There are so many needlessly negative comments. Get a crip people. She recorded the video years ago, when camera quality and sound were embryonic. The fact that she made a TH-cam video was probably pioneering at the time. Kudos to Ms. Moore. This is excellent information for new writers. We can overlook the audio issues.
I am undertaking a diploma in novel writing and I am also working on my debut novel. I have read many books all offering different ways of outlining a novel and all of them have been very difficult to adapt to the physical process. Your storyboarding process has enlightened me and has perfectly pushed everything I have learnt into one final, excellend concept - which I will definitely be using. Thanks for teaching us Mary!
I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for posting this. I am just beginning my journey as a writer and I have always preferred to be a "fly by the seat of my pants" writer but I found it made staying on target with my novels difficult. I was looking for something that was simple to work with and didn't require a lot of effort to get the story laid out (I abhor outlining) and this seems like a wonderful technique. I will definitely give it a try.
I don't know how to thank you. Within these 12 mins I was actually able to divide my whole book into the 3 acts... You are amazing and your students are lucky to have such an awesome teacher... Thank u...
The middle section (act 2) of my book was dragging, and I went back and rewatched this video. I followed Mary's instructions, and I made up little post its for each scene or narrative section of that second act, and I looked for ways to order them to give rising and falling action, from point 2 to 3 and down to 4. I think it really helped, and my book reads much better now. As I go into final revisions, working on language and little tweaks, I am happier with how it reads. Thanks, Mary
I have been writing for awhile, taken courses, read LOTS of books, but this is the best explaination I have ever witnessed and put so many things in perspective for me. *Getting to work now!* thanks so much!
This video contained unbelievably helpful information for me. The "W Storyboard Structure" is an extensive, yet simple enough, way of showing me the structure to a story. Thank you~!
Thanks so much for all the great comments. Feel free to access the W storyboard from my book Your Book Starts Here. It has a sample diagram that you can photocopy and enlarge.
Although the quality of this video was somewhat poor, this is the best information I have learned during my outlining phase! Thank you SO very much Mary!
This can be a fun process when shared but also be a frustrating process when significant gaps are discovered in the plot. It is a technique that improves with practice. I found that perseverance is the key to success with storyboarding.
This is the most helpful video regarding novel structuring I could find on TH-cam. I was already familiar with this structure, but I have never seen it presented in such a coherent way. Thank you!
This is great. I have never used a storyboard before. What I do to stretch myself is We Writes. It's where I collaborate with other writers, other styles, etc. on a single short story project. This helps me paint pictures in my mind of different ways to express my main plot line through the chronology of a book I am writing. I think I am going to try a storyboard on my next novel.
Mary Carroll Moore, you have dropped a gem in this video and hopefully, one day, you'll hire a developer and work on doing this as a writing app. Its visual appeal will cater to the younger generation and bring you back into the forefront of Story Development.
WOW this is incredibly helpful. I used to write a book series back when I was in elementary school to a little bit into middle school. It was definatly a lot of fun, however I was just like what you said towards the end: My islands never formed into continents they were so far apart in fact, that I gave up on my story and never took it back up again. Now that I know a good way to set it up and It works even for far minded people like me, I'll make a new one and hope for the best! Thanks a lot!
Thanks MCM. I am not very disciplined abut my writing. I usually write what comes to my head first, in absolutely no order. Out there somewhere, I know how the entire story will come together. However, I also found out that it takes a longer time to finish my work - sometimes just collating the chapters takes weeks. And forces reviews and edits. Your storyboard sounds very useful. Now, I have to find a way to convince my head that this is the better way to go. Old habits...
I agree exactly what I needed right now. Bought 2 story boards. Should have watched until the end and bought 3. For the future for sure if the first two work. Thank you for doing this video!
Thank you for sharing your secrets and knowledge with us. I write little (what I called) snippets of my story and then merge them...now I know they are little islands that connect into continents! Thank you! :D
This is a grand rethinking of the traditionally taught "Plot Diagram", with its all too simplistic rising action, climax & unwinding action.I always thought it was too simplistic, given the action movie mindset of most students who expect a lot more story after the supposed climax in schoolbook literature. I'm going to try to find out if other educators have re-thought that diagram, particularly in light of such intriguing writing maps such as yours here. Thank you so much.
