Step 6: Outline scenes to create a storyboard
Whether you use index cards or other small pieces of paper such as post-its, a storyboard is a useful device for developing your story.
Try to summarize the key events of each scene in as little as two lines, which of your characters it will involve, and what the scene’s purpose is.
As you plot your novel and plan your story development, you can reorder scenes as your story dictates, until you have a sequence of scenes that makes sense to you.
Sometimes you’ll find the order of two or more scenes should be reversed. Other times you might find that an early scene might be better shifted towards the end of the story due to its content or mood. This process will help you make your story flow and develop smoothly.
Step 7: Learn how to develop a story using subplots
A subplot is a secondary or subordinate plot that supports your main story arc.
To use a well-known example, in Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the children’s fascination with their mysterious, reclusive neighbour Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley (and their eventual encounter with him) is a subplot to the main story (a trial exposing race politics in which the children’s father Atticus is involved).
In Lee’s book, events involving Boo Radley support the main arc. The children receive a practical lesson through their encounters with Boo. They learn that inventing fantastical stories about others and turning them into bogeymen is a dubious alternative to confronting fear of the unknown and getting ‘the whole story’ about a person. In this way, Lee uses her subplot to underscore the issues at heart of the story’s central legal trial.
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