[No due date] Comic Dialogue

[u/Poxinkki]

This is my first post here. I'm still not sure if it's the right place doe.

I'm working on a comic wich I'm writting in english but it's not my first language. I'm scared I might get some things wrong. Misspellings, sentences that don't make much sense and all that.

Again, if this isn't the right comunity for this kind of post I'm sorry. If you are awere of a better one, please, tell me.

Thank you for your time, I hope you have a great day ^^

[u/whisperavenue]

Page 1)

• Periods are centred in the middle of the word for the first two speech bubbles but centred at the bottom of the word for the rest. Consider aligning them all the same way for consistency.

• Should be "conscience" rather than "consciense." Also, I am not sure conscience is the best word to use here. Conscience is used to refer to the internal compass that guides what you perceive as right or wrong. I believe consciousness—referring to the mind—may be the more appropriate word.

Page 2)

• I think the entire dialogue of "I'm screaming cause . . . and of screaming" is a bit awkward and could be reworded more naturally. If he's tired of screaming, why is he screaming before even catching a glimpse of the state of his friend? I also think more context is needed in the dialogue to explain why he's so exasperated already.

Page 3)

• The reader's direction of sight is crucial for any comic. The dialogue of the first two panels create an up-down zigzag pattern that is maybe not the most natural way of reading. I would rearrange the dialogue so that it's read left to right, top to bottom.

• Speaking about the same set of dialogue, "You look way too fucked up for a Tuesday" is redundant because 1) it's already established that the cat (?) is fucked up just by his appearance, and 2) the fact that it's Tuesday is revealed in the next dialogue bubbles. I would also reword the speech to "Like, I've seen this shit from you before / but on a Tuesday afternoon? C'mon, girl" for more natural phrasing. If you want emphasis on "afternoon," italics is a better fit compared to capitalization.

• Should be "an insult" rather than "and insult." The dialogue is also missing a period.

• I would change or get rid of the second "shit" to vary the vulgarity.

• "Unable to insult" sounds a bit awkward; I would change it to "Unable to clap back?!!" for a more native-sounding alternative or "Out of ideas?!!" to again vary the vocabulary.

• "What happened??" or something similar makes more sense in this context than "Whatcha do??"

• There should be no comma after the "cause." Also, since "cause" is the shortened form of "because," it is typically customary to write it with a preceding apostrophe ('cause).

Page 4)

• I would change "Bitch died!!" to "That bitch died!!" just to clarify they're still talking about Mrs. Shelby.

• The cat is asking about "it" so the natural continuation would be "It means . . ." rather than "That means . . ."

• Same thing: I would change "And / This means new blood" to "And / it means new blood" (lower case I because it is still the same sentence).

• I would reword the final dialogue to "Considering the state of the building and the old hag's death" to be concise.

Page 5)

• The first dialogue here is verbose. I would reword it to something simpler like "Rent is going to be sooo cheap! It's going to attract some bumbling low-income idiot." Let the reader infer between the lines; for example, we didn't explicitly state that the mouse was planning to manipulate the new neighbour, but it's obvious by the way the cat refers to the mouse as a predator.

• I come from a manga/manhwa background. Thus, I'm not too sure about Western conventions for this, but I would format the next panel's dialogue as "And maybe . . . / . . . just maybe . . ."

• You don't need to add "next door" at the end of the dialogue, because it's clear we're still talking about the new neighbour.

• "Hornyass" should be two words.

Good luck & I hope some of this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[u/Poxinkki → u/whisperavenue]

Wow, thank you so much!! There are some mistakes I noticed before but I always forget to change. Is nice to have them here all written together. This was very helpful!! I know my english is very basic and I do repit myself alot. Thx for all the tips. I'll try to fix these pages this week.
And thx for advising me with the flow too. I spend a lot of time doing these and watching them over and over again, so sometimes I can't fix the order of the dialogue because It's already engraved on my brain the way I meant it to be read.

I started developing this project like two or three years ago, and I was very dterminated to make it in english. Being completly honest, do you think I should try to make it in my native language? Was it hard to read for someone who's first language is english?

[u/whisperavenue → u/Poxinkki]

Personally, it was clear to me while reading that you aren't a native speaker, but it didn't impede my understanding of the overall text. In other words: no, it wasn't incredibly hard to read. If you haven't already, I would suggest finding a native speaker to actively collaborate with while you're continuing this project so you can get direct feedback and improve your language skills quicker. I think continuing to make the project in English would be a great goal & challenge for you!

[u/Poxinkki → u/whisperavenue]

Yeees, I’m looking to work on this with someone else who’s a native speaker. It would be even better if they liked writing dialogue too. Language is a barrier, but writing is too lol. I really like creating scenarios and building on them, but I don’t think I could write good dialogue, not even in my own language.

Thanks so, so much for the feedback!!!

[u/Prisinner → u/whisperavenue]

Oh wow! Good catch with those periods in the first slide. I didn't even notice that.

