After the Outline: The Storyboard

You've developed your proposal outline and schedule, and you've assigned all the writing sections to the various members of your proposal team. So now you're ready to begin writing the proposal -- right? Not so fast. There's another step to take before the writing begins. It involves doing some in-depth brainstorming and planning about what will actually be written in each section. This step is often referred to as developing a storyboard.

As its name implies, a storyboard is the "story" of your proposal from beginning to end. It serves as a script or guide for the proposal writers by specifying what should be addressed in each section and subsection of the proposal. It also helps all members of the proposal team get a better understanding of the proposal as a whole, as well as the relationships among the various sections and subsections.

Depending on the length and complexity of your proposal, the storyboarding process can take several hours or several days. But it is time well-spent. To develop a storyboard, all members of the team should be convened for a proposal strategy meeting. The proposal manager or other designated person facilitates the process by going step-by-step through the outline, using a large whiteboard or chart paper.

For each section/subsection of the proposal, the facilitator asks:

• What is our theme for this section?


• What are we going to write about here?


• How does this section relate to Section XYZ?


• Is what we are saying in this section consistent with what we said earlier/later?


• And so on...

Through a brainstorming process, proposal team members arrive at agreed-upon answers (as well as bringing up other important points and issues), all of which are written down so that they can be referred to during the course of the meeting and later typed up and distributed.