ultimate frisbee should know that to reach peak ultimate they have to die a dramatic death, and ride a chariot driven by swans, which is not as ridiculous as the fact that they named ultimate frisbee “ultimate”). A discus that Apollo himself threw, much like how Enjolras threw all his friends into the revolution (kinda a stretch because they were all willing and Im pretty sure Hyacinth didn’t plan to get deaded by a frisbee getting yeeted [yot?] at his head, but I’m gay and uncaring). After all this went down (depending on your source) Apollo wished to be mortal and die along side his lover (damn, very angsty). Hugo was certainly an educated man. It is entirely possible that he knew of this story and purposefully added all those lines about Grantaire practically worshiping Enjolras (see what I did there) because he heard of the story, and before you come at me saying “you’re crazy” and “that’s 100% not what happened”... I know on both counts but don’t really care (correct me if I’m wrong but anything to do with homosexuality at that time was probably heavily censored). Les mis was Hugo’s Greek gods modern au fanfic and you can rip that from my cold, dead, hands.

[unexaggerateddumbass]

my writing style has been in shambles ever since I read edgar allan poe in 7th grade and picking up les mis recently has only made it worse

[dis-astre]

and yknow ✨they died holding hands✨ and stuff but fr imagine, enjolras was all alone, all of his friends died and he must be terrified and blaming himself and when he's about to get killed grantaire joins him, the man who's supposed to not believe in anything and kept moking his belief, he comes and choose to dies with him and enjolras grabs his hands and yes it's very gay but also can you imagine how scared they both must have been ? it was also for reassurance, like enjolras, the fearless leader, the angel of revolution, of all people needed the presence of grantaire here now and at that moment he's not the fearless leader he's supposed to be, he's just a 24yo kid that tried to change things, and that makes him so much more human and idk i just have a lot of feelings rn

no but i almost burst into tears thinking about les miserables and the revolution like they were all so young and full of hope and even when it got rlly bad they kept fighting and they must have been so scared...

like they saw jehan die executed in front of them, bahorel getting killed in the first battle, and then everyone falling one after the other and until the end they fought and that must have been terrifying and idk i'm just sad

[shattteredvisage]

Me: Hmmmm, do I want to love Andrew Davies for Pride and Prejudice (1995) or do I want to murder him for the insult that is BBC's Les Mis???

Davies: *Insults the whole musical for no reason, Shits on Cosette, makes Marius have a fucking wet dream about Eponine, calls Javert's potentially homosexual obsession with Valjean "perverse," already kinda ruined War & Peace."

Me: Yeah I think I'll kill him.

[finniestoncrane]

Do u have like a ranking of the characters starting from your fav

oh gosh like as in the rogues (i hope so because that's what i'm doing now)??? i like a very specific set of rogues (although it gets bigger every day lmao) but you asked for it so i will not PUNISH YOU in ways you never even thought possible by rambling on for quite some time 💚 so anyway feel free to suggest new rogues to me or try to change my mind because i listed rogues i don't care for and ones i wanna fall in love with too u-u

ok let's start off nice and easy by saying i don't like catwoman. i find her hard to read, she's cold, she's mean and i she would make me cry. i hate her. and i also hate ra's al ghul god damn.

ANYWAY ON TO THE GOOD STUFF

Number One: The Riddler

my beloved disgusting green man 💚 there hasn't been a riddler i've met yet who i wouldn't kiss on the head and then fuck hard and long like i am obsessed with every iteration of him. you want me to rank them, i can't, but please know that arkham and capullo are up at the top fighting each other (shirtless, covered in oil, maybe kissing too i dunno, maybe not just shirtless either maybe we're talking just hanging dong, bouncing around all over the place, rubbing against each other I GOT SO DISTRACTED HOLY SHIT LMAO)

Number Two: The Penguin

just something about a silly little guy with a silly little smile and a silly little tummy that does it for me. this is very specific to farrell and gotham penguins but honestly, i've just finished reading one bad day and i'd fuck him too 💜

Number Three: Scarecrow

i want him so bad you don't even know, like i want jonathan crane to read me a book, then fuckin fear toxin me and then i want scarebeast to rail me sorry but i'm also not sorry. he also just seems like such a nice man which don't even come at me

Number Four: Two Face

such a handsome, handsome, charming, well-dressed man battling his inner (outer) demons like??? what more could you really ask for??? get you a man who can do both, be super smart and cutie and also absolutely unhinged and hot

