A friend one day asked me about how I plan my story and if I used a storyboard to set it out. Though storyboarding is a great tool, I find it restrictive. I prefer to brainstorm ideas and from that develop a comprehensive outline of what to put in the story.
For instance, I am working on a fourth book, which is a stand alone, and a monologue. The first thing I came up with was the title of the book. It had been playing on my mind for ages so I wrote it down. Then I thought about what sort of story I wanted to write and would fit the title. I have a yellow note pad on my desk where I write down ideas for stories. Sometimes they come out of the blue and others from books or magazines I have read. But I digress.
Okay, so first brainstorming, then the outline. From this I have generated a plot for the story. Sometimes there’s more than one, much like the series I am writing. From the outline I then create scenes (mentioned in the previous post) as bullet points. In my fourth book I have five scenes, which is the entire book. The scenes are a guide only really, just to keep me on track with the plot/s and storyline.
The book is called Aphrodite’s Curse and explores human tragedy. I was inspired by the myth of Theseus and Ariadne. For those who are not familiar with the story go to: Ancient Greek Mythology. A great website on Greek Mythology and one I frequent often.
Luciana Cavallaro 