When you think about it, the transformative power of the written word is no less phenomenal than the technological miracles of computers, televisions, and smarts phones. Both are alchemy. Technology uses wires and circuits to turn code into the wonder of light and color. Writing does exactly the same thing. Little black squiggles on the page have the power to reach another human being’s mind and light it up with imagery just as vivid as anything that person might experience in the real world.

In reading, all you see are words on paper. But think about one of your favorite books. The visual memory that returns to you is not one of black words on white paper, is it? What you see are images—recalled snapshots of an experience that, in your mind’s eye, looks almost as real as memories of your actual life.

That is the marvelous power of written fiction.

As readers, we know this instinctively. But as writers, we can sometimes get so lost in the technical minutiae of the art form that we forget fiction’s visceral impact. To readers, a story is light and color, sensation and emotion. To writers, fiction is often words. Ideas. Themes. Plot. Structure. Scenes.

Although all those things are crucial to a solid story, they are ultimately just the framework for a reader’s sensory experience of your work. This is why it’s so important for writers to think visually when writing.

Creating Visual Memories of Your Stories: An Exercise

Light the Dark edited by Jonthan Franzen (affiliate link)

In her essay “Nobody Asked You to Write That Novel” in the anthology Light the Dark, Pulitzer-winner Jane Smiley observed:

The moments are what come to mind when I think about the books I like best—moments that stick in my mind as pictures. When you’re deep into reading a book that you’re very fond of, the images pass through your mind and leave a permanent impression. I don’t tend to remember the ideas as strongly. For me, a novel’s conceptual framework generally takes a backseat to the images that tell the story. Ultimately, these images are more important and enduring than what the writer believes.

Today, I want to challenge you to stop thinking about scenes (not permanently, of course, but just as an exercise). Instead, start thinking of your story in terms of images.

Close your eyes and let your story drift through your mind. Maybe put on a song you find especially evocative of your story. Now just watch. What do you see?

• Maybe you immediately have a strong visual response. (Whenever I listen to Nightwish’s “Last of the Wilds,” I experience an almost overwhelming image of my heroine from Dreamlander riding a black stallion through the white snow toward a battle.)

• Maybe what you experience is more of a jumbled mass of pictures—as if you dumped a box of Polaroids onto a table—vivid and real but without conscious order.
• Or maybe you have to purposefully conjure specific images based on scene ideas—creating them on the spot, rather than discovering them already preformed in your own mind.

No one of these responses is right or wrong. But the stronger your visual memories of your story, the more likely you will be able to craft words that work the same alchemy for readers.

Likely, the images that come to you most naturally and vividly are representative of the most important moments in your story—whether you realize it or not. If you want to create a cohesive (and resonant!) story, you must use these visceral “story memories” to build your narrative, plot, and theme in the most organic way possible. Instead of trying to glue the story’s mechanics onto the top of these central images, you can instead mine these images for the thematic elements and ideas that make them so powerful to you. And then use that.

6 Ways to Write Powerful Imagery

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg (affiliate link)

In Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote:

The very nature of reading encourages us to believe we’re looking through the prose to worlds on the other side of the ink.

To that end, here are six ways you can learn to pay attention to your own visual imagination, mine it for its full wealth, and then craft a story that unforgettably shares those riches with your readers.

1. Recall Your Visceral Responses From Other Books

The first step to writing strongly visual fiction is to gain a conscious understanding of this highly subconscious phenomenon. Look to yourself and your own reading experiences.

Again, think of your favorite reading experiences (not movie experiences, since they’re already explicitly visual). What do you remember? What do you see? (And definitely try to go beyond any image that might have been directly influenced by the book’s cover or other related art.)

Try to remember these “moments” in the story as specifically as possible. Mentally flesh out the visual details. Now… what do you feel? What emotions do you associate with these moments? Do you remember what was happening in the plot? In the theme? Do you have an intellectual memory or understanding of these things as well? Or is what you feel more of an idea?

Again, there are no right or wrong answers. Just analyze your experiences and your responses. Figure out what about these particular scenes is so visually arresting they’ve become imprinted in your memory.

2. Fill Your Mind With Images

You cannot draw water from an empty well. None of us are capable of coming up with something out of nothing. We all need external “objective” input from the outside world in order to, in turn, create something subjective from within our interior worlds.

Remember the Neil Gaiman quote we referenced a few weeks ago? He talked about how our early (and not-so-early) influences get tossed into the compost heap of our minds where they’re broken down into the kind of rich and fertile soil we require to grow new ideas.

This is why writers must be students of the world. Being a student begins by opening yourself to experiences and, particularly, images. Yes, read like crazy. But also look like crazy. Become an avid looker of the world. At every opportunity, fill your brain with new images.

When possible, travel. Watch movies of all types—the more varied, the better. Study paintings: if it’s of people, study every single face: look for the artist’s conscious decisions in every brushstroke. Utilize Pinterest by following a variety of boards, everything from global scenery to fantasy paintings to architecture.

Be a visual glutton. Cram your imagination full of beautiful and arresting images. You won’t even be aware of how most of these images influence your own writing, but they will.