+rob dizo ----------- said: This is a grand rethinking of the traditionally taught "Plot Diagram", with its all too simplistic rising action, climax & unwinding action. Right. Feralt's Triangle: www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781614751755/9781614751755___7.htm So antiquated but still a favorite of our pal, Dave Farland. That's because of the plot DEVICE that he adds to it --- the "Try Fail Cycle." (Also a favorite of Robert McKee and Dan Wells.) It seems to me that Feralt's Triangle is wholly suited just for that plot device --- or one even more simplistic. Google it and --- by all indications, Feralt and Freytag were the same guy. (They're not.) Freytag's Pyramid --- another antiquated paradigm (circa 1864). By the time Freytag published that paper...Jane Austen had already been successful with the "W" structure, soon to be followed by Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Island), Henry Haggard (She) and in the 20th Century, Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence).
This video was very helpful in giving me a framework to use as I begin plotting my writing. I believe this simple structure will prove to be invaluable to me as I write! Thanks very much for sharing.
Thank you so much. I have an incredible story to tell, and all my life I have been very creative at telling stories and writing assignments, but never have the structure to map out. Now you have made it like just filling out a frame, which i can certainly do and it changes one huge daunting cloudy challenge to specific tasks. When I make the Book Of The Month, I will certainly credit you.
OMG . hello , i'am 15 jears old and i live in belgium. i just started to write my first book , i alrady got 2000 words and now i was watching some vids . when i saw your vid i saw i was using the w storyboard alrady in my mind , so i was alrady using this techniek whitout nowing it is a real techniek . i am now at the middle of te first slide down , and you helpt me a bit whit thinking of the rest of the story , thank you .
Thank you so much for posting this. I feel rather optimistic as I've been really struggling with a complex story idea for a number of years now and I'm hoping the story board idea will stop me tensing up whenever I think about it. Without knowing how to construct a book, I've only been making things more complicated and no sooner had you started explaining the process, I realised I've two or three books worth of ideas and not one. I'm hoping that this will ease my anxiety. Many regards, Matt.
@ Mary Carroll Moore, I am writing a book about a daring life from a wolf's perspective. They can communicate with each other and I have the whole thing planned out in my head. I started writing, then I thought I should add speech. Then I worried about having too much speech, and the whole idea has come to a halt. I very much appreciate if you could advise me to put not much speech in, a little bit of speech, or quite a bit of speech. Please reply, kind regards, Will.
I think this is a very useful and informative guide to properly structure a storyline. It reminds the potential author that events have to go this way and not that at a given point in their story.
I keep coming back to this video because this one makes the most sense. I have a lot that I need to write so I'm thinking of putting it into separate stories within a book. I really like this video tutorial :) Thank you!
omgggg!! ur soo smart!! this has helped me soooo much!! i started the idea for my fiction novels years ago...started it 1 year ago and have just wrote little snipets of it and wasnt sure where to go...this has helps me soo much! and it even helped unblock how to make things connect. thank u!
This was wonderful, thank you! Do you/anyone have any videos or recommendations about theme, voice, pacing, inner/outer story, and dilemma that you mentioned at the end?
Marry you are an excellent teacher in writing a nonfiction book, in such short time you have explained so well how to start with W. It is an amazing, I would like to know if you offer any course how to write a book. Thanks.
I recently purchased Plottr and saw your template. I've been looking at most of them because I had already started my novel and was about 26 chapters in. I've been trying to find a template that would help me structure what I have already written and that my loose structure would fit with. Your "w" structure is perfect. I'll need to do some tweaking to my islands, but it looks like I've already followed this basic idea already. Thanks!
Thank you for this very informative and helpful video! I have hundreds of islands and characters and settings in my 'book' but I need to make them connect and was totally lost about how to do that. This gives me enough structure that I think I can pull it together. Wow, that's scary… :O
"...a change inside herself". ...something tells me this is what happens in most of your fiction books :P ....no, but seriously, this was helpful. I have all these ideas, but I can never organize them (...plus, I get distracted by ideas that spark other stories lol).
Thank you for your comments! Very happy this video helped! Feel free to visit my website to learn more about my classes and workshops--on line and in person--for storyboarding.
I've done this since I was a kid. This is how I was taught, but I have different terms like hook, inciting incident, plot point 1/2 and I call mine a "dramatic arc."
@ Mary Carroll Moore a wonderful tutorial, that was of instant help to me. Just one question. There is the phrase back story between the 2nd and 4th low points. Can you explain this term with reference to the diagram. I know what back story is, just wondering how it relates in the diagram. Thanks and many smiles
I see a problem here. There is an implication that Act 3 is a point synonymous with the end or final resolution, which seems to short-circuit what should be an accelerated interval of time (as opposed to a point) that begins well before the end and terminates at the resolution. I think the three acts probably are best expressed as three intervals demarcated by points between each one's own start and end rather being points in and of themselves as this 'W" seems to imply. Thoughts?
