If you’re a novelist who struggles with writer’s block or just needs some help organizing your story, then I’ve got some good news for you. Storyboarding is a great tool to get your ideas down in one place and get them organized.
Whether you’re a National Novel Writing Month® participant or a professional from a online book writing service working towards a novel, screenplay, short story, novel, or memoir, a storyboard can help you write your book and direct your story.
This is because storyboarding is proven to be a great exercise to help you visualize your novel before you start writing. It is extremely useful in seeing how your novel will flow and how it will end. But the big question novelists ask is how to effectively storyboard the project. How do we organize the flow of events in our book?
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to create a storyboard for your novel. So you can focus on writing and get the best result out of it. Without any delay, let’s start learning the art of storyboarding!
5 Easy Steps To Create A Storyboard For Your Novel
Here’s how you can storyboard your novel in 5 easy and simple steps.
Step 1: Identify The Main Plot Points
The first step in storyboarding is to identify the main plot points. These are the events that drive your story, and they can be anything from a major decision made by one of your characters (a turning point) to an important event that takes place outside of their world (such as what happens when you open another door).
Do you know what your main plots are? If not, ask yourself: What does this story need? How does it move forward? What’s at stake for our characters? The answers to these questions will help guide you toward identifying your main plot points.
Asking yourself these questions will also help ensure that when you start writing out each chapter section in detail, everything lines up nicely. And thus, it will give you a clear sense of direction as well!
Step 2: Fill In Your Novel’s Main Events
The third step is to fill in your novel’s main events. These are the things that happen in chronological order, and they’re often referred to as “plot points.” The following is a thorough list of everything you need to include in your storyboard:
- List main events in order of importance. For example: “John meets Jane at the coffee shop,” or “The book club discovers John’s secret art project.”
- Plot events in chronological order. This also applies to minor turning points.
- List the characters involved and their relationships to each other or the novel’s story. For example: “The main character is a 10-year-old girl named Sally who lives on an island with her mother and an older sister.
- If there are multiple characters involved with any given event then make sure each one has its own section within your storyboard. So you can differentiate them clearly without confusion arising later down the line.
- List major turning points that occur later in the story (such as when Sally makes friends at school).
- Add minor turning points that occur earlier (such as when she first meets her teacher). Or even whole scenes which only serve as a setup for future events rather than being plot points themselves.
- List any significant changes made by either character throughout this particular section of your manuscript.
There may be multiple ways you can structure these things. It depends on what kind of plotline you’re working with so just go ahead and try one method out until it feels right.
Step 3: Add Key Characters
Now that you have your storyboard, it’s time to add key characters. You don’t want to forget about the main protagonists and antagonists, as well as other major players such as minor characters and settings.
The next step is adding some basic details about each character—their name, age, or occupation (if they’re important), etc. Next, you can Include setting details, including weather, time of day, and season.
You can also include descriptions of events that happen in your story. For example: “The sun had set an hour ago but there was still no sign of rain” or “It was snowing outside again”. You can also add something as simple as “She looked out over her garden and sighed with satisfaction at how well everything had turned out this year.”
Adding themes is also important because they affect how we see everything around us. They give depth to our perception of reality and help us understand why things happen as they do in real life
Step 4: Add Side Plots And Subplots.
Side plots are secondary stories that are important to the main plot. They may be related, or they may not be, it all depends on how you want them to work. For example, one subplot might involve a character trying to rescue his kidnapped niece from kidnappers in another country. Another could see a character dealing with issues of identity as he learns more about his past history with people who had been important in his life before he came of age.
Subplots should also be related to your main plot. They should also contain information that helps explain what’s happening at each stage of your story. If you’re writing about a young man who wants revenge on those responsible for killing his father during one war (the main plot), then perhaps another subplot would involve him learning more about those responsible while traveling through different countries around the world. This event may affect how he decides what path should take now that he has learned more about who killed his father…
Step 5: Draw Or Print Out A Storyboard Template
Storyboarding is a great way to get a sense of the structure of your novel before you start writing. Once you’ve drawn out your storyboard, it’s time to make it look pretty. You can do this by printing out a template or drawing one yourself.
If you have access to a whiteboard, this is an excellent place to begin. If not, try using paper or the computer program Adobe Spark for free. You can also download one of the many free printable storyboards available online.
This is because creating and printing out a storyboard template for your novel will be helpful to think about the flow of your story, and how events will interact with each other. It will help you to make sure that everything fits together nicely as you’re building it up.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, storyboarding is a simple but effective tool for writers. It can help you get a sense of the structure of your novel before writing it. It will also help you figure out if there are any gaps or plot holes. You can use this method to plan out the main plot points and write down key scenes that need to happen in each chapter. But also include side plots and subplots so that everything fits together seamlessly.
