Make the next panel obvious.

01

Choose a reading direction before drawing

For a conventional right-to-left manga page, begin at the upper right. Read across the upper row toward the left, then enter the next row from its right edge. VIZ’s publisher FAQ explains the right-to-left convention; Scholastic’s reading guide illustrates the panel and balloon sequence.

Set the convention for the whole chapter. If your audience or publishing format calls for left-to-right pages or vertical scrolling, plan that version deliberately. An English translation can retain a right-to-left panel order while the words inside a balloon read left to right.

02

Reserve dialogue space in the thumbnail

Use rough boxes and placeholder balloons before generating finished art. In the diagram, the first balloon sits toward the upper right of panel 1 and the response is lower and farther left. This is a simple teaching layout; unusual panel shapes need their own reading check.

Give each line a speaker

Keep a dialogue list with panel number, speaker, and exact text. Point each tail toward that speaker and keep tails from crossing.

Keep the action visible

Leave space around the face, the notebook handoff, and the clue. If text covers the important gesture, shorten the line or change the composition.

Check the final viewing size

Read a phone-size preview and the intended print-size proof. There is no single font size that works for every page dimension, language, and typeface.

03

Separate the image brief from the lettering brief

Generated text can be misspelled, duplicated, or assigned to the wrong speaker. Treat the output as a draft and keep an editable copy of the dialogue. For exact wording, review and place the lettering in an editor rather than accepting the first image.

Format: one right-to-left page, two rows of two panels.
Panel order: upper right 1; upper left 2; lower right 3; lower left 4.
Panel 1: Mira, upper-right balloon: ‘Is this yours?’ Response, lower-left balloon: ‘My notebook!’
Panel 2: a quiet close-up of the notebook; no dialogue.
Panel 3: Mira hands it back: ‘You left it on the bench.’
Panel 4: the owner smiles: ‘Thank you.’
Keep lettering away from faces and the handoff. Do not mirror the character artwork to change reading direction.

04

Review the translated page as a new layout

A translated line can need different wrapping or a different balloon shape. Keep names and character terms in a short glossary, then fit the actual translated text instead of a word-count estimate. Check punctuation, accents, and whether the chosen font has every required glyph.

Do a silent pass through the images, then a dialogue-only pass. If a response appears before its question, move the balloons or simplify the panel. Ask another reader to number the panels without seeing your script; disagreements identify places to revise. These are suggested review steps, not a reported user study.

Planning diagram

AI-assisted editorial guide with original teaching examples. The diagrams illustrate a workflow; they are not screenshots, measured product results, or customer testimonials.