Dreamlander (Amazon affiliate link)

Recently, I rewatched Disney’s animated Robin Hood, which was a childhood favorite. I was surprised to be able to realize how much of the film’s imagery had impacted my own writing. (The armory behind the waterfall in Dreamlander? I can now see how that was totally my imagination recycling the scene when Robin takes Marian to his hidden camp through the entrance behind the waterfall.)

3. Study Symbolism

The reason imagery is so memorable—and so powerful—is because it represents symbolism. This is true on both a universal level (e.g., we all instinctively understand the implications of light and dark), but also on a personal level. The reason certain images from certain stories remain with you so intensely is because they represent or are in themselves symbols of things that are important to you.

We might argue that art itself is essentially nothing more or less than symbolism. Especially when it requires people to interact with it emotionally (rather than on a conscious, logical level), it becomes a manifestation or metaphor of a deeper feeling, idea, or belief.

Written fiction tends to complicate this idea. Unlike a painting, which simply is what it is and offers no commentary upon itself, written fiction is almost entirely its own commentary. This is why writers instinctively understand the importance of the principle “show, don’t tell.” The more we tell—the more we commentate—the more we degrade a story’s natural symbolism.

To execute symbolism well, writers must have a conscious understanding of this powerful tool. One way to look at symbolism is as the intersection of imagery and meaning. This definition affords guidelines for study. Part of paying attention to your own visceral reactions to images (those you see in real life, film, and visual art, but also those you imagine based on the written word) is, first, asking yourself what these reactions tell you these images mean to you, and, then, what it is you think the artist intended them to mean.

4. Make Use of Weather, Lighting, and Color

Universal symbolism largely draws its metaphors from universal sources. Top among these are weather, lighting, and color. Think of these as these as the primary colors on your palette—red, blue, and yellow. They’re bold, they’re brash, they’re impossible to ignore, and they’re powerfully memorable. But they’re also just the starting place for more nuanced uses of symbolic imagery.

Think again about some of your favorite remembered scenes. I bet some of the most powerful aspects of these memories incorporates one or all of these elements.

More than once, when I’ve struggled to write a scene, it’s because the lighting is off. Sounds crazy, but sometimes you just can’t write a scene the way you want it if you have the sun shining down on your characters.

Same goes for color. Color galvanizes all my visual scenes. In all my memories, it’s the colors that pop to mind first. And when I do the mental exercise of running through one of my stories image by image, my mind’s eye is instantly awash in color.

5. Train Yourself to Think in Images

Outlining Your Novel (Amazon affiliate link)

Allow me a momentary rabbit trail: It has been my observation that the reason many writers get hung up on the outlining process is because they’re too focused on the words. They’re creating a list of scenes that is nothing but words (e.g., Larry went to town; Maya broke her leg). When they stop thinking of the outline as a scene list and instead start using it as a brainstorming exercise in which they vividly envision their scenes, everything changes.

Storming (Amazon affiliate link)

However important it may be, if scene structure is the beginning and end of how you think about scenes, you’re missing one of the most important ingredients. In planning every scene in your story, discipline yourself to take a step back from the plotting. Instead of focusing rigorously about how your character has to have a goal and that goal has to be met by conflict, give your subconscious a chance to speak up. Stop thinking about the scene and start seeing it.

A recent reviewer of my aviation-adventure novel Storming made my day by saying that “some of her stuff is outrageous, but always entertaining.” To me, this means I’m doing my job right. I’m opening up my subconscious and using its unique and vibrant images. Instead of just writing, “oh, and then they had a fight,” I’m trying to find the most interesting visual to represent this important moment in the plot.

But remember, even as you’re relying on the power of universal symbolism, you’re trying to avoid using the same old image readers have seen a million times before. You’re taking all your own visual influences, throwing them in a food processor, and seeing what new and interesting mashup emerges. Don’t settle for seeing the same old sights; seek brave new visions.

6. Polish Descriptive Skills

And now, finally, we come to the subject of execution. Writing is ever a tale of duality: subconscious and conscious. Your conscious brain can have nothing worthwhile to execute if the subconscious isn’t supplying it with rich fodder. But even the richest imaginations will fail to connect with others if the conscious execution isn’t portraying ideas as powerfully and cleanly as possible.

Really, the art of creating visual fiction is as vast as the art of narrative writing itself. Choosing the right words, balancing subtext and context, knowing when to show and when to tell, even crafting solid structures and themes—all of these are inherent to marvelously visual fiction.

Still, when most of us think of executing images on the page, we’re thinking about describing them. Description is one of the most important, straightforward, and yet difficult skills for any writer to master. In writing visual fiction, perhaps the two most important aspects of description are concreteness (avoiding abstractions or generalities) and specificity (choosing evocative and memorable descriptors).

***

A writer’s imagination is the ultimate fantasy land. Visit it fully every chance you get. Open the doors and let it spill into the real world. And, in return, never cease feeding those fantasies with the beauties and wonders of reality. Taking full advantage of the shared imaginative experience the written word creates between individuals is one of the most incredible opportunities and greatest privileges of being a writer.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What is an image you recall vividly from one of your favorite books? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast or Amazon Music).

___

Love Helping Writers Become Authors? You can now become a patron. (Huge thanks to those of you who are already part of my Patreon family!)