Write Your Novel Like You’re Making a Movie Part 5

Pre-production Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a graphical representation of a scene from a camera’s viewpoint. Why bother with a storyboard? Creating a storyboard will quickly illustrate what’s essential and interesting in your scene and what’s extraneous or boring. If you’re writing a scene that seems to drag and is highly narrative, bust out a quick storyboard with dialog and see what to cut. Just like in the world of filmmaking, a lot of your scenes will (and should) wind up on the (virtual) cutting room floor.

When I was writing the opening scenes of The Day Detroit Went Dark I was into the manuscript about fifteen pages when I thought it started to drag. I went back to the outline and re-examined the first few sequences. It was apparent there wasn’t enough action. I drew a storyboard of the first chapter, cutting out the non-action fluff, then wrote the scenes from that. I wound up with about ninety percent action and ten percent glue to bind the scenes together. Bottom line? Storyboards work.

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…

Write Your Novel Like You’re Making a Movie Part 2

More Development

We now have two high concepts (The Carnival Barker and Aquaphobia) and two viable loglines. Now what? In the film development stage an outline is produced, a synopsis or treatment is created and a screenplay is written and re-written. For novel writers, the outline phase is moved to pre-production. What’s left for you to do in the development phase is to determine your target audience and asses your book’s chances of success in the appropriate market.

What genre does your new book idea fall into? Thriller? Romance? YA? Figure that out in a hurry and be hesitant to write in a genre you don’t really like. You’ll come off as a phony and readers will see through you immediately.

Run your high concepts and loglines by some of your honest, trusted friends and readers. This is the acid test. Look at their faces, especially their eyes. If more than one person’s eyes glaze over when you pitch a concept and logline, you’ve got a dud on your hands. Dump it, try another one or start over. If their faces brighten and they say that are looking forward to reading it, then you may have a winner.

This is similar but in much less detail the kind of work a film studio performs before they pull the  pre-production trigger. The studio’s goal is to maximize the number of butts in theatre seats, eyes glued to the silver screen. As an author, your goal is to maximize the number of eyeballs on a eReader or printed page. Once you’ve done the development work, now is the time to approach your agent, if you work with one. If you’re an independent, then you’re ready to move on to the pre-production phase.

More on this to come…