Visualizing the Story

By the author, Jim Doti

In constructing a narrative arc that includes a beginning, middle and end in a children’s picture book of 32 pages, as I did for A Christmas Adventure in Little Italy, I like to work with an outline.  Such an outline basically involves storyboarding the book.

Before doing that, I spend a good deal of time visualizing the story in my mind.  I often do this while I’m running.  Since I’m a marathoner, I have plenty of time to think as I pound the turf.

During Saturday’s 10-miler, I realized the story will need some initial character development as well as descriptions of the main characters, Jimmy’s speech impediment and the bullying and other challenges he experiences because of it.

Then there needs to be a description of how Jimmy confronts those challenges by appearing in a play.  A complicating factor is that I have to somehow describe the plot of the play.  I think I can best do that by means of a story within the story.  That may be a little complicated for young readers, but I like challenge.  So I’ll try to find a way to do it.

I think I’ll title the book Jimmy the Elf.  Like A Christmas Adventure, this book is based on a true story where I was selected to be one of the elves in my first grade student play, “The Elves and the Shoemaker.”  I still remember my fellow students complaining to the teacher about me being in the play because of my speech impediment.  That hurt me very much, but I decided – with the encouragement of my teacher and mother – to stick with it and do the best I could.  When we performed the play, I delivered one of my few lines with a certain dramatic flair that led my adventure on stage to be successful.

My vision for the plot, therefore, will be to describe in the story how I came up with the idea to use verve in delivering that line on stage and for that delivery to be the climax of the plot.

Although the stories aren’t linked, the same characters that I introduced in A Christmas Adventure in Little Italy will appear again in Jimmy the Elf.  I also want the two books also to have the same look and feel.  So like A Christmas Adventure, Jimmy the Elf will begin with a letter from me that introduces the story and include a closing letter that brings the reader back to the present.  In our first book, biscotti cookies played a central role in the plot, and I added a biscotti recipe (my Nonna’s!) at the very end of the book.  Since this seemed to hit a responsive chord with readers, I’ll again include a food item in the body of the story and provide a recipe for it at the end.  All these similarities will suggest that the books are part of the same series and can even be sold in a set.

With these ideas in mind, I think I have enough to storyboard the story, something I’ll describe more fully in my next post.