Storyboarding with Flash (Spoiler)

I probably shouldn’t show you this since it’s from Volume 2 so if you don’t want the story spoilt click away now.

I’ve decided you just can’t beat Flash for storyboarding and thought I’d show you a sample of the type of thing I’m working with. This is frame 10 of a complex scene. I don’t know any other way of working this type of thing out.

I wonder how other authors do this type of thing?

So here’s the image. Might not look much to you but it’s a big help to me!

 

Character’s voice to Narrator’s

Writing the new chapter 34, where Catriona finds the tunnel, I wrote it first in Catty’s voice, fast and fluid with lots of ands and no full stops and then gradually converted it into narrative description. This wasn’t planned, it just seemed that I could get more drama out of the description than Catty would be able to give by rushing through. But it seemed a natural way of writing and was how I saw it as I tried to live it through her eyes. I’ve never written anything this way before.

I used TextAloud’s editor to edit the text since PowerWriter insists on putting capital letters at the start of sentences which I didn’t want but mainly because I get tired of highlighting text and pressing CTRL-F10 which is my shortcut for reading aloud.

I cut up Catty’s monologue into phrases and re-arranged them into a slightly different sequence and grouping them into sentences. This also forced me to think through the moment-by-moment description which is so vital in bringing a piece of action to life but which the character would never give when recounting her own story. This is quite hard to write, since you need to see the situation vividly, most of which I’ve got to invent. It’s also not a skill I feel very confident at. I’m forever tinkering with the text, re-arranging bits. I don’t hear the text in my head and then write it down like, for example, Edward Gibbon used to to. Instead I tinker and then have TextAloud read it to me and decide I don’t like it and fiddle some more. Very laborious and time consuming, but hopefully I’ll get more efficient as I gain in practice. I hope so!

So this movement, from character’s to narrator’s voice, seems like a good method of text development. Wonder if I’ll ever use it again?

 

Proof listening on the road

Had an amazing day yesterday. Among a hundred other things I ran an event at AstraZeneca in Loughborough that seemed to go well. See the http://www.emsec.org.uk/index.php/Working_lunch_2007 page for details. (Eventually I’ll get round to transcribing and publishing it). But the best part of the day as far as TC is concerned is that I came up with some good little plot ideas during the drive up and back. Proof listening using TextAloud while driving is really a boon.