There are so many needlessly negative comments. Get a crip people. She recorded the video years ago, when camera quality and sound were embryonic. The fact that she made a TH-cam video was probably pioneering at the time. Kudos to Ms. Moore. This is excellent information for new writers. We can overlook the audio issues.
I am undertaking a diploma in novel writing and I am also working on my debut novel. I have read many books all offering different ways of outlining a novel and all of them have been very difficult to adapt to the physical process. Your storyboarding process has enlightened me and has perfectly pushed everything I have learnt into one final, excellend concept - which I will definitely be using. Thanks for teaching us Mary!
I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for posting this. I am just beginning my journey as a writer and I have always preferred to be a "fly by the seat of my pants" writer but I found it made staying on target with my novels difficult. I was looking for something that was simple to work with and didn't require a lot of effort to get the story laid out (I abhor outlining) and this seems like a wonderful technique. I will definitely give it a try.
I don't know how to thank you. Within these 12 mins I was actually able to divide my whole book into the 3 acts... You are amazing and your students are lucky to have such an awesome teacher... Thank u...
I'm 14 and I'm writing a book too! This has really helped!
The middle section (act 2) of my book was dragging, and I went back and rewatched this video. I followed Mary's instructions, and I made up little post its for each scene or narrative section of that second act, and I looked for ways to order them to give rising and falling action, from point 2 to 3 and down to 4. I think it really helped, and my book reads much better now. As I go into final revisions, working on language and little tweaks, I am happier with how it reads. Thanks, Mary
I have been writing for awhile, taken courses, read LOTS of books, but this is the best explaination I have ever witnessed and put so many things in perspective for me. *Getting to work now!* thanks so much!
This video contained unbelievably helpful information for me. The "W Storyboard Structure" is an extensive, yet simple enough, way of showing me the structure to a story. Thank you~!
This is exactly what I needed! Thank you for putting this out their for us new writers!
Thanks so much for all the great comments. Feel free to access the W storyboard from my book Your Book Starts Here. It has a sample diagram that you can photocopy and enlarge.
Although the quality of this video was somewhat poor, this is the best information I have learned during my outlining phase! Thank you SO very much Mary!
im a freshman and my teacher assigned this video for homework. i was surprised at how helpful it was!
How useful. Your storyboarding technique takes my spotty archipelago of plotting ideas and solidifies them into a continent. Thanks.
This can be a fun process when shared but also be a frustrating process when significant gaps are discovered in the plot. It is a technique that improves with practice. I found that perseverance is the key to success with storyboarding.
This is the most helpful video regarding novel structuring I could find on TH-cam.
I was already familiar with this structure, but I have never seen it presented in such a coherent way.
Thank you!
This is great. I have never used a storyboard before. What I do to stretch myself is We Writes. It's where I collaborate with other writers, other styles, etc. on a single short story project. This helps me paint pictures in my mind of different ways to express my main plot line through the chronology of a book I am writing. I think I am going to try a storyboard on my next novel.
Mary Carroll Moore, you have dropped a gem in this video and hopefully, one day, you'll hire a developer and work on doing this as a writing app. Its visual appeal will cater to the younger generation and bring you back into the forefront of Story Development.
WOW this is incredibly helpful. I used to write a book series back when I was in elementary school to a little bit into middle school. It was definatly a lot of fun, however I was just like what you said towards the end: My islands never formed into continents they were so far apart in fact, that I gave up on my story and never took it back up again. Now that I know a good way to set it up and It works even for far minded people like me, I'll make a new one and hope for the best!
Thanks a lot!
Thanks MCM.
I am not very disciplined abut my writing. I usually write what comes to my head first, in absolutely no order. Out there somewhere, I know how the entire story will come together. However, I also found out that it takes a longer time to finish my work - sometimes just collating the chapters takes weeks. And forces reviews and edits. Your storyboard sounds very useful. Now, I have to find a way to convince my head that this is the better way to go. Old habits...
You did a great job teaching a topic that tends to be too convoluted
Thank you Mary for taking the time to do this for all of us. Very informative.
Thank you! I can finally start writing that novel that I've been putting off....
You are great....thanks, i had some blocks in my book , they are now easy to explain..........i LOVE you.
I agree exactly what I needed right now. Bought 2 story boards. Should have watched until the end and bought 3. For the future for sure if the first two work. Thank you for doing this video!
Thank you for taking the time to share your insights. Very good information.
