Scott McCloud's Story Machine

Scott McCloud is a comic book writer, artist, and theorist. He’s best known for his book Understanding Comics and has written other works about the future of the medium, how to convey story visually, as well as various comic books in general. He’s been referred to as “just about the smartest guy in comics” by Frank Miller.

For our next writing tool, we’re going to take a look at McCloud’s Story Machine, a tool he put together to help get your story juices flowing. For various reasons, I won’t host the full image here, for that you can visit his website, but I’ll put a chunk of the image below so you can visualize.

This tool is meant to be a bit of a free association, but I’ll let you know how I might use it building upon McCloud’s instructions. Rather than start from a place of pure nothingness, I’d recommend starting with some piece of your story… a character, setting, incident, or set-piece. Next, drop your finger/mouse pointer at a random part of the story machine. Think of how that shape relates to your piece of story. Next, roll the D4 as suggested and move the appropriate direction and imagine how that next shape can relate to your story piece, etc.

If it’s not working for you, drop your finger/mouse in another location and give it another shot. I don’t think this is necessary to carry you through a full story, but can get you moving if you’re stuck.

Scott McCloud’s Story Machine - Detail