Just Ginger

Story Steps 10 Suppose you decided to use my Story Steps to get started on your latest project. Let’s recap them: the idea for a story  a theme or message you want the reader to take away  compelling characters  a working title  the essential story ingredients of a story–protagonist, antagonist, situation, motivation, goal, and conflict  appropriate character names  writing a narrative synopsis Today, we’re going to look at storyboarding, a technique that helps with the actual writing of your book. For starters, let’s look at the definition: Storyboarding is a sequence of pictures created to communicate a desired general visual appearance. Although storyboarding has been traditionally associated with cinema, its beginnings can be traced back to Leonardo da Vinci, who put his ideas on a wall and examined the layout prior to producing the final painting. (She Sat, He Stood: What Do Your Characters Do While They Talk?) Populari...

Story Step 9 Writing a short narrative synopsis of my story is another step I take in this process. What’s a narrative synopsis? According to the New Oxford American Dictionary , a narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events while a synopsis is a brief summary or general survey of something. In my mind, a narrative synopsis is a summary of the connected events that will take place in my story. I like to think of the synopses as short stories of my novels written in a compelling format that will catch editor or reader interest. Preliminary Writing Tool       Many writers dislike writing a synopsis and save it for last. I followed that school of thought in the beginning of my writing career. I didn’t write the synopsis until I finished the manuscript. Eventually, I began writing a short narrative synopsis during the early stages of my story writing. Now I see the synopsis as a powerful preliminary writing tool, because it ...

Story Step 8 In Story Step 6, I suggested you don’t need to have the perfect title before you write your story. Working titles are fine. Stumbling across the perfect title during the process is always fun. On the other hand, choosing names for your characters is an important early step when writing a story. Assigning names helps you bond with your characters better than calling them Male #1 or Female #2. Names carry a lot of weight. This is as true in real life as it is in a story. Choosing the right name for your characters is important. I love names and have a spreadsheet of several hundred male and female names I’ve collected over the years. I’ve visited cemeteries to record names and life span dates from gravestones. I’ve found unusual names in obituary columns and news articles, and I’ve plucked names off the identity badges of sales clerks. I’m not shy about name gathering or asking the story behind an unusual name. After complimenting a person’s name, I of...

Story Steps Seven You’ve got an idea for a story, some characters with interesting backstories, a general idea of your theme, and a working title. Now what? Personally, I like to write a synopsis of my story. I see it as an opportunity to sketch out the major events of the story. It’s not written in stone, but it gives me an idea of where I’m going. It can also clue me into weak points or details I may need to further research. A synopsis offers any writer the opportunity to see if the essential story ingredients are there. Say what? Essential story ingredients, you ask? What could those be? Well, a story needs at least one protagonist –I mostly write romance so we have two: the hero and the heroine. The word protagonist originated in Greek drama and means the main character–or two characters in a romance. This is the story character you want the reader to like, to cheer on, and become the most emotionally invested in whether or not he or she succeeds. Then yo...

Story Step Six As some point in this writing process, you’re going to want to hang a title on your story. Don’t worry over what to call it this early. The purpose of giving a work in progress (WIP) a title is to differentiate it from any other story you’re writing. Finding the perfect title isn’t as important as writing the story. The role of a working title is to give substance to your project. Ideas for possible titles will hit you as you wrestle the story into submission. Rather than change the working title every other day, just keep a list of possible titles. Titles are not my strong point and I set myself up for headaches with my Tassanoxie series (all the stories are set in one town, but can be read in any order). It all started with the first book, Feather’s Last Dance . I was rather proud when I thought of it. Then, the second book ended up being titled Ellie’s Song . Hmmmm, by happy accident both books contained the heroine’s name. Two published titles cont...

Story Steps Five   As I was winding up my undergrad degree many, many years ago, for fun I took a Creative Writing class. Somewhere along the way I lost the handy dandy writing how-to book we used in the class, but one recommendation stuck with me: write a detailed biography for characters prior to writing the story. After the class, I subscribed to several writing magazines. They echoed the author’s opinion that a writer had to “get to know” story characters completely before you could write about them. Over the years, I read articles and attended workshops that abounded  with character lists. Hair color. Eye color. Date of birth. Educational background. Height. Weight. Favorite foods. Foods dislikes. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I wasted a lot of time writing biographies full of trivial information for characters. Information I never used and soon forgot after writing it down. Gradually, my biographies changed. I started concentrating on...

Story Steps Four Sierra showed up at our small local airport, a starving, flea and tick infested Beagle. No microchip, no tags, she became an immediate addition to the family. She was an anomaly in the Beagle family because she seldom barked. From all accounts, barking is a perennial Beagle issue. She arrived with some additional baggage, she didn’t run to the door when we arrived home. This is a major dog duty and we resorted to bribing Sierra into acceptable dog-at-the-door behavior. We kept treats in the garage to reward her when we opened the door. My husband even came up with a “Sierra’s happy we’re home” dance. Backstory Naturally, I came up with a backstory to fit her behavior. If she’d been kenneled by her previous owner, she wouldn’t know how to greet anyone when they arrived home. How can you greet anyone when you’re locked in a kennel? Why would you bark at anything, if you’re locked away from the windows and doors? Just as I build a backstory for...