Secret Coders

Graphic novels have a unique set of narrative techniques that make the reader’s experience of the story different from reading a text-only book. Gene Luen Yang uses these techniques to not only tell the story of Hopper, Eni, and Josh, but also to teach readers about coding.

One storytelling technique that is uniquely available to writers of graphic novels is that each page can come in a variety of panel formats; sometimes there is one large picture on a page or a series of panels. In Secret Coders, the panel formats range from anywhere between one and eight panels per page. In some cases, the panels are squares of all the same size; in others, they are long, thin rectangles, and in others, they are a variety of shapes and sizes. This variety allows the author to “zoom in” or “zoom out” almost as a camera would for a TV show or movie to put emphasis on certain parts of the story. For example, Page 47, where Mr. Bee discovers that Eni and Hopper have broken into his shed and subsequently shines the number 15 at the birds, is broken up into eight separate panels, but the scene on Page 28 where he commands the birds to go after Eni and Hopper is one large picture. This variety of page layouts can also be useful for instructional purposes, such as when Yang is trying to communicate a difficult concept in a clear, step-by-step fashion.

Another useful narrative technique available to graphic novel writers is separate text formatting for narration and dialogue. For example, Hopper is the narrator of the Secret Coders books. The narration appears in rectangular text boxes, while her and other character’s dialogue appears in speech bubbles. Having separate text formats for narration and dialogue allows both types of storytelling to take place on one panel, which can increase opportunities for irony and exposition, offering an efficient way to communicate much information at once. One example of how this technique can create irony within the story is when Hopper tells her mom in a speech bubble that she has to go to basketball practice, but the narration box at the bottom of the panel says, “I was lying. Girls’ basketball hadn’t started yet” (35). These two different types of text, plus the images in each panel, have the potential to create several layers of meaning that allow the reader to understand complex storytelling more easily.

Graphic novel writers also use color in interesting and strategic ways to communicate certain concepts to readers—a technique that authors of text-only books don’t have at their disposal. Sometimes, some pictures are in black and white, while others are in color. Sometimes the colors of the pictures indicate a different time period, a dream, or a flashback; if a character is remembering something that happened in the past, the color palette of the pictures will change. Often, a graphic novel will utilize one dominant color—the Secret Coders uses green—while the rest of the palette is black, white, and gray. Manipulating the colors of the pictures to convey a certain meaning is a visual storytelling technique that makes reading a graphic novel more akin to watching a television show or movie because the artist has some of the same visual tools as a camera lens. Gene Luen Yang makes use of these techniques to demonstrate coding concepts, emphasize different aspects of a dramatic scene, and create irony within the narration.