Tag: Imagination
The Observer
I love hot air balloons, yet I’ve never been up in one. I am afraid of heights, yet I would go up in one of these in a heart beat. The opportunity never presented itself. Just think about how quiet it must be up there. You’d be able to look down and wonder, letting your imagination go. Maybe you are going through some stressful times and need to get away from everything. This would be a great way to do that. Hiking is another fun activity to help one relax. Here again, I’ve never been hiking. Not really. I have friends who do and they send back some fabulous pictures of their trips. There’s so much so see in this world, not just here in America. Get out and live life. Enjoy the beauty it has to offer, whether you’re on the ground or up in a balloon.
Voice
When I am reading a work of fiction, I hear the voices of the character in my mind. No, I don’t hear voices literally. I imagine I hear them. That’s quite different. But, when I hear each of them as I’m reading, they all sound different. I hear them that way because the author did such a good job with creating a voice for each individual character that they all sound different.
So how do we make our fictional characters sound different? It comes down to choice of words and how those words are said. I think body language/facial expression also plays a part in that it helps with how the words are intended when spoken on the page in your dialogue. Think of their character too. Is how they speak out of character for them. If so, why?
Look at the different ways to say something.
Example:
“You heard that? Really? I didn’t think I was that loud,” said Bill.
“Hey ya. Serious now, ya’ll hear that? How? Not like I was ‘at loud or nothin,” said Bill.
Play around with your words. See your character in your mind. Imagine them talking. How are they saying what their saying?
Pretend
As a child, did you ever play pretend? It’s the ultimate use of the imagination. At some point along the way many people stop playing pretend and enter into the world of reality. Their focus turns to something else. That’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with that. For authors though, the pretending doesn’t stop. We like to play pretend. It’s how our books get written.
When I was a child, I loved to play make believe. I daydreamed a lot (to my teachers’ angst). As I grew older, the thought of writing stories and poems became my focus. I had much to learn about the writing process, but I didn’t let it stand in my way. You shouldn’t let that stand in your way either. Learn it, use it, keep it. Never lose that hunger/passion within you that wants to write. Write for your pleasure and to make others happy. AND, above all else, KEEP PRETENDING.
Mt. Hood
The Tight Rope of Story Telling
We write and we edit. We try to get the story on paper or the computer screen, then we go back when we’re finished and edit what we’ve written. That’s how it’s supposed to be done anyway. Does that always happen in that order? No. Not always. There are times when we try to edit as we type. The left side of our brain wants to insert itself at the same time our right side of the brain is trying to be imaginative and creative. This process can cause you to slow down when you’re trying to come up with a story.
Let’s say you’re a paragraph into writing a scene. So far you like it, but then the analytical side of your brain (left) is saying ‘No, no. That won’t work’. You go back and rewrite parts of that paragraph. You like what you came up with and move on to the next paragraph. You’re a couple of sentences into the second paragraph when your analytical side starts rethinking what you rewrote in the first paragraph. So, you go back and look at it but aren’t sure how you want to fix it. You end up sitting there thinking. Your fingers start strumming on your desk and you lean back in your chair and stare at the ceiling. An hour later you haven’t fixed anything, nor have you moved on with your writing. Had you waited to fix what your analytical side of your brain wanted to fix, you would have been MUCH further on in your story. You may have even gotten a chapter done.
How many of you can relate to the scenario above. I know it’s happened to me at times. So, how do we turn off the left side of our brain and make its impatient self wait? It’s quite easy actually. You make it wait. Turn it off. If you don’t like something you’ve just written, make a note of it so you can go back at a later date and fix it when you’re not writing. Choose a specific day and time when that’s all you’re going to do is edit and fix.
Loosen the “rope” when you’re creating and “tighten” it back up when you’re editing.
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 