The Illusion of Control
As a writer, I used to be of the firm and unshakable opinion that the Marvel style of scripting was bunk. For those of you who don't know what that means, it boils down to a writer giving a synopsis of the story to the artist, who then paced things out visually without dialogue. Then the scripter gets the pencils and writes the script based on the layouts that the artist has come up with. Funny, but there isn't a DC style (cheap jokes aside). The only other way I thought to do things involved the artist working directly from the full script and not deviating all that much from it, so that the dialogue could be laid in without modification.
I figured that this was a better way of doing things, but then I've always been a writer-centric cuss. Yes, I know that writing and art should share the workload. I always thought that full scripting would be a better way for me to work, 'cause more of my vision (ha) would make it to the page. And not only that, but like I said above, I felt the Marvel style involved a pretty major step that shouldn't be necessary.
Of course, I've found that I could learn a thing or two about pacing, something that the artist I'm working with does know. Consequently, he deviates from my script a bit. It mostly works. However, the final step in the Marvel style, where you can go back and tweak things and shift emphases and realize that the artist did a better job telling the story than I thought I did (and letting the text back off a bit) is a good thing. I'm not sure that it's workable on a regular monthly title, but having the time to do it on Strangeways (that being the project in question) has been invaluable.
But then so has, y'know, actually writing the script and getting it into an artist's hands.