Number Five: Harley Quinn

i struggled ranking ivy and harley but ultimately she's so cute and bubbly and fun and i want her to squish my cheeks and let me touch her butt, like i don't like margot robbie something about her bugs me but i still loved birds of prey, that's the lure of harley ;-;

Number Six: Poison Ivy

yeah yeah ivy is hot everyone knows it, yes cool eco-terrorism sure thing, but ok so also while we're here, fat ivy. fat ivy fat ivy fat ivy. i would sell my fucking organs to fill my grabby little hands with her body >:(

Number Seven: Victor Zsasz

love you chihuahua man u-u mostly gotham zsasz because he radiates mischief, just a cheeky lil guy, visiting his bub and getting ice cream with his pals, and he's so funny???

Number Eight: Victor Freeze

freeze gets to be ranked on my list PURELY because he's a mad scientist, he's nice to his wife (romantic what????) and MOSTLY because of that one shot of nathan darrows in gotham with the low-rise fucking trousers like good LORD in heaven the stranglehold that has on my clit you wouldn't believe

honourable mentions of rogues i kinda fuck with but not enough to rate or rank yet:

black mask, but absolutely the fuck not ewan mcgregor

mad hatter, i want to love you

joker, i hate him but i want to fuck him sometimes it's complicated

bane

professor pyg

hugo strange

solomon grundy

rogues i want to fuck with in future:

clock king

music meister

huntress

the creeper

batmite (what the fuck is he i love him???)

jeremiah arkham

flamingo

cluemaster

calendarman

firefly

hush

rogues i know but don't give a fuck about:

killer croc

manbat

clayface

killer moth

king shark (except i wanted to fuck him in assualt on arkham)

[psalm22-6]

This article satirizing the hype surrounding les Misérables and the bourgeois enthusiasm for a book about poverty was published the same day as the first volume of the novel and it is hilarious to me. 

Le Charivari, 4 April 1862 [image semi related, it’s from 1868 and it appears the bookstore moved down the street]

The scene takes place during the night of Wednesday to Thursday the 2nd of April, in the year of our Lord 1862, number 6 rue de Seine, before the door of the publisher Pagnerre. Two thousand people are least are in line and it is only just 3 o’clock in the morning.   Why are so many people at the door of this publisher? Because today Pagnerre will have the famous Les Misérables for sale. 

The whole jostling crowd, painstakingly maintained by a strong squad of policemen and municipal guards, is chit chatting to pass the time. 

Madame Prudhomme: “My love, we made a mistake by joining this crowd.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme: “Why?”  

“We could have sent our maid tomorrow to buy Les Misérables at the first bookseller she saw.” 

“My wife, in this moment you have plunged into an abyss of errors. This publisher will open his stores at 6 o’clock in the morning and I am certain that at 7 o’clock there will not be a single copy left.” 

“So what? We’ll wait for a second edition.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme (disgusted): “Eudoxie, you are a woman with no sensitivity for beauty or the grandeur of art. You think I will be content to be one of the last to read this work that Europe awaits with such keen impatience?  If I would have known that you would one day say such words to me then I never would have married you.” 

“But my love, you have seen for yourself that I had no difficulty following you here. Only I do not know why you wanted to bring your son.” 

“I desire for Guguste to be with us because when I have a copy of Les Misérables the three of us will go up the Saint-Jacques tower and I will read you Victor Hugo’s new masterpiece.” 

A man: “Excuse me sir, would you be obliged to tell me the time?” 

Monsieur Prudhomme: “I would tell you with great pleasure but I do not have my watch. I never bring it when I am joining a crowd because you risk encountering scoundrels…”

The man: “It seems to me that you are looking at me, are you implying something about me?” 

Monsieur Prudhomme: “I cannot imply anything about you because I do not know your history…great snakes! Who is climbing on my back?” 

A gamin, climbing on the shoulders of Monsieur Prudhomme: “It’s me, Mister Bourgeois. Don’t pay any attention.”

“Don’t put yourself out.” 

“Damn! Someone stepped on my toes.” 

“Well my friend, what did you join this crowd to do?” 

“I’m in line like you to buy one of the first copies of Les Misérables.” 

“For yourself?”

“Certainly.”

“How old are you?” 

“15 years old.” 

“What is your job?” 

“I pick up cigar butts and I open car doors.” 

“And you like fine literature?” 

