Website 101: Storyboarding (Part Two)

In part one of this discussion, we looked at why a writer needs a website even if he or she is unpublished. You’ve hopefully answered two basic question: the purpose of your website and who you hope will visit. Now we’re going to discuss storyboarding, which I think is a great writing tool.

Storyboarding and Websites

While storyboarding is traditionally associated with films, it is also popular in the world of web design. Just think of storyboarding as a management tool that facilitates the creative thinking process and you’ll see why it’s useful in a variety of endeavors. Its primary appeal is that it allows for thoughts to be captured on paper (and writers love paper, right?), which can be spread out as one works on a project. For a writer, this can mean using lists, graphs, boxes with text, images, or illustrations.

You don’t need to be an artist–believe me I’m not one–to storyboard. All you need is paper, pencil, and imagination to determine the content of your website. To keep things simple, use boxes to represent the webpages. The top box represents your home page while the next level of boxes represent the pages you plan to include in your basic navigation bar. 

A quick note, I’m in the process of updating my website, and this storyboard reflects changes I’m making in the layout.

Basic Storyboard Navigation Bar

The example above shows my basic line up. When a visitor arrives at my home page, they have several choices on the navigation bar if they want to go deeper into the site. I chose to put Books first on the menu. If the visitor clicks here on my in-progress website, a drop down menu from Books will link the visitor to the different categories of books I write.

While I’m not the most prolific writer in the world, I do have a selection of novels, short stories, as well as three nonfiction books. Since I want to promote and sell them, Books is an important navigation item for me. This is where readers can go to read about my books and hopefully buy them.

For Readers is next on the nav bar. This is a behind the scenes web page about my books as well as some personal insights. I also periodically offer a free short story for readers.

Writers who read my writing skills books, She Sat, He Stood and She Said, He Said can click on For Writers to access the web page with links to the PDFs referenced in these books. There are also other free PDFs filled with information for writers.

In case visitors are wondering about who I am, I have a bio page with a photo of me, a biography, and some fun facts. The Contact Me link finishes off my top nav bar choices.

In the revised website, I plan to streamline my submenu choices. My current site has almost every project listed on its own page for visitors who want a deeper dive into the books. Rather than list every book on a separate page, I plan to group the books into categories with titles, cover images, and blurbs. And of course, links to the various book distributors. 

My goal is to create a streamlined experience for visitors. For this rendition of the website, Books will end up having a drop down menu with four pages instead of eleven. (I'm only showing two!)

Unpublished? Not to Worry

If you aren’t published yet or perhaps have only one book to showcase, don’t worry. You can look at other sources for images that reflect the purpose of your content. Stock photos are useful and depending on the source, you may only need to credit the photographer.

Perhaps you’re sharing an excerpt of your current work in progress and it’s set on an island in the Caribbean. Depending on what you find, you can always add an image of a topical island or even clip art of a beach umbrella. It isn’t difficult to give your content a little image boost.

One last word of advice, in today’s fast-paced world, it’s always good to keep your website easy to navigate. Going mobile years ago certainly influenced me into trimming my content. I like to think I have an attractive, easy-to-navigate website. More importantly, I doubt a visitor has any problem figuring out who I am or what’s available on the website.

Website 101 (Part 1)

Some writers use only social media to connect with readers, but most social media is a superficial system of communication filled with brief posts or videos. It’s good to be connected with readers via social media, but social media has its limitations. Most importantly, the user forfeits control over their content which can be lost when the company changes policies.

If you’re serious about your writing career, build a website.

Websites are all about content, much of it written. Lucky for us, writers are all about writing. We’re a natural fit with websites. Website design is about putting together the content in a visually pleasing way. If you’re published, you have the written content or descriptions of your stories, so you have text. As for visual content, you have book covers. If you’re unpublished, nothing is stopping you from creating an informative website.

Why does an unpublished author need a website? It’s the best way to ensure you own your domain name. Many website builder companies offer easy to-fill-out templates beginners can use to create visually appealing websites.

Two basic questions need to be answered as you think about your website: what will be its purpose and who will be its audience?

Purpose

The purpose of your website determines what you’re going to put on it. For published writers, one purpose is to sell their stories, but that doesn’t have to be the site’s only purpose.

For example, I want to promote and sell my books, but I also want to educate writers and entertain readers. For the past 20 years, in each rendition of my website I’ve worked to promote that purpose.

