Monday, June 24, 2013

Get References For What You Imagine

In the story I am currently working on with the working title, The Outlaw, I have a situation where I had an off road vehicle. I had imagined what it would look like and that worked fairly well. The vehicle was a small detail and it wasn't that important, but the way I imagined it is part of the world I'm creating for the story to take place and the characters to inhabit.

I am compiling a Pinterest board on the story with photographic references to help me visualize and describe the world that I imagine. Click here and you can go see it. I managed to find off road vehicles that very closely approximated what I had imagined. Looking at them gives me a better idea of my imagined off road vehicle and provides me with detail that I didn't think of. When I go back to rewrite the part of the story where that vehicle comes up, I'll be able to incorporate what I found from the visual references I found.

The same thing happened with the patio furniture. I had envisioned a patio setting for a meeting where I would introduce the major antagonist. When I went looking for visual references I found furniture more in keeping with the setting that was different from what I had originally imagined. In this case changing the furniture will reset the emotional interaction in the scene and allow me to make the villain much more menacing.

With the availability of so much reference material on the internet it behooves a writer to take advantage of it. This is especially true for helping a writer visualize the various aspects of the world they are creating in which their story takes place.

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