Heya I can totally relate to this. I can sort of give a summary of a method that works well here but if you REALLY want to get a good grasp on storytelling visually I recommend reading Story by Robert McKee. (Apologies in advance for how long this is)
The best method I found this far has been working from the inside out of the story. Writing theory is great but only during revision not story creation. It's two different modes of thinking.
Making the story should be imaginative and expansive and revisioning is where you cut things down and make them more precise. But to do that you need to create an excess of content to work with. In my pitch for the Tapas Incubator I cut out 70% of the material I came up with.
Working from the inside out means starting from your characters and constantly asking yourself, "If I were this character in this situation what would I do?" and you ask that whenever any of the characters makes a decision to act or say something.
To start you can make a step-outline. That's using either index cards or a spreadsheet or something like Scrivener to make short summaries of scenes and where you think they ought to go in a story (setup, inciting incident, increasing progress, crisis and climax etc.). The best stories are found after you've scrapped like a lot of possible scenes and since its all brief summaries of what happens and changes in a scene you can make a lot over a good period of time while you also just keep a side pile of information you think of for the characters and setting. Always keep in mind to think through your characters eyes.
Once you have a workable step outline you can tie it together int a reasonable synopsis that should tell the whole story in a maximum of five paragraphs. That is what you can present to people you trust to see if the story is solid. It's a good way to catch plot problems early.
Then you move on to a Treatment which is an expansion of every scene in your outline into a description of everything that happens and what's going on. No dialogue allowed here, this things like "Frank wanted Judy to stay but she decides to leave". The story will continue to reveal itself to you here and transform as you expand each scene.
It's only after the treatment is complete and you can really see the story that you make the Script. And by this point you know your story inside out so the pace at which the script gets made tends to be explosive (even though the story outline phase is the longest of the three cause that's where you generate the maximum content of ideas). The script also finally has dialogue which you can write in a wonderful way cause you know the subtext of what the characters want to say and thus the dialogue gains a layer of dimension that you would not get if you went straight into the script.
This is just a summary of the basic process and its the very last chapter in the book I mentioned at the top of my post. Reading the book will honestly give you all the tools you need to develop a story.
I hope this helps and best of luck with your story!
