NaNoWriMo2011 Day 5: My Storyboard
- At November 05, 2011
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, NaNoWriMo, Roxanne Writes On
- 6
I passed the 10,000 word mark earlier today, which means I’m well on track to completing the first draft of a 50K-word manuscript. I’m actually aiming for 70-75K, which is a typical length for a work of contemporary commercial fiction.
I’ve been studying plot and structure for the past few years, since that’s the toughest part of the craft for me. Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure. Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. Screenwriters Michael Hauge and Alexandra Sokoloff. Robin Perini’s Discovering Story Magic. Between these and many others, I’ve patched together a storyboard-and-index-card method that – SO FAR – seems to be working.
Hopefully, I’m not jinxing myself, here.
This is what my writing work-space looks like:
This big newsprint sheet is my “template” of where I need to have certain structural elements, and at what percentage of the story, according to the final word/page count I intend my book to be. It’s all very mathematical and smart. I like it a lot.
Then I lay out my index cards, one for each chapter. I want 20 chapters in total, allotted as follows: five in Act I, 10 in Act II, five in Act III.
The cards marked with red are for Act Climaxes. As I write the actual text, on my laptop, I make notes of the scenes on the appropriate index card. This helps me keep track of what happens when, and where, so that it’s easier to write my synopsis later. This also allows me to write scenes out of order, without getting completely messed up. You might notice that I’ve got a scene written in Chapter 7, even though I haven’t written Chapters 4, 5 or 6 yet.
Isn’t it kewl?