The story plan is the skeleton to your story or book. Whether you are planning a novel or a short children's book, your story plan is important. These work well for anybody looking to iron out the wrinkles of their ideas before they get to the heavy work of writing a book. You can download our free story planner pdf to help you.
I also talk a lot about the outsourcing process and how a well put together story plan helps the hiring process, whether hiring a writer to bring your ideas to life or hiring a freelancer to illustrate your book.
So, I have put together a simple but resourceful story planner pdf to help you out.
It is 7 pages long, A4 sized and includes the following templates:
- Character Profile Planner
- Storyboard
- Advanced Storyboard
- Mindmap
- Setting & Theme Planner
- Notes
Character Profile Planner
You can use the character profile template to develop your characters and their roles in the story.
These come in handy when you need to make sure you have a variety of characters and strategies how they are connected in the main story.
While you start to draft your book you can always refer back to your character sheets to make sure these notable characteristics are displayed and consistent throughout.
Storyboard
The storyboard is typically used for planning illustrated scenes in a children's book. You can sketch your ideas for the page and make notes about what is happening in the scene.
These are also what I would send over if hiring a freelance illustrator.
Even if you cannot draw well, the instruction will serve as guidelines as with text alone they might come up with their own idea for the scene which may not correlate with yours!
To minimize these sorts of issues, it is always best to use a storyboard.
Advanced Storyboard
The advanced storyboard planner is for more detailed illustrations or sketches, followed by wide-ruled lines for description.
This is used both when hiring somebody and doing the illustrations yourself. With the advanced storyboard pages, you simply have more room to design your page, making it easier to upload and adjust in photoshop.
Likewise, if you require more detailed illustrations in your book and wish for the freelance illustrator to follow more specific rules for constructing your book's artwork, you would use this sheet.
- Or Cover Design Planner
Another use for the advanced storyboard planner is as a cover design planner. Covers are typically uploaded as one file, back cover to front cover. You can use this rectangular drawing box to sketch out your cover idea or print your mockup directly onto the A4 page. From there you can use the lined section to construct the blurb.
Mindmap
Brainstorm your characters, story plot, settings, color-schemes and whatever else you want.
Setting & Theme Planner
The setting and theme planner is used to develop different scenes and themes in your book. These could be locations or they could be the actual layout of your book.
Notes
The notes pages are just wide-ruled lined pages. These can be used for anything. When writing short children's story's often one or two pages suffice and can be kept with the other story plans.
YOUR FREE STORY PLANNER PDF DOWNLOAD IS BELOW!
Once downloaded you can print as many copies of each page as you like. For example, if you have just 4 characters and 18 different scenes/pages that you plan to illustrate - you can simply download 4 copies of the character planner and 2 storyboard sheets. I thought it might be easier this way rather than make a larger document with duplicates.
If you do not wish to faff about with multiple sheets of paper, there are a number of story planners selling on Amazon which do the same thing.
Story Planner Paperback Journals
Plot Factory Story Planner
There is also a free online platform and app called Plot Factory which allows you to plan your story in depth including creating universes, characters, plots and subplots and also audio narration.
You can check out my review of the platform here.
