Write Your Novel Like You’re Making a Movie Part 3

Pre-production

Now that the high concept, logline, genre and trusted reader acid tests are performed, it’s time to enter the pre-production phase. The first thing to do is to create a schedule. As in any business, time is money. As a writer, every day you spend on a project is a day lost on another. Be aggressive and set deadlines.

In movie making there are a lot of pre-production roles to play, all requiring different talents and specialties. Guess what- as an author you have to fill most of these roles yourself. First and foremost, you are the producer and director and responsible for everything on the creative side. You will also be the location manager, art director and maybe the storyboard artist.

Now is the time to start outlining your novel in detail. There are several ways to do this. One way is utilizing the old journalism paradigm- who, what, why, when and where.

Who – is your main character?

What – is their predicament and goal?

Why – is someone trying to stop the main character from attaining the goal?

When – does the story happen, past, present or future?

Where – does the story take place?

Answering these questions will help clarify your plot and character development.

Make sure you fit everything into the three act structure, just like in a screenplay. If you aren’t intimately familiar with the three act structure, Act I plot points, Act II yes/no reversals and big action and resolution in Act III, consider picking up a copy of Contour by Mariner Software. Contour is a screenplay outlining tool. It’s rigorous to the extreme but if you stick with it you will know the three act structure inside and out. It’s relatively inexpensive and worth buying.

 

Once your outline is fleshed out the next role you will play is the location manager. In the movie world the location manager scouts locations along with discovering potential interiors and exteriors for shooting scenes, among many other duties. Where is your novel located? Detroit? New York City? Paris? A small midwestern town? It’s important that you, the location manager, visit the locales and absorb every little detail you can.

 

What if you live in Cleveland and your novel is set in Los Angeles and there is no way you can justify a trip to the west coast? Visit it virtually. My second novel, Reckoning in Escobara, is located in and around Juarez, Mexico. I spent hours walking the streets and back alleys of Juarez using Google Earth. One reader asked me how much time I spent in Juarez and recognized a lot of areas that only residents knew about. Taking your role as location manager seriously and it will pay off in your novel.

 

Next, more pre-production…