Recently I’ve been struggling with a scene in my Red
WIP. It has a lot of action and there’s
a fight within it. I was struggling
because I had a hard time keeping track of the action, reaction and motivation
of each character. Various betas had
complained that the action slowed when I stopped to have the character react,
but at the same time, they didn’t understand the purpose of the fight.
After struggling with the scene for several days, I had a
mild epiphany.
What do screenwriters do when they’re planning the layout of
a scene? (Especially when creating
animated films. I’ve watched a lot of
Disney behind the scenes. J ) They create storyboards. They pick out the important parts of the scene
– the parts that need the most emphasis or link two thoughts and lay them out
side by side.
Although I love colors, I’m not much of an artist. I can draw stick figures. Instead, I wrote out the key points of the
scene on notecards, taping them in order on a board I have at home. Of course, I did use different colors to write it out.
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| Storyboarded Scene |
All of a sudden, I understood the scene. I was able to slow the action down for myself
so that I could understand the actions and reactions of the characters and the
necessary motivations. When I finally
rewrote the scene, I could speed up the action, but still understand the why
behind it.
The storyboard was so successful that I decided to try it
again – this time with a scene filled with internal conflict. Again, I was able to slow down the thoughts
long enough to understand the why behind it.
And I was able to find the actions and details that helped propel the story
and conflict forward.
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| Second Scene |
How do you break down your scenes? Do you act?
Draw? Outline? What works best for you?
WOW, congrats on the breakthrough :D I never even thought about breaking down an indiviual scene before. I just breakdown the novel itself using a spreadsheet.
ReplyDeleteI am really lousy with action scenes, It would be so much easier if I could draw, but I'm thinking that maybe I could use my spreadsheet idea to work on that.
Great post, Krista. Best of luck with your novel.
Thanks Ben! I have a hard time with action scenes too, but this has really made a difference! How do you use a spreadsheet to work through it? I've never heard of that before.
DeleteI have a six up six across spreadsheet and basically write the key events of the novel going across. Then flesh it out with characters sub-plots and other things that might spring to mind. Then it is a case of arranging them chronologically so each scene leads off each more effectivly. JK Rowling used this method too. I go into more detail on my blog post about methods of plotting. here's the link: http://thewritingwanderer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/to-plot-or-not-to-plot.html
DeleteThanks for sharing Ben! I'll have to try that out sometime. It sounds like it's a good way of keeping track of what's happening throughout the entire novel.
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