Free comic / manga / graphic novel scripting tool. Rates the readability and pacing density of a script page based on panel count, dialogue, and action density. Flags overly cramped or slow pages against industry baselines.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Use while scripting to catch overstuffed pages before they go to the artist. Catching it at script stage saves a rewrite later.
Most comic-writing guides give text-based rules of thumb. This tool turns them into a live diagnostic.
Pacing looks healthy for the chosen style.
Industry ratios for panel count, dialogue words, and action beats per page vary by style. The calculator compares your inputs against curated medians.
Word density per panel above ~30 typically indicates cramped text balloons. Action density above ~1.2 actions/panel signals too much happening visually.
The tool is a planning estimator; final pacing depends on your specific layout and artistic choices.
4–7 panels per page is standard for US comics; manga packs 5–8; webtoons use 3–5 per scroll segment.
Any distinct visual moment that must be drawn — a punch landing, a door opening, a character reacting. More than one per panel is hard to read.
Cramming many panels onto a page shrinks each one and crowds the dialogue, forcing readers to slow down and strain to follow the flow. The tool flags pages that exceed comfortable density against typical print baselines.
Heavy dialogue slows the reader and competes with artwork for space, while sparse text speeds the page along. Balancing word count against panel and action density keeps the page from feeling either talky or rushed.
Input
6 panels, 40 dialogue words, 6 action beats, US comic style.
Output
Dialogue per panel: 6.7 — balanced. Action density: 1.0 — at the edge.
Six panels at 6.7 words each is comfortable. One distinct visual action per panel is the upper limit of what reads cleanly — push further and panels need to be larger.
The model works from panels per page, words of dialogue per page and action beats, defaulting to six panels — the mainstream US comic average. Style presets shift that, because panel density is a genuine formal difference between traditions rather than a preference: manga typically runs more panels per page with less text in each, European album formats are denser again, and modern decompressed storytelling uses far fewer.
Panel count and dialogue load trade against each other. Space on a page is fixed, so more panels means less room for balloons in each, and a page with both high panel count and heavy dialogue is one that will not fit at letter size.
The practical ceiling is roughly 25 to 35 words per panel before balloons start covering the art. That is the number that decides whether a script is producible, and writers discover it at lettering stage when it is expensive to fix.
The tool flags dialogue load per page against panel count for exactly that reason. If the figure is high, the fix is at script stage: cut lines, split the exchange across more panels, or move information into the art.
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