A Head First chapter goes from nothing to something

by michael on November 12, 2009

I just bought some new screencasting software and decided to let it run while I did a first-pass layout on Head First Excel chapter 4.

A first-pass layout, at least in my workflow, is when I take a chapter that has been planned out in storyboards and put the elements I’ve written into InDesign. In this video you can see a PDF of storyboards on the right hand side of the screen while I create an InDesign version of the storyboards on the left.

On my second pass, I’ll add screenshots and any code that needs to be written for the chapter. On the third pass, I’ll focus on the writing. On the fourth pass, I’ll make sure everything’s tight before I send it to my editor Brian. Before the first pass in InDesign, the chapter lives as storyboards, and prior to that it lives as a Learner’s Journey, and prior to that it is just a mess of ideas in my head.

Right now, the chapter is crap. It only becomes non-crap on the fourth layout pass.

Every day I sit down and say, “I’m going to make some crap.” That may sound negativistic and depressing, but actually it’s uplifting and liberating. Since the transition from ideas into my head to a finished product takes at least seven steps, and since only on the last step does the material go from crap to good work, most of the times I sit down to work I’m making crap. It’s easier to get motivated if I recognize this from the beginning. I’m usually setting myself up for disappointment if I sit down and say, “I’m going to do good work,” since good work only takes place at step #7.

Flour (even the best flour) tastes like crap. It takes months to grow the wheat, and processing the wheat into flour is expensive and arduous. Actually making bread only takes a few hours. Eating the bread takes minutes. Most of the work of breadmaking is in the creation of individually foul-tasting raw ingredients. An observation for authors.

(Oh, and it appears from my webcam video that eyebrow-raising, lip-pursing, and other assorted grimacing is part of the writing process as well, but that is all news to me.)

  • Lindsey Fallow

    Hey Michael – great to see someone else going through that process!

    I have a draw-on-the-screen tablet which lets me do my boards direct into the template – boards take longer but the first couple of ID passes are quicker. Then my stroke of genius: I hand it over to Badger! Having a ID expert / illustrator who also happens to be neurologically diverse is definitely a bonus. She’s my most efficient crap-filter.

    Thinking of it as just making crap is really liberating. At the beginning I needed things to be too perfect too quickly – it really crippled me. Since I relaxed about it it seems to go quicker!

  • Troy Church

    Thanks for sharing. Good stuff! May I ask what screen recording software you used?

    Also, in the previous comment Lindsey mentioned drawing directly into “the template”. Is that a story board template that you folks use? Got an example we could see?

    • http://michaelmilton.wordpress.com/ michaelmilton

      Thanks Troy! The screencast software I use is ScreenFlow. That screencast was literally the first time I’d fired up the program. I noticed that it would record both the screen and from your webcame simultaneously, so that is what I made it do.

      I’m really envious of Lindsey’s approach. I’ve lusted after those on-screen tablets for a while. When she uses the word “template” I believe (correct me if I’m wrong, Lindsey) that she’s referring to the InDesign template we use for the layouts. So she’s doing her storyboards on top of that template using her tablet rather than doing them on paper and then copying to the template.

      The InDesign template itself consists of page sizes, margins, guides, styles, and more. In addition to the template, there are the library items you see me dragging from panels onto the page in the video. The template and library, btw, were put together by the multi-talented Lou Barr and make our lives much easier.

      The storyboards themselves don’t have a template. But before doing them the writer needs to have in mind the parameters of the HF format. We need to stay consistent, so if we deviate from the styles or library items in any great measure there needs to be a reason for it. Plus, there are some rules you just have to know, like how you can’t allow headings or body text to spread all the way across the width of the page (unless, again, there’s a good reason for it). So the constraints you have on your design in the storyboard phase are what you’ve learned need to fit with the format.

      Even though the Head First genre has a specific look and feel, and the template/library answers many if not most of the authors’ design questions, O’Reilly is quite supportive of our thinking outside the box visually. We authors are allowed to deviate from the template as much as we want, as long as we can tie our design decisions to claims about how our deviance will improve the learner’s experience. :)

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