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| Writer's storyboard - visualizing some elements helps make a project real through the long months of writing |
What comes first - the book or the movie?
As a Creative Director in advertising, I've learnt to think visually. As a result, I like to do a book storyboard using Googled photos - like this opening scene
This approach helps to achieve a heightened sense of reality - as important for the author to sustain enthusiasm overvthe long months of writing as it is to the reader living the story.
I've almost shot the movie BEFORE I've written the book.
Excerpt from The Egyptian Mythology Murders
Chapter 1
A female mummy from ancient Egypt lay
outstretched inside a hospital scanning machine.
The British Museum had brought the mummy to St.
Thomas’ Hospital for a non-invasive examination of the body
beneath its wrappings.
“We’ll begin by doing the head and neck in
two millimetre slices. I’m just relieved that nobody will have to give this
patient the bad news that she’s terminal.”
The radiologist had made the joke to bridge
the jarring disconnect between ancient death, wrapped up in magical spells, and
the modern day machinery of medical imaging.
The radiation scan - at a dose lethal for
the living - blasted through the linen windings. It was like a penetration of
sunlight warming the bones after the ache of the desert night.
The machine hummed. A spinning cylinder
curved around the mummy’s head like a night sky arching over Egypt.
The sand-dry cells of the body, spread out
in an undulating landscape on the CT tray, stirred in a sudden breath.
Life!
Resurgent life! It eddied, thickened, mounted in force, blowing, gusting, then
blasting through the mummy like a desert sand storm.
She opened one green eye to look out through
a small gap in her wrappings.
“Shall we pipe in some comforting music for
the patient?” a voice said outside the chamber...
