How Does A Manga Writer Present His Story?

Does he present it to the artist in a script or a traditional novel book format for the artist to draw from? I asked a similar question in the comics section since manga and comics are very similar.

From what I understand, it depends on the writer, but most go as far as basic panel layouts and the like. (See Volume 1 of Bakuman for what I mean)

Bakuman shows this in depth, particularly the chapters where they're in high school. The FIRST step is usually the submission of a name (or sketch outline) of the first three chapters of your proposed comic to an editor, I think.

edited 29th Oct '13 4:56:07 PM by MyssaRei

Manga and comics are actually very different on that aspect. In manga, the writer and the main artist is usually the same person. That is why the writer doesn't usually have to present his story in any way but as a comic. That is not aways the case, of course. There is plenty manga written and drawn by different persons.

Anyway, ff you are interested in the inner workings of a manga, you might want to check out Bakuman, which is precisely about duo writing manga for Shonen Jump. This manga is even more pertinent for you as the main characters, unlike the majority in Japan, are a duo. From what I could get there, the writer draws a rough comic himself, with the panels disposition and characters, and the artists works from there.

Eventually the writer in Bakuman switched to prose because it let the artist pick up on details and play around more with panels. Far more attention is paid to the "writer draws a storyboard" method though.

edited 29th Oct '13 5:54:08 PM by Prime32

I know. But it is clear this is the exception, not the rule. It seemed to me Imoo wanted a more general answer about how it usually goes, and the storyboard/name approach is the most common one. Orf course, different people may do things differently, but that is up to each individual case.

ZUN apparently discusses the events of the story in depth with the artists and leaves the presentation and exact dialogue to them

But, the artist and writer being separate people is pretty rare, so I doubt there's a standard method

ZUN supposedly handles things really weird. He lets the characters' houses change design between artists, yet he keeps rigid control over which random characters are in crowd scenes.

edited 29th Oct '13 7:07:57 PM by Prime32