For the unpublished writer, a website offers a place to establish some credentials before publication. (Check out my free PDF “Promotion Before Publication” for ways to get known before publication at www.gingerhanson.com.) A website also offers prospective agents. editors, and readers a taste of your writing skills.

Potential Website Audience

Once you establish the purpose of your website, it’s time to think about your audience or who you hope will visit your website. As a writer with published books, I hope readers who enjoy my books will visit to learn more about me and my stories and buy more of them. Another segment of my audience will be writers because two of my ebooks are writing skills handbooks. Anyone who buys She Sat, He Stood or She Said, He Said will probably visit my website because I put downloadable charts used in the books on my website. I also have various handouts, such as the previously mentioned Promotion Before Publication and Story Steps, an overview of some steps I take when I write a story.

The Readers page is devoted to a behind the scenes look at my writing life as well as my nonwriting life. I also post free short stories or articles that I think might interest readers.

As you can see, it’s a good idea to picture your potential audience because they influence the content you put on your website. Once you can answer those two basic questions–purpose and audience–it’s time to think about how your web site will look.

In the next blog, we’ll look at how to use storyboarding, a basic design technique that works well with building websites.

Finding the Write Fit

You may or may not recognize the actor Burt Reynolds who was a celebrity icon in the 20th century. If Smokey and the Bandit rings any bells, then you probably remember Burt Reynolds.

A former high school and college football player, Burt often did his own stunts while making a movie. During the filming of City Heat, Burt was hit in the jaw with a metal chair while filming a fight scene. The stuntman who played the assailant grabbed the metal chair instead of grabbing the breakaway chair. Burt spent the next two years in agony with constant vertigo and difficulty chewing food. Searching for a diagnosis and cure, he saw forty doctors.

He was diagnosed with temporomandibular disorder (aka TMJ dysfunction) which can cause pain in the jaw joint and the muscles that control jaw movement. The problem was figuring out how to fix it.

Not much was known about the issue then, but basically he needed extensive reconstructive jaw surgery. Finding a doctor willing to undertake the surgery wasn’t easy, but he found one and the surgery was a success.

What stuck with me was Burt Reynold’s perseverance in his search for an answer to his problem and a doctor willing to accept the challenge.

Burt was looking for a path to success.

Now you might wonder how this anecdote has anything to do with writing.

It’s probably a stretch, but maybe not.

Burt Reynolds was given all sorts of different advice for the treatment of his problem. Much of that advice didn’t help. But he persevered until he not only found a solution, but also found a doctor willing to try and repair the damage.

Now, think about all the how-to writing paths available to writers. Save the Cat, the Snowflake Method, W Plot Technique, Story Grid, Dramatica, and the list goes on. Then, of course, there are videos, online courses, and blogs filled with writing advice (including this one!).

I started writing short stories B.T.I. (Before The Internet) and relied primarily on the library, bookstores, a creative writing class, and writing magazines to learn how to write. I seldom lived in large cities, but I eventually discovered writing conferences. I remember going to one way back when. It was an exhilarating experience until I attended a workshop by a published author who read a selection from his latest novel. I’ve never really figured out why reading an excerpt from a novel is a selling point. Probably because I’m not an auditory learner. Read listening is not my strong point. I tend to daydream too easily.

After his reading, this author proceeded to describe his writing process and pretty much told us his way was the only successful route to writing a novel.

His ego astounded me.

Based on all the how-to writing methods, there is obviously more than one way to arrive at a well-written story. It may take you a few tries (hopefully, not forty) to figure out your individual path to writing a story.

Or you could follow Stephen King’s thoughts on how to be a writer:

“You don’t need writing classes or seminars any more than you need this (On Writing) or any other book on writing… You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”

Whatever path you follow, just be sure to find the write fit for you.

When a Novel Becomes a Screenplay

How do you tell if your story has too much dialogue?

This question was posed to me by an attendee at one of my Zoom writing presentations. It’s a good question and like a good question it nagged me far longer than the answer I gave that day.

Finding the right balance between narrative and dialogue is a challenge. Too much dialogue and you’re writing a screenplay. Too much narrative and sleep overpowers the reader.

Balancing dialogue with narrative reminds me of advice a commercial printer gave me: white space is good in a newsletter. (I’ve written a lot of newsletters in my day.) He said pages need to be a balancing act between text, images, and white space to keep the reader engaged.

Although I don’t use images in my fiction, I found this concept–balancing dialogue and narrative–works for stories, too.

Caveat: I read and write for entertainment so my opinion is shaded toward commercial (read for pleasure) fiction more than literary (usually designed to make the reader sad. I read the news for that.)

