I try to use captioned dialogue sparingly, and when used I try to make sure it’s not super important to know exactly who is speaking.
This was put to the test in Chapter 4 when at least three different people were talking off-screen and I had to try to contend with the logistics of that. What I landed on in that chapter was giving each different character different colored boxes their text was in so that even though you didn’t necessarily know who was speaking, you could at least track each individual voice through the conversation.
As I’ve said before about this technique, I’m not sure how successful it is (meaning it might be hard to follow at first), but I’m buoyed by the confidence that whenever I do use this technique the dialogue is mostly exposition and not super central to any specific character.
The thumbnail drawing for this page. Click for larger version.
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