Recommended 10 years later.
thanks Mary, have just watched the video twice (and made notes), and am going to play with the storyboard idea for my own novel-on-progress!
Extremely helpful tool . This makes everything more clear.
What a very informative presentation. Thank you very much. This was very helpful.
Can't thank you enugh for this video, I've been using it for years!!!!!
Thank you so much for the video!!!! I now have a plan to follow to get my ebook written.
Thank you for sharing your secrets and knowledge with us. I write little (what I called) snippets of my story and then merge them...now I know they are little islands that connect into continents! Thank you! :D
This is a grand rethinking of the traditionally taught "Plot Diagram", with its all too simplistic rising action, climax & unwinding action.I always thought it was too simplistic, given the action movie mindset of most students who expect a lot more story after the supposed climax in schoolbook literature. I'm going to try to find out if other educators have re-thought that diagram, particularly in light of such intriguing writing maps such as yours here. Thank you so much.
+rob dizo ----------- said: This is a grand rethinking of the traditionally taught "Plot Diagram", with its all too simplistic rising action, climax & unwinding action.
Right. Feralt's Triangle:
www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781614751755/9781614751755___7.htm
So antiquated but still a favorite of our pal, Dave Farland. That's because of the plot DEVICE that he adds to it --- the "Try Fail Cycle." (Also a favorite of Robert McKee and Dan Wells.) It seems to me that Feralt's Triangle is wholly suited just for that plot device --- or one even more simplistic.
Google it and --- by all indications, Feralt and Freytag were the same guy. (They're not.) Freytag's Pyramid --- another antiquated paradigm (circa 1864). By the time Freytag published that paper...Jane Austen had already been successful with the "W" structure, soon to be followed by Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Island), Henry Haggard (She) and in the 20th Century, Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence).
This video was very helpful in giving me a framework to use as I begin plotting my writing. I believe this simple structure will prove to be invaluable to me as I write! Thanks very much for sharing.
Thank you so much. I have an incredible story to tell, and all my life I have been very creative at telling stories and writing assignments, but never have the structure to map out. Now you have made it like just filling out a frame, which i can certainly do and it changes one huge daunting cloudy challenge to specific tasks. When I make the Book Of The Month, I will certainly credit you.
Thank you. Just finished using your W storyboard for my story.
So helpful, thank you! Concise & clear explanation.
Simple.Direct.Beautiful. Too good mary..Thank you..
Succinct and crystal clear. Thank you!
Definitely useful. Thank you. Now let's start.
Anxious to try this. I am all over the place when I write. Thank you!
OMG . hello , i'am 15 jears old and i live in belgium. i just started to write my first book , i alrady got 2000 words and now i was watching some vids . when i saw your vid i saw i was using the w storyboard alrady in my mind , so i was alrady using this techniek whitout nowing it is a real techniek . i am now at the middle of te first slide down , and you helpt me a bit whit thinking of the rest of the story , thank you .
Thank you so much for posting this. I feel rather optimistic as I've been really struggling with a complex story idea for a number of years now and I'm hoping the story board idea will stop me tensing up whenever I think about it.
Without knowing how to construct a book, I've only been making things more complicated and no sooner had you started explaining the process, I realised I've two or three books worth of ideas and not one. I'm hoping that this will ease my anxiety.
Many regards, Matt.
@ Mary Carroll Moore, I am writing a book about a daring life from a wolf's perspective. They can communicate with each other and I have the whole thing planned out in my head. I started writing, then I thought I should add speech. Then I worried about having too much speech, and the whole idea has come to a halt. I very much appreciate if you could advise me to put not much speech in, a little bit of speech, or quite a bit of speech. Please reply, kind regards, Will.
I think this is a very useful and informative guide to properly structure a storyline. It reminds the potential author that events have to go this way and not that at a given point in their story.
Thanks for the advice. I just went thru my Outline and now it makes sense.
My desire is to be a published author of a novel. This has been very helpful!
this is very helpful, thank you! The center of the W is labeled "Back Story" but it's not covered.
Got it. THANKS
the corners of my mouth are turned up..i enjoyed your lesson
I keep coming back to this video because this one makes the most sense. I have a lot that I need to write so I'm thinking of putting it into separate stories within a book. I really like this video tutorial :) Thank you!
Yes, story boarding is a very practical, helpful idea. Great video!
-Sarah
(Writer, Blogger, Writing Tutorial Maker)
omgggg!! ur soo smart!! this has helped me soooo much!! i started the idea for my fiction novels years ago...started it 1 year ago and have just wrote little snipets of it and wasnt sure where to go...this has helps me soo much! and it even helped unblock how to make things connect. thank u!
