Writing is not Easy
In a post I became aware of on someone’s blog via a link recently, thanks to a blogger friend, its author was talking about whether or not it might be a good idea to employ storyboarding when it comes to writing fiction.
To the uninitiated, it may sound like a sensible suggestion. But, while new writers might wish to employ the technique, writers like myself largely refrain from doing so for the simplest of reasons.
Most full-time writers (I include myself in this group) will tell you that writing a story is a dynamic process where ideas constantly change direction during the story’s evolution.
By relying rigidly on a mapped-out storyline, it is far too easy to literally ‘paint yourself into a corner.’ I firmly believe that ‘flexibility’ is the key to good writing.
Another valid point to consider is that storyboarding is just another name for formulaic writing; think pulp fiction, Mills and Boon, books by Barbara Cartland or perhaps any daytime television soap opera you care to name.
Any book written employing the technique, by definition, must be highly predictable. While its type may appeal to the brain-dead among us, for the vast majority of discerning readers, it is a big turn-off. Storyboarding is to be avoided at all costs.
If you had a mapped-out storyline in your head and then changed your mind, writing without elements of that storyline finding their way into your subconscious becomes extremely difficult. If you already know the ending of the story before you have even begun…
It’s far better that you write your story through the eyes of the reader. When they open the book at page one, unless they are one of those people who read the last page wanting to know how the story ends, most normal people enjoy discovering something new within the story on every page.
That is how you should write. Write a sentence, stop, take a long, hard look at it, and move on to the next one if it fits what you had in mind. Pretty soon, you will have that first paragraph.
On more than one occasion, I can and have spent an entire day deconstructing a paragraph to the point where it bears no resemblance to its original draft. While most people say that after reading a book in their favourite genre, they could have written something better, I say prove it.
Don’t become just another moaning armchair pseudo-literary critic on the internet online book sites, writing scathing one-star reviews. Put your pen where your mouth is and produce a book that people actually want to read.
Yes, it’s true that most people do have a book buried somewhere within themselves, but very few have the courage to write it. Even fewer can turn that story into a best seller…
