A great story and beautiful art are easy things to identify as part of what makes a good comic or manga. However, have you ever thought about the simple turning of the page? It’s something we do dozens, or a hundred of times when reading a single comic or graphic novel. For large omnibus editions, it can be a few hundred pages turns! I bet you didn’t even notice you were doing it!
One important factor in building great pages is the page turn, how to KEEP readers reading and make them want more. There are a few tricks that we can use to make our readers to engaged that they don’t even notice they are turning pages. The smoother your reading flow is, the better off your readers will be.
Why does a good page turn matter?
As mentioned above, the idea of the “page turn effect” is that it keeps the reader reading (as is everything we do as creators). It is a gentle balance of giving them just enough information to make them curious on the current page, so that they want to turn it; and then a satisfying reveal on the second page that the reader turned to.
This applies to both comics and manga, as well as vertical scrolling, in its own way. You want to be able to set up the panels so that it makes the reader keep scrolling down to see the next panel. At the end of the episode, you want the reader to click to read more. To do that, you want to have a really interesting hook set at the end of the first episode to encourage more reading.
Take a look at a classic comic, Range Rider (showing how long this technique has been around):
The sample raises the tension of the scene as our bad guy takes aim at the ranger in the very last panel of the page. Will he hit the ranger? Surely not, there’s no way, right? Not the hero? Our curiosity makes us turn the page as, if done well, your reader will have an emotional connection to that moment. They NEED to know what happens next. Creating characters the readers feel strong emotions for, good or bad, is very crucial.
In manga, it works very much the same way! Now note that not all manga is right to left, this is one sample.
In this example from Jujutsu Kaisen, we’ve got a bloody fight going on between one of our heroes and his enemy. We start this two-page spread with an attack, clearing the path and then suddenly an attack from above1 What will happen next?! (You’ll have to go read JJK to find out!) If you want to know more just from this two-page spread, then the mangaka did their job well.
Now, what do these two examples have in common?
1. They set up the question of "What happens next?"
Make the reader curious and then satisfy their curiosity on the next page. Reward them for reading more with a great reveal or something exciting. Not rewarding your readers as they continue reading can make a story feel slow. A bored reader is not what you want!
2. They use reading direction to their advantage.
Generally speaking, whatever follows the flow of the reading direction advances the story forward, either through action or through information. In the case of page turns, it’s usually action. The enemy taking aim at the ranger, the enemy from above after our hero charges into the fight. Both of these keep the action physically moving forward and, again, prevents it from getting slow or stale. Typically, anything that move in the opposite flow of reading is an obstacle, or a moment when the story isn’t moving forward, it’s slowed down or stopped for a reason.
Comics and manga are very much like a flowing river. For an easier experience, go WITH the flow, go with the reading. However,you can go against the flow from time to time to create more tension or pause to enjoy the scenery once in a while. (Remember the Ma panels we discussed last time!)
In Comics, the page turn doesn’t really have a name, but it’s been referred to occasionally as “the page turn effect”. In manga, this page turn doesn’t have an “effect name” per se but, like many other panel types, the panels themselves have names! The last panel on the previous page is called “hiki-goma”. This is the set-up panel, making the reader excited to turn the page. The first panel on the next page, the reveal, is called “mekuri-goma”. You can also check out more resources below for more information!
Resources:
- Page-Turn Surprise by TV Tropes
- Comics and Control: Leading the Reading
- Hiki-Goma and Retention by SMA Manga Audition
Well that’s it everyone! Not a very long article today, but not all important lessons need to be! See you all next time for another lesson! Thank you all so much for spending your time here today. As always please drop any comments or questions below!
~ ArtCrumbs and the GlobalComix Team