In a plot script the artist works from a story synopsis from the writer (or plotter), rather than a full script. The artist creates page-by-page plot details on his or her own, after which the work is returned to the writer for the insertion of dialogue. Due to its widespread use at Marvel Comics beginning in the 1960s, primarily under writer-editor Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, this approach became commonly known as the Marvel method or Marvel house style.

Comics historian Mark Evanier writes that this "new means of collaboration . . . was born of necessity—Stan was overburdened with work—and to make use of Jack's great skill with storylines. . . . Sometimes Stan would type up a written plot outline for the artist. Sometimes, not." As comic-book writer-editor Dennis O'Neil describes, the Marvel method ". . . requires the writer to begin by writing out a plot and add[ing] words when the penciled artwork is finished. . . .[I]n the mid-sixties, plots were seldom more than a typewritten page, and sometimes less," while writers in later times "might produce as many as twenty-five pages of plot for a twenty-two page story, and even include in them snatches of dialog. So a Marvel Method plot can run from a couple of paragraphs to something much longer and more elaborate."

The Marvel method was in place with at least one artist by early 1961, as Lee described in 2009 when speaking of his and Ditko's "short, five-page filler strips … placed in any of our comics that had a few extra pages to fill", most prominently in Amazing Fantasy but even previously in Amazing Adventures and other "pre-superhero Marvel" science-fiction/fantasy anthology titles.

I'd dream up odd fantasy tales with an O. Henry type twist ending. All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he'd be off and running. He'd take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect.[12]

The October 2018 issue of DC Comics' in-house previews magazine, DC Nation, featured a look at the creative process that writer Brian Michael Bendis and artists Ryan Sook, Wade von Grawbadger and Brad Anderson employed on Action Comics #1004, which included pages of Bendis' script that were broken down panel by panel, albeit without dialogue.[13]

Advantages of the Marvel method over the full script method that have been cited by creators and industry professionals include:

- The fact that artists, who are employed to visualize scenes, may be better equipped to determine panel structure
- The greater freedom this gives artists
- The lower burden placed on the writer.

Cited disadvantages include:

- The fact that not all artists are talented writers, and some struggle over aspects such as plot ideas and pacing
- It takes advantage of artists, who are typically paid for art alone even though they are essentially working as co-writers