I'm somewhat good at drawing. Do you think if you work out the story in your head and then draw it scene by scene it would be easier to write it? It would probably take a lot more work but would your work benefit
Not for me. My drawing sucks. I think it also depends on what you are writing. My current project is a historical novel covering 500 years. Even if I could draw, I'd be Noah's age by the time I was ready to actually start writing. I've always thought that storyboards were more applicable for screenplays than novels. No?
Drawing each scene seems a bit like a waste of time to me, but I'm not graphically artistic at all. People note scenes on index cards and lay them out, which I suppose is a bit like a text storyboard. I'm not sure how drawing them would help really.
IDK. I don't see my ideas as vivid as other people in my head. It be easier if I had them on paper and then just describe what I have drawn. Of course I'm not talking about some High level graphic novel stuff. I mean simple drawings. I've never tried it to. I was wondering is it a good idea.
It's depend on how quick you can draw the idea. I draw too, but I write the scenes like a screenplay, to work in them later. Basic action describing and dialogues. Drawing is to illustrate the book after
you could either do sketches or cheat a little bit and use stock photos to illustrate where you want to go
Personally, I think it's a waste of time. Story boarding is used to transmit information from one film dept to another; the actors, cameramen, props, wardrobe, etc... it is NOT used for writing a story. In the case of graphic novels, you need to have some idea of story and pacing of scenes beforehand so as to know how to break up the panels effectively. You are a one man show. If you know what's in your head sufficiently to draw it, you should be able to write it. Books deal in words, why faff around with anything else?
I'd be wary about thinking of writing as describing a series of stills. If you describe most of the pictures on a storyboard it could make for a rather slow read. There might be the odd occasion where a character stops in awe and drinks in all the details of beautiful scenery or a beautiful person. - but most the time this isn't how people realistically think. - they'll probably be more worried about trying to accomplish whatever goal they're trying to achieve at the time. Most the time, you'll be throwing in the odd visual detail here and there as they become relevant to the action, but hopefully not whole pictures worth. (because according to the popular saying that's 1000 words) Also a lot of what we write can't really be drawn in a picture. A picture can't really capture a characters thoughts and feelings. And a lot of the time even when you are trying to write descriptively, the advice I've heard is to engage all 5 senses. You can't really draw smells, sounds etc.
This! This reminds of the thread not long ago about picturing your story as if it were a film. The problem is that you end up describing the film rather than immersing the reader in the story. Same thing here. Frankly, I don't see the advantage to the writer. Could it be that your real passion lies, not with writing but with some other medium?
Well I suppose you can draw on that things are emitting some sort of smell if you want to. Though you can write about smells more accurately than you can draw them. I'm not sure that drawing gives you an advantage in any area except for describing visual details, which is a smaller proportion of writing than you might first think. - a lot of the time when people are reading they do see pictures in their heads, but a lot more has often been filled in by their own imaginations than they realise.
Storyboards are used by filmmakers to plan camera angles, actor positions, and so on. None of that is really relevant to a writer. Sure, there are times when you want to emphasize something that a filmmaker will use a camera angle for (such as a spy listening behind the drapes while a couple of enemy military officers talk about secret plans), but you can certainly do that in prose (by writing the scene from the spy's POV, for example). Or, in a scene in which a train is speeding along the tracks, the director can put the camera on a distant hill overlooking the tracks if he wants to emphasize the vastness of the empty landscape the train is moving through, or he could position the camera right beside the track, low to the ground, pointing at the oncoming train - this would make the train seem huge and would make the audience feel like it's charging right out of the screen at them. That's the director's creative choice. Once again, your job is to figure out how to do that with prose, not with pictures. In most cases, as well, you'd have to use many storyboard pictures per scene. This would involve a lot of drawing that wouldn't really solve any of the problems you face in actually writing your scenes in prose. Why you would do this is beyond me. I'd say storyboards are unnecessary time-wasters when it comes to writing novels.
i don't even do it for the screenplays i write/rewrite... i'm not going to be the director and when writing spec scripts, it's best to leave all the set design/directing/acting up to those who get paid the big bucks to do it, avoid stepping on their toes, so all i need be concerned with is the written script... i see the scenes in my mind's eye as i write them, anyway, so there's no need to see them drawn...