“I’m crazy for it.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme (enthusiastically): “My God, how France is rising in my eyes this very moment. (Addressing the crowd) Here is a gamin, a child of the people, who has saved up to buy Les Misérables. Come my friend, I will press you to my heart. (He embraces him.) You will go far my friend, you will go very far. Here is two francs, that way you wont spend all your savings buying Victor Hugo’s work.”

“Thank you Mister Bourgeois. I wish there was a baker near me because I am hungry.”

“You are hungry. You should have said so earlier. (To his wife) My lovely, in your basket you have leftover pâté and a half bottle of wine. Give them to this young man. We were right to have brought something to eat.”

The gamin eats the bit of pâté and drinks the half bottle of wine. A few instants later Pagnerre’s doors open. The gamin, Monsieur Prudhomme’s protégé, manages to sneak into the store but when Monsieur Prudhomme wants to enter at his turn, he is told that all the copies have been sold. 

Madame Prudhomme: “Weren’t we prudent to stand in line all night.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme: “We didn’t come early enough. Ah! I see my young friend. He’s luckier than us, he has a copy.”

The gamin: “I’ll resell you this copy if you like.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme: “Yes? For how much?”

“Twenty francs.” 

“Here you go.” 

He takes the book and looks at the price. 

“But it only costs 12 francs.” 

“I know only I must earn something for spending the night here.” He runs away laughing.” 

Monsieur Prudhomme (furious):  And I thought he was here because of a love of literature. Oh! What a terrible subject! Victor Hugo was right to do something against the miserables, there’s much to be said about those people…His book is thrillingly topical.

- Adrien Huart

[garretgentleman-art]

This dialogue looks weird because it use information that will never  mentioned again. I understood this dialogue only after I read a play "Waiting for Godot". Are you kidding me? Now do I need to read french plays to understand what this game is about? You know, if you're going to do a reference a 20th century book, you really have to make sure people from all countries at least know it exists. It's not Victor Hugo who was advertised by Disney, after all.  But okay, that's not a real problem. I'm more want to know how do I should INTERPRET this dialog now??? Like breaking the fourth wall, where is the developer of game is joking, and we must pretend that this dialogue does not exist? Is Atmey joking because he loves this book? But the characters didn't get the joke, so this is pointless! Or should we forget about the book and interpret that Atmey was really impressed with the prosecutor/embellishing to scare Phoenix/realized that Godot suspect him of stealing the urn and was delighted?? 

And what about Miles? Does he love this book too? 

Did he recognize Diego Armando, who was a cool lawyer? I mean obviously. He could write a recommendation to his boss for Diego. But where did Atmey get the information about Miles by the way?... And why Miles's opinion is important for him. This is so weird, it looks like a continuation of the meta joke which we should ignore too, ugh...

... I will think that he saw this book in Mia's office (she borrowed it from Diego to read and never returned it). And no one will stop me.

Yes-yes, very cool an introduction of a character. And yet, horrible HORRIBLE decision, dear game. Story and characters > cultural reference-joke, thank you very much. P.s: I know, that Godo is RIVER that Dahlia jumped into (Eagle River in the eng-version), so I guess there is no reference to the French play in the original game. But what about Miles? I don't know Japanese, I can't look the original game and fact-check, so I used anime. Oh my god, this dialog don't has the contradictions now! 

It's so damn stupid when translators make up their joke and break the plot in the process. Thanks for the headcanons, but next time please don't. I'm sad because I don't know how to fact-check this dialogue too

[morticiaslittlemadhouse]

All the ships in my au

Jonathan Crane x Jervis Tetch (it's too cute for my gay brain)

Oswald Cobblepot x Basil Karlo (when you're tired from too much riddlebird and like shipping things other people don't)

Harleen Quinzell x Pamela Isley (.....who doesn't ship this?seriously who doesn't ship it?)

Drury Walker x Garfield Lynns (the beauty of shipping a wholesome thing with a chaotic thing)

Waylon Jones x Grace Balin (ok straight people can exist I guess)

Margaret Pye x Harriet Pratt (be gay and commit theft)

Victor Fries x Nora Fries ("I miss my wife <:("-Mr.Freeze)

Kirk Langstrom x Francine Langstrom ("GOD DAMN IT KIRK,STOP TURNING INTO A BAT"-Francine Langstrom)

Whatever the fuck is going on with Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent,Selina Kyle,Joker,Gilda Dent,Clark Kent,Diana Prince,Vickie Vale etc (and Hugo Strange and Edward Nygma being creepy)

Jonathan Crane and Kirk Langstrom are Exes (and same thing with Edward Nygma and Oswald Cobblepot)

[kmclaude]

Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.