Centipede Dragon
  • About
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Crafts
  • Where to buy
  • Contact
  • Medical art

A story told in pictures

7/7/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Let’s get back to answering a question posed in the March 30 “The blank page” post: what is another name for a visual road map?

The answer is a storyboard!

Storyboards are used in the film and TV industries and usually have three components: the narration (the manuscript), the sketch that shows what’s happening when that narration is heard, and the directives. Now, directives are an important distinction from a storyboard made for a book, because in movies and TV, there is the element of movement. So within the directives, you write out how the scene “comes onto” the screen, how it transitions to the next scene, you describe any movement occurring, any special effects; basically, you include anything visual that is happening during this chunk of narration. 

You’ll recall that I’ve made dummies of my books before. This is another approach to mapping out the story arc for a book. The dummy helps to figure out the pacing for the text, since you make a small version of a book with pages. As you read through the text on each page, and turn the page to find out what happens next (just as a reader of your book would do), you see how the story unfolds across the entire span of the book. Is your action too bunched up within the 32 pages, such that only 4 pages are interesting while the rest feels like filler? Does your exposition (introduction of setting, characters and “the problem”) take up too many pages so that getting to the action would challenge even your attention span? Can you space out the action to create even more suspense? Try it out, you’d be amazed at how helpful a tool this is!
0 Comments

    Alice Y. Chen

    is the author of Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature, the first of a series of children's picture books for ages 3-7 (and up).

    Archives

    December 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.