Stop dividing narration among multiple panels, especially when mixing narration with other dialogue.
("Love and Illusion" from Women of Marvel (Digital Comics) John Layman, Davide Gianfelice and Veronica Gandini)
Nobody really uses thought bubbles anymore in comic books these days. I guess I'm okay with that, as writers and artists have come up with alternative ways to show character's inner thoughts/monologues. I guess we call these things "narration boxes" instead.
(As an aside, perhaps we should credit the innovations of digitized coloring and printing, as often these narrative boxes will have little icons and/or special colors, often in a wash or cross-fade gradient, to denote who is the character "speaking.")
But sometimes the writer gets carried away, breaking up the narration of ONE sentence across MULTIPLE panels, often when there is a lot of action taking place. Usually, I will notice this after I have read two or three panels. The "voice" has been broken up so much, however, that I lose the actual content of what is being said. After all, there might be a lot action to witness and even OTHER DIALOGUE happening in between the split-narration. Then I have to find myself reading the page twice-- once to just read the narration boxes and then again to read the other dialogue. Actually, this might mean reading the page three times, but this is hard to explain through just typing it out-- you see, I am a visual person, too, and I tend to do my first "reading" of a page by looking the action of the characters/scenes within the panels regardless of word balloons. It's like reading someone's body language before you tune in to what they are actually saying. And obviously this is easier with some artists over others, and is what people talk about when they say an artist has "good storytelling."
All of that to say, if a writer breaks up narration boxes with other things, it can be quite confusing to get a "flow" to the reading experience. Rather than expressing a coherent message, the whole thing is fragmented, disjointed. If narration/inner thoughts/whatever needs to be expressed, it should be used in a place where it is most effective-- for example, to set up the scene or to wrap up the scene. Sure, there may be times when an interruption is effective and thus can be broken over multiple panels, but that is more likely the exception that proves the rule. You gotta know the rules first before you can break 'em!
Or just go back to using a thought bubble, okay?
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