Featured Author: Michael Morrison on Head First Behind the Scenes: Storyboarding

Seriously, pretty much every page of every Head First book first exists as a scribbly drawing on paper before it ever makes its way into page layout software. Same deal with my book. In fact, my entire book was written on paper in pencil before I ever laid out a single page electronically. That version of a Head First book is known as storyboards, or boards for short. The idea is that you sketch up the core visual elements of each page in the boards. And by steering clear of software layout tools with fancy visual effects, you're forced to stick within the realm of concepts. No characters, no cute graphics, just core visual concepts and whatever your artistic ability can muster. It's all about focus.

As an example of how this works, check out these real storyboards from Head First JavaScript. In this spread (two facing pages), I'm showing how browser cookies are used to recall the user's name when they touch a virtual pet rock (the iRock). The main thing to notice is that although there is some text on the pages (apologies for the handwriting), the real focus is on how the teaching will be carried out visually. First the code is shown on the left side of the spread, then the flow of the script code is shown on the right side of the script, complete with little hand drawn screen shots of the dialog boxes that appear.

Now look at the finished product, which appears on pages 122 and 123 of the real book if you happen to have it. In the final version, the sketches have been replaced with real imagery and screen shots, and more details have been fleshed out, including a new paragraph at the top of the right page. This is typical of the Head First writing process - get the really important stuff down first, especially the visuals, and then add to it as necessary to fill in the gaps. And by "gaps," I don't mean places to add fluffy filler, I mean important holes in the teaching that truly need to be plugged. That's why more details were added on these pages.

OK, so maybe it's vaguely interesting to see how these books go together, but what's the real point here? The point is that a whole lot more goes on in the creation of these books than immediately meets the reader's eye. And this is just the boards. Before the boards are the beats, which are written descriptions of how the boards will flow. And before the beats is the learner's journey, which is sort of like a table of contents on Head First steroids. And before the learner's journey, well, that's still a bit top secret. I can't give it all away or you'd just write your own Head First JavaScript and I'd be left on a street corner offering JavaScript advice for tips. That's a scary thought...in more ways than one! I hope you enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes look at how Head First books are created.