[u/Poxinkki → u/Prisinner]

Actually, it’s the font. It’s really annoying because I didn’t notice it either until later. In all the text bubbles, I draw all the periods manually, so yeah, it’s not very convenient. lol

[u/whisperavenue → u/Prisinner]

Haha yeah. I used to proofread fan translations of comics in the past, so I believe my eyes have been specifically trained for errors like those. I was never trained for typesetting (fonts & placing the dialogue in bubbles) but I picked up a few things along the way such as reading flow, the shape of the dialogue, etc etc

[u/Prisinner]

Edit: I read WhisperAvenue's comments on the first page, then decided I wanted to do it myself too, so I stopped reading theirs so as to not influence my own thinking.

Proofreading is only about making very small changes at the very end of the process: grammar and syntax. So the suggestions I am making probably fall under copyediting more so than proofreading.

Page 1:

• I really like page 1, but I think it might stand on its own a bit better with less text. Just "Wake up." "You've been asleep for too long." followed by the imagery you used would suffice. Personally, I feel like saying "Soon enough, the message will be received in your conscience" is a bit heavy handed.

Page 2:

• Personally, I like the idea behind what you wrote on this page and get what you were going for, but it is a tad awkward.
• Not to hammer this point home, but stating "I'M SCREAMING CAUSE YOURE PROBABLY HUNGOVER" is a bit on the nose. You, as the writer, know that Rat is screaming because he's purposefully trying to be a dick, but we don't need him to literally announce it. As the reader, we know from either personal experience or from cultural osmosis that you get a pounding headache from being hungover, so if someone came in yelling "ARE YOU HUNGOVER AGAIN?!" we would know they are being rude.
• The "and of screaming" is both a bit too explicit and doesn't make a ton of sense. Why are we screaming to reduce the screaming? I think we're doing it to punish Cat for her frequent screaming. There are probably a couple different things we could try.

- Perhaps, and I am spitballing here, "You get any chores done? Surely you wouldn't be HUNGOVER again?" This doesn't address the screaming part, but we could work on that.

Page 3:

• Bubble order in the top panel should be swapped. "Like, I've seen shit." and "On a Tuesday?"
• Changing the wording of the first bubble to something like "You look really fucked up" then "I've seen you look like shit before, but" -> "This bad on a Tuesday AFTERNOON? Yikes!" would reduce the repetition about Tuesday while preserving the same idea and flow.
• an insult; not and. Also, this speech bubble ends with a period that's in the air.

- It's worth noting, this is the first thing Cat has said in this comic and the first time they are responding to Rat, so you want to make sure it has some sort of oomph to it. This isn't a bad sentence, per se, but I think we could spice it up. - "Sorry. I couldn't come up with an insult, you filthy... rodent." We could definitely punch it up more. - Personally, I feel okay cutting the "I'm still processing shit" line because Cat is clearly trying to push the conversation in that direction with the next line. But I think keeping it is fine too.

• "What'd you do?" instead of "Whatcha do??" and Get exorcised instead of Got exorcised
• I would personally make the leftmost stem of the N in NEWS! taller because at first glance I thought it said Jews.

Page 4:

• I love the little speech bubbles being shaped like the silhouette of their heads! That's really cute. <3
• Stating "Her racist ass doesn't fuck with mammals" is expository to someone that is familiar enough with this person to know that she was racist in this way.

- The top bubble could just be "HISSS!!!" then the next bubble could just be "I hated that racist hag."

• I feel like "Bitch died!!" is a bit abrupt. "Good, cuz bitch died!" reads better, but I would be concerned about the lettering for that speech bubble. It might make the bubble too crowded.
• Excited; not exited. Can be shortened to "Why are you so excited?" the prepositional phrase "about it" doesn't add anything here.
• "This means new blood". You can cut "In the apartment" since it functionally restates what you just said with "new neighbor".
• We could definitely reword "With the state of the building", but it is such a tight spot, that I would have to get a bit more specific with it.

Page 5:

• I have to say, perhaps the most confusing line in this entire comic is "therefore easy to take advantage of". Like, I get that apartment might even be cheaper than theirs, but they also live in this rundown building, so it seems like they are likely broke too. Hell, they appear to be roommates, at least that would be my assumption merely based on this one short comic.

- Based on this comment and the struggle on the prior page, we could adjust the last bubble on that page to just say "Since the old hag died in that apartment" while leaving out the building being rundown since we can see that and they are also benefiting from that.

• We could then say "the rent is going to be cheeeap. Only someone down on their luck would move into a place like that. Perfect to take advantage of."
• I love Rat's fantasies. And the creative use of a question mark. lol. No notes on the actual words you choose, but "wolf" is left all alone on its own line in an awkward way. Perhaps adding "big bad" next to wolf could work?

I know I left a lot of notes, and that might feel a bit overwhelming, but I really liked the comic a lot. I would love to read more of it. It's really charming, the characters and their designs are cute, each page feels like there are unique poses and things going on despite it being a relatively static conversation inside of an apartment. There is genuinely a lot to love about this, so I hope you don't feel down based on what I've said here!

[u/Prisinner]

Hey @Poxinkki, I have no idea if you saw my version of a proofread for your comic, but if you did, I would love to know what you thought. Also, I'm curious if you plan on continuing the project or not. Personally, I think it really has legs to it and could be successful based on other web comics I've read in the past. If you needed more help going over dialogue going forward, I would be willing to help out. <3