This was wonderful, thank you! Do you/anyone have any videos or recommendations about theme, voice, pacing, inner/outer story, and dilemma that you mentioned at the end?
Very good video, A little hard to follow the graph since we can't see it, but I got the general idea
That was absolutely excellent!
Thanks, Mary! You make it seem so possible.
I really appreciate you putting this video up. Thanks!
Marry you are an excellent teacher in writing a nonfiction book, in such short time you have explained so well how to start with W. It is an amazing, I would like to know if you offer any course how to write a book. Thanks.
Agreed. I love getting advice from other writers. It's very inspiring!
-Sarah
(Writer, Blogger, Writing Tutorial Maker)
Thank you Mary this information was very helpful. I'm going use it in my memoir and share it with my writers circle.
I recently purchased Plottr and saw your template. I've been looking at most of them because I had already started my novel and was about 26 chapters in. I've been trying to find a template that would help me structure what I have already written and that my loose structure would fit with. Your "w" structure is perfect. I'll need to do some tweaking to my islands, but it looks like I've already followed this basic idea already. Thanks!
This is going to help a big deal! Thanks, my fantasy novel will have better story thanks to this... hopefully.
Thanks for this. It's very digestible and immediately applicable
"This is as inspiring as that novel you wrote in the mid-90s, M. C. Moore." --Reward Morrison Nangi from Barcelona, Spain.
Let's see if this works for my book. Thank You!
indeed, a storyboard is very useful and gives a clear vision of the 'flow' of your book... That was a awesome video ;)
Hi Mary-
Looking forward to storyboarding with you at the Loft in Minneapolis in March.
Mary Jo Hoffman
3:08 GTTP (get to the point)
OH man thank you so much. This video is literally torture for me. Ive tried so many time and just cant get passed the first minute.
Thank you for this very informative and helpful video! I have hundreds of islands and characters and settings in my 'book' but I need to make them connect and was totally lost about how to do that. This gives me enough structure that I think I can pull it together. Wow, that's scary… :O
This was a great video Mary! Thanks for you help! I was starting to bog down but this has helped immensely!
Clear and to the point! Thank you!
Love this idea! Thanks for sharing. This method definitely appeals to me and my writing process.
super helpful I can see a clear path in my novel now thanks
Great explanation. Thank you.
Thanks Mary.
Thanks, for letting me learn, from you.
Marry thanks so much for this amazing and helpful info may jesus repay you.this was true gold.
Thanks, now I can develop my game's story better.
Thank you!!! Just what I was looking for!
I really like your sweater & scarf u look very nice in that color.
Very helpful! I've never seen a storyboard done this way before! =)
This was very informative, Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience.
Thank you very much. Very informative. You did an awesome job!
"...a change inside herself". ...something tells me this is what happens in most of your fiction books :P ....no, but seriously, this was helpful. I have all these ideas, but I can never organize them (...plus, I get distracted by ideas that spark other stories lol).
Awesome! So informative and clear! Thank you so much!
Thanks Great job in helping us that need it. you are awesome
Thank you for posting these tips!
thank you sooo much for this... it's been a great help.
Thank you. Visual learner. Smile.
Thank you for your comments! Very happy this video helped!
Feel free to visit my website to learn more about my classes and workshops--on line and in person--for storyboarding.
this was incredibly helpful..... THANK YOU very much....
I've done this since I was a kid. This is how I was taught, but I have different terms like hook, inciting incident, plot point 1/2 and I call mine a "dramatic arc."
Thanks. This makes sense.
I'm not sure what Islands are... isolated ideas? Continents are connected islands (peninsulas or archipelagos)?
Great material!
this makes sense and is very helpful, thanks
Brilliant work!
1000&1 Astonishing Random Facts released on Kindle last night. Thnx
This was really helpful thanks
Excellent tool. Thank you!
@ Mary Carroll Moore a wonderful tutorial, that was of instant help to me. Just one question. There is the phrase back story between the 2nd and 4th low points. Can you explain this term with reference to the diagram. I know what back story is, just wondering how it relates in the diagram. Thanks and many smiles
I see a problem here. There is an implication that Act 3 is a point synonymous with the end or final resolution, which seems to short-circuit what should be an accelerated interval of time (as opposed to a point) that begins well before the end and terminates at the resolution. I think the three acts probably are best expressed as three intervals demarcated by points between each one's own start and end rather being points in and of themselves as this 'W" seems to imply. Thoughts?
Very nice instruction.
Thank you for the video. I found it very helpful!!