Dialogue versus Interiority

Robert B. Parker, who passed away over 10 years ago, is one of my favorite authors. I enjoyed his early Spenser novels the most. To be honest, I wasn’t as happy with him in the later years of his career. His novels became dialogue heavy, lacking the narrative I had so enjoyed in his earlier books. He had a lot of white space and not much interiority.

Basically, he stopped exploring the inner character’s–thoughts, emotional reactions, and feelings–about a situation. Sure I knew Spenser, Susan, and Hawk really well, but I still want to know how the story affects them.

And while dialogue can achieve wonders in a story, the reader stills needs interior anchors that flesh out the scene and the characters.

When Ace Akins was given the job of writing the Spenser books, I was leery of the end product. Then I read that Mr. Akins was a lifelong fan of the Spenser books. To my delight, his additions to the series brought the original flavor of the Spenser books back to life. His stories had a nice balance of narrative and dialogue.

I think Mr. Parker’s reliance on dialogue in his later novels made me feel cheated. He was no longer writing with all the nuances I enjoyed and expected. He had too much white space.

Which is why I think some novels make better screenplays. A screenplay is supposed to be dialogue heavy.

Huh?

Novel versus Screenplay

Think about it. A screenplay doesn’t need all the components of a novel. The curtain rises and the setting is clear to the audience. The movie is set in a diner, suburbia, or a football field.

An actor walks on stage and the audience makes immediate deductions: male or female, tall or short, blonde or brunette. The actor starts speaking and the audience thinks, oh, a Russian accent.

You get the idea. The movie setting and actors anchor the audience into the movie world within moments of the opening scene.

The writer doesn’t have this luxury. The opening paragraphs set the scene and introduce the characters. The reader “sees” the story via the writer who uses many elements to bring the story alive for the reader. Dialogue should only be one of the paths a writer follows to bring the story alive.

Back to the question at hand:

How to tell if your story has too much dialogue.

One very visual way to determine if your story has too much dialogue: highlight the dialogue. This can be done using a highlighter pen on printed pages, or the highlight tool on computer documents.

In either method, the goal is to highlight the dialogue. This offers the writer a concrete visual of how much of the story is dialogue and how much is narrative. Large blocks of either dialogue or narrative can be rewritten to ensure there is a nice balance between narrative, dialogue, and white space.

 

The Beat Goes On and On and On…Writing Fiction Dialogue

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the word beat has a cornucopia of meanings. For me, the definition of beat offered in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King, makes the most sense.

They defined beat as a descriptive sentence or sentences inserted before, after, or during the dialogue section. Keep in mind, it is not a dialogue tag such as “said,” that establishes who is talking. Instead, a beat comes into play after the reader knows who is talking and describes a character’s response or action.

If dialogue is the audio, think of beat as the video.

Renni Browne and Dave King go one step further by saying a beat is the “literary equivalent of what is known in the theater as stage business.”

I love this definition because stage business refers to physical actions made by an actor on stage such as tucking a tendril of hair behind an ear. You see stage business all the time in plays, movies, and television shows. If you have trouble visualizing this concept, just mute the sound on a TV show or movie and watch the actors. They don’t stand around like robots and talk, they do things while they are saying their lines.

Which is exactly what the characters in our stories should be doing.

Beats enable readers to picture the action, they allow you to vary the rhythm of the dialogue, and they help reveal your character’s personalities and emotional reactions. In effect, they remind your readers of who your characters are and what they are doing.

How do you chose what type of “stage business” a character should do while talking? That’s where nonverbal communication or body language comes into play.

In my writing skills ebook, She Sat, He Stood, What Do Your Characters Do While They Talk, nonverbal communication is defined as the gestures and mannerisms by which one person communicates with others. Although different cultures may have different meanings for some gestures, most body language is universal.

Humans actually use body language more than tone of voice or even words to communicate. Writers deal in words so it behooves a writer to figure out how to convey body language and tone to better set each character firmly the reader’s mind. 

Beats can help a writer do this. They also help a writer avoid interior dialogue to track a character’s emotions.

Well-written beats fulfill many roles in a story, but it’s important to strike the right balance between dialogue and beats. Just as too much uninterrupted dialogue can confuse or irritate a reader, too many interruptive beats can be distracting.

The best way to check your dialogue is to read it aloud. Listen to the rhythm of the dialogue to ensure the beats enhance the dialogue exchanges rather than overwhelm them.