I had a brilliant, productive three hours this morning, working with Eva Byrne on storyboarding our Terrified Troll picture book. I'd written several drafts of the story over the last few years, and Eva had produced loads of sketches, but this was the first time that we sat down as a pair and fine-tuned it into a working storyboard. We now have a clear working plan for how the book is going to play, with each page of the story sketched out. VERY exciting!!
If you'd like to track the evolution of The Terrified Troll, there's a PERK in our fundraiser for the book, called the TROLL DRAFTS PORTFOLIO. This features every draft of the story to date, from when it was a single-page poem, to my latest run-through of it this month. There's actually LOADS more in the drafts than will appear in the final book, as we've ended up having to trim it down quite severely to get the story flowing the way it needed to. And there are scenes that will only properly be understood by the few people who read the various drafts. You'll also get to read my original, beautiful-but-bleak ending, which I had to change because I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks that a scene where a child is told it's going to grow up to eat its parents can be a SWEET scene!!! :-)
This is a truly unprecedented look-behind-the-scenes into my working process. I think it's an amazing perk. It takes me a lot of time to put each portfolio together, and although they're photocopies, I handwrite dates on several of the drafts, and Eva produces a wonderful title page with an original sketch for each of them. I've attached a photo of a title page (as yet unsigned and numbered).
Oh!! I almost forgot to mention -- I'm also going to write a short essay, probably a couple of pages or so in length, reflecting on the growth of the story, explaining some of the changes that I made between drafts, and also talking about how the work has now moved on from my drafts, to the storyboard, where any final changes will be made by myself and Eva working in collaboration.
If I've whetted your appetite for more, you can purchase a copy of the portfolio (only 6 remain up for grabs as I write this), or any of the other perks, by clicking here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-bring-our-troll-to-life/x/35435619#/
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