Write your comic script

1The Script tab

On a comic or zine you get a top-level Script tab, described simply as "Where you write the per-page script in one place." It swaps the old plain text box for a format-aware editor: instead of loose prose, you build each page out of real script elements, panels, panel descriptions, dialogue, captions and sound effects, laid out in the standard comic-script format an artist and letterer already read fluently.

The script is the plan before the art. Page by page, panel by panel, you decide what happens and who says what. Because the script is per page and one script page lines up with one page of the comic, the whole team works from a single source: you write the beat, the artist draws it, the letterer places the words later.

2Open it, and add pages first

Open your comic or zine issue and choose the Script tab, sitting alongside Content, About and the rest (its address carries ?tab=script). One thing trips people up: the script is built on your real pages, so you need pages before you can write a word. With none, the editor tells you plainly, No pages yet. Add pages to write a script. Head to the Pages view, add your pages, then come back and script them.

Once pages exist, each one is labelled to match your book. Body pages read Page 1, Page 2 and onward. Covers read Front cover, Inside front cover, Inside back cover and Back cover, with quick-jump chips (FC, IFC, IBC, BC) to skip straight to them.

3Two ways to see it

The Script view switch now gives you three ways to look at the same script. Page by page is the default: one page at a time beside its art, with Prev and Next and quick-jump chips, so you write against the actual drawing and check that a beat lands on its panel. Continuous shows the whole issue as one paged document, each page starting fresh, the familiar word-processor scroll, for reading the issue through, feeling the pacing, or editing a thread that runs across several pages. Rendered is a read-only, screenplay-formatted preview: your script laid out clean and in order, to read rather than edit. Draft page by page, edit across pages in continuous, then flip to Rendered to read it back as a finished script.

4Break the page into panels

Panels are the backbone of a comic page. From the Insert toolbar, add a Panel and it lands as the header Panel 1, then Panel 2, and so on down the page. Give each one an optional Setting / environment line (say, "New York, 2013") to fix where and when the moment happens. Everything you write beneath a panel, its description, its dialogue, its captions, belongs to that panel.

Think of a page as a sequence of beats. How many panels a page holds is a pacing choice: a quiet page might breathe across three wide panels, a fight might crowd in six. Block the panels first, decide the rhythm, then fill each with what happens and who speaks.

5Describe the shot

Under a panel, add a Description element to tell the team what the panel shows. Its placeholder names the job: "Panel description, action, camera, notes to the team..." Write what the artist can actually draw. Concrete staging beats vague mood: not "she's tense," but "tight on her hands, knuckles white on the railing, low angle." Name the shot (wide establishing, over-the-shoulder, extreme close-up) and the beat inside it. A description can carry reference links, small pills with a label and a URL, so you can point at a pose, a location photo, or an earlier page. Keep your notes to the team honest and labeled: a real question, a hard must-have, or a soft maybe, so nobody guesses which is which.

6Dialogue and who speaks it

Add a Dialogue element for a line of speech. Start with the Character field, which autocompletes from your issue's cast so names stay spelled the same way page after page. Then type the line in sentence case, and use the Bold button to wrap the words you want to punch, the way they will read bold in the balloon. Keep it to one balloon's worth of speech per line, and name the speaker every single time, even in a back-and-forth. A descriptor dropdown sets the delivery: leave it at (no call-out), or choose Off-panel, Whisper, Burst, Weak or Singing. Let that dropdown carry the tone rather than stuffing stage directions into the words.

7Captions and narration

A Caption carries words nobody is speaking out loud in the moment: narration, a title, or a character's voice-over. Add one, then set the subtype to say which kind it is. Reach for Caption (time & place) (or the dedicated Time & place button) to jump the reader across space or time with a classic location-and-date title like "New York, 2013". Use Narration for the storyteller's voice sitting over the scene, and Caption (voice over) when a character narrates over a different scene than the one they are in. Choosing the subtype keeps your intent clear on the page and gives the letterer exactly what each box needs.

8Sound effects

Add an SFX element wherever a sound belongs, from the KRA-KOOM of an explosion to the whisper of a page turning. Write the sound the way it should read on the page and lean into onomatopoeia. Stretched vowels, doubled letters and hard consonants all do work, so let the spelling carry the noise. Because an effect gets drawn big and expressive, keep it short and punchy. A wall of letters kills the impact. If placement matters, say so in the panel description: note where a large effect should sit and what it overlaps, so the letterer and artist can make room. Sound effects are part of the lettering, so they get counted and numbered right alongside your dialogue and captions.

9How it numbers everything

Your page carries two separate counts, and this is where the script starts talking to the letterer. Panels number from 1 upward, straightforward. Lettering is the clever part: every dialogue, caption and sound effect is numbered continuously across the whole page, in reading order, regardless of which panel it sits in. So the third balloon on the page is lettering 3, even if it opens panel 2. A small readout tallies each page as {n} panels · {m} lettering. That continuous count is exactly what a letterer works from. It is how they match your script line to the balloon they place, so trust it and never renumber by hand.

10Read words off the art

Already have a lettered page, or a rough with dialogue scribbled in the margins? In the page-by-page view, where the script sits beside the page image, use Read text from art to pull the words off the current page, or Read all pages to sweep the whole issue. The nudge says it plainly: FoundryInk can read the words printed on your art and drop them in for you to tidy up. Free on every plan. What comes back lands as a single Description block. That is the fast part done. Now do the craft part: read it through, split it into real dialogue and captions, and tag each line so the letterer knows what is a balloon and what is a box.

11Save, print, and hand it off

The editor holds your edits until you press Save changes. Watch the {n} unsaved page(s) counter at all times: it tells you exactly how much work is still in the buffer. Get in the habit of saving after each page, and always save before you leave the tab. When the issue is ready to hand off, use Print / PDF to lay the whole script out in standard comic-script format and save a clean PDF for your artist or letterer to work from. Prefer .txt when you just need the raw words with no formatting, for pasting into another tool or archiving the dialogue. A teammate without edit rights can still open the script read-only, so sharing never risks accidental changes.

12Where the script fits

The script is the words half of your book. Every line of dialogue, caption and sound effect you type becomes a numbered lettering item, ready for a letterer to work from. What the script does not do is place balloons on the art for you. A lettering item can become a placed balloon later, but that happens as a lettering step on the page, not something the script does on its own.

The delivery descriptors (Off-panel, Whisper, Burst and the rest) are chosen to match the balloon styles, so the hand-off stays clean. Character names autocomplete from your issue's cast, tying the script to the same characters your Codex and Storyboard already know.

Questions writers actually ask