Time for the next installment of the Visual Storyboarding series!
(Previous entries have been bookmarked for you at the end of this post.)
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KINDS OF TIMELINES:
JELLYBEAN, LICORICE, VONNEGUT, LINE
Now that we’ve discussed (a) why we storyboard and not
merely “plot”, (b) how to visualize our hooks, and (c) how to pull together the
factual AND visual details for our respective novels --- the next step, then,
is to craft a timeline of events that your characters must endure for the sake
of the story.
The good news?
Timelines don’t need to be ultra-specific - only enough to keep you on track
with where your tale needs to go.
The challenge?
Since this is visual storyboarding, you'll likely need at least two different kinds of timelines,
and possibly all four.
Which four kinds of timelines do I mean? The ones mentioned
in the blog title, of course: Jellybean, Licorice, Vonnegut, Line.
But in true Angela fashion, I’ve given you the list of
timeline forms in reverse order. Let’s start with the last one, shall we?
LINE TIMELINE:
This is the form of timeline that every schoolchild knows. A
basic, straightforward timeline that gives the general idea of which event
happened first – you know, to show that Napoleon lived before Ronald Reagan, or
that the sinking of the Titanic did
NOT happen during the Third Crusade.
A basic line timeline looks something like this:
Simple enough, yes?
So when you first sit down to work the timelines for your
novel, this is usually your first step. Go ahead and get the obvious out on
paper – not in paragraph form, but in this simple line form, so that you can
have a quick reference to make sure your novel doesn’t jump the tracks and
diverge into the opium fields somewhere.
You may have already done this part, of course. If you have,
you’re ready for the next kind of timeline:
VONNEGUT TIMELINE:
This is the timeline idea that revolutionized the way I plot
my stories – and, as you might have guessed from the name, the idea was given
to me by the old wisecracking surrealist writer, Kurt Vonnegut himself.
More specifically, I learned about this style of
time-line-ing when I first sat down to read Vonnegut’s best-known novel, Slaughterhouse Five.
I refer, of course, to the first chapter of that book, which
explains how he came up with his hypnotically fractured story about
time-sliding Billy Pilgrim. More specifically, he explains what aliens and a disillusioned
middle-aged man have to do with Vonnegut’s own experiences during the bombing
of Dresden (WWII), which he and his comrades narrowly survived by hiding out in
a concrete slaughterhouse (from which the book derives its name).
The part that changed the way I saw story-plotting was
Vonnegut’s own confession on how he started to draw out the idea for Slaughterhouse Five:
I had outlined the
Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway, the
prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper. I used my daughter’s
crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper
was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there
was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red
line and then the yellow line, and yellow line stopped because the character
represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden
was represented by a vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines
that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.
Now – I don’t know if that description makes any sense to
you, but it sent off massive amounts of light bulbs in my head. Holy crow, I
thought. That makes so much sense! I could see at one whack where all the major
characters are, where they fall in and out of the story, who crosses into the climactic
conflicts, and so on. I could totally do this.
And when I did the serious storyboarding for Castle 8,
that’s just what I did. I taped together several sheets of typing paper end to
end – fourteen feet of it – and spent five solid days during a January ice storm laying out my Dresdens and colored lines and battlefields.
The result looked like this:
"The beginning of the story." First half of the behemoth 14 foot timeline, spread across
my desperately-needs-vacuuming floor. This is how I spent the five days I was stuck
at home during the ice storm of early 2011.
"All that middle part, which was the middle." What you see here has
changed somewhat now; I’ve dropped some characters and shifted the timeline.
That
happens when you write, at least to a point.
"And the other end was the end." The other end of the 14 foot timeline. The broad yellow stripe
indicates the huge climactic scene of the series. I gave myself another foot
or so of space afterward, to allow for adequately handling the denouement of the tale.
Some of the timeline has changed, but most of it is still
structurally sound. I refer to it frequently, because this shows me
at one glance where each character is in relation to the major events happening
in my tale. Moreover, because my series will become increasingly complex in the
overlap of characters’ lives, I will refer to it still more as the tale
progresses. My fourteen foot timeline may look like overkill, but for me – it’s
a lifesaver.
LICORICE TIMELINE
So you’ve got your Vonnegut Timeline ready (or we’re
pretending that you have). Now you realize that even within the overall harp of
colored lifelines, there are some finer points that need their own timeline.
Maybe there is a very busy three month period in your tale where a lot is going
on – OR maybe your story doesn’t cross years (like mine), but a series of
weeks, and a narrower range of time-line-ing is in order.
That’s where laying out a licorice timeline will help.
An incomplete licorice timeline. With very short, squat licorice strips.
(But not quite a jellybean timeline, even so.)
I call it a “licorice” timeline because it looks like
someone’s laid out those long, thin rectangular strands of Twizzlers and given
them funny labels, and took away the color. I did a licorice timeline for
a nine month stretch of Castle 8, and
while it’s not completely finished (or accurate), the current format still helps me understand the necessary structure of those nine important months in my characters' lives.
JELLYBEAN TIMELINE
But what if you need to break events down even further? What
if there are a few days in your narrative where everything is happening at once, and
in several different places?
That’s where a jellybean timeline will help. It works
essentially like the licorice timeline, but with shorter, fatter dollops of
information on a Vonnegut trajectory. I recently had to create a jellybean
timeline to get a better grasp of the opening five days of my story, and the
result was this:
See the cute little jellybean shapes? Or maybe they're more like gumdrops.
But "gumdrop" doesn't quite catch the rhythm of the "jellybean, licorice, Vonnegut, line" jingle.
OTHER THINGS TO
REMEMBER ABOUT STORY TIMELINES:
·
I am severely OCD when it comes to timelines.
Yours doesn’t need to be so neat, or so anal-retentive.
·
Not all of these timeline types will apply to
your story. Most of you will need only one or two, and which ones you need may
vary, depending on the project.
·
It’s always advisable to do the standard line
timeline at least, just so you know where your major events fall, and what
those major events are.
·
EXPERIMENT. I’m sure there’s another way of
handing the timing aspect of things that I haven’t covered here. Use what works
right for you.
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If you missed the earlier Visual Storyboarding episodes, you can follow the following links to catch up:
Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comment section below!
