Using Collage to Create a Snapshot of Your Novel
By Barbara O'Neal | August 24, 2016 |
I can’t remember exactly who taught me the fine, messy art of collaging a novel—it was either Jenny Crusie or Susan Wiggs. Pretty sure Susan mentioned it first, but either way, it’s been a part of my process for a long time. I’m currently building a collage for a novel of women’s fiction, and as I worked on it over the weekend, I was reminded of the value of the process.
Some writers scoff at this process, finding it a waster of time. Maybe some of you fail to see how an art-based project can help you build a book that’s made of words. If you’ve never tried it, however, maybe give it a shot.
The basic process is straight-forward: you use images and other physical or visual materials to create a snapshot of your book. It can be very simple or very complex, and does not require any particular skills or any kind of artistic bent. Jenny, the former art teacher, builds astonishing collages, three-dimensional and with all sorts of gadgets and gizmos. Susan once built them of them of paper board and magazine cut-outs and now has moved her work to Pinterest. I fall somewhere in-between. (The photo above is from the collage I made for How to Bake a Perfect Life.)
The product is not the actual point. It’s a process tool. Using tactile, visual, or textural materials, you get out of your logical, verbal left brain and allow the loose, associative right brain to play.
Let me stress again that you do not need artistic talent. You don’t need to create something “beautiful.” No one else has to see it. Ever. You don’t even have to keep what you make, though I find the snapshot very grounding over the weeks and months it takes to complete a book. For example: On the current board, a photo of a row of worn, paint-splattered female cowboy books brings me back again and again to a basic concept of one main character.
Assemble your materials
Base
You will need a base, at least the weight of poster board. I tend to like the kind of foam board kids use for science fair projects. It can be any size you like, though do give yourself a little space for play, no less than 8×10. I have space on my office wall, plus I’m nearsighted and don’t wear my glasses at the computer, so mine tend to be pretty big, but it really does not matter. It also doesn’t have to be a flat board—you might enjoy browsing around Michael’s or some other hobby store to look at the various options. I once created a gorgeous collage in a hat box, an elaborate thing complete with purple Christmas lights.
Magazines and paper
If you’re flush, by all means go to the local bookstore and buy a bunch of new magazines. I’m madly in love with a series of periodicals published by Stampington, especially Bella Grace and Artful Blogging, which give me the kind of images I need for my women’s fiction novels about women and cooking and all those things. I splurge on them regularly to have material, but it isn’t necessary. You can find lots of periodicals at library sales and thrift shops, and there is a magazine for almost anything you can imagine. Great general choices are photography and art magazines, travel magazines, and home decorating magazines like Veranda.
Other paper products you might enjoy are tissue paper and scrapbooking sheets—there are big blocks of them at hobby stores like Michael’s. Browsing for materials can be an exercise in brainstorming in itself. You’ll find yourself thinking about the general tone and feeling of your book—is it more a delicate green thing, or a sturdy leather?
Other supplies
Get some glue sticks. They don’t have to be fancy. Basic glue sticks from the grocery store will do. Scissors, of course, to cut out the photos and patterns and color swatches you need. In recent years, I’ve used Pinterest and my color printer pretty heavily because I can search for exactly the image I need, and print it out. A Chinese goddess, say, or an actor who represents a character.
You might also want some simple water colors or colored ink, some Mod Podge or glossy finish, paintbrushes or things like that. I have a closet for craft and art supplies and never know what might tickle the muses.
You can also use other bits and pieces—I’ve used milagros and magnets, glitter, paint, leaves and branches. Anything goes. Once I built a collage from a kit for a shrine to a rock star and covered the outside with shredded red Santa Barbara incense. Bonus: it perfumed my office for months.
Timing
To build the collage, I need to be somewhere beyond the very beginning. To get a strong snapshot, I need a sense of the characters and where the book is going, and what my theme or main ideas are.
That tends to happen somewhere around the end of the first 100 pages. Far enough in to sort of know who everyone is, but getting to the point where the initial burst of excitement for the story might be flagging. Most of us hit this point somewhere in that first quarter to third of the book, and collaging at this stage can help keep motivation high.
You can, however, collage at any point within the book. Whenever it feels right to you.
Process, step by step
- Start with a session of cutting out photos, images, even just pages of color that appeal, and stack them up. Maybe listen to music that suits the book, drink a cup of tea and let your mind wander. If you want images of your characters but modern magazines aren’t cutting it, try places like Deviant Art or run an image search for an actor who might work. You can also just capture the spirit of a character in an image—a hard-boiled guy staring at the camera, a leaping athlete.Mainly at this stage, you’re just collecting whatever images and things that catch your eye. It doesn’t have to directly relate to your book—let the girls (or guys) in the basement lead you—those clouds! That red car! Maybe you’ll have gritty urban landscapes, or castles, or dogs, or feet. Don’t think much, just let your eye wander. You are not committed to keeping anything. Better to have more to build with than less.It’s also not just about pictures or bits of color. If you see words that embody your theme, grab them. If other words give a ripple of recognition, cut those out, too. I’ve sometimes made word images at Wordle to help me get a handle on complex ideas.
- Once you have your pile of materials, give yourself some time to play with arranging them. Don’t glue anything just yet, just loosely shuffle your pictures, rearrange, step back, try again. Play with relationships, words, strips of color. You might like slipping some scrapbooking paper behind photos, or looping things together with a little string.Again, don’t glue anything here. Just let it be for a little while. When you discover an arrangement that feels good, take a break. Do something else, clear your head, and come back later. You’ll see more. Maybe something will feel wrong and you get rid of it. Maybe you need more color, or a different kind of image. Remember: this is not meant to be a work of art. It’s a process tool.
- Once you feel happy with the layout, you can start gluing things in place. Take your time. I do listen to music, sometimes drink a nice ale, let myself fall into the mood.Get the basic layout in place, and then step back. Is anything missing? Do you feel a need to get some paintbrushes and add some color, or maybe spritz it with some ink? Need more words to keep your theme in mind? Print them out, or use an app like Word Swag to put words over pictures and print those out.
- Finished!
You do not have to put the collage where you can see it, but it helps me to see it constantly. I prop it up in my office where it is the thing I see when I come into the room. First, this offers a focal point—my job, during these months, is to write this book. Second, I catch on new images every time, and that keeps my grounded in a holographic version of the book, right there in time and space.If you don’t have wall space, maybe the back of a door or closet door. Or take a photo and upload it to the wallpaper on your laptop. If you don’t want to look at it, or are one of those people who likes an uncluttered environment, tuck it away. The main work is done.
One last note: I’m often asked if you can do this process in a digital format. You can, of course–as Susan has done on Pinterest–but I strongly suggest trying the paper version first. Some parts of the brain are more fully accessed through tactile actions—the cutting, writing, glueing are all ways to reach those areas.
Any questions? I’m here to answer if I can. Have you ever used this method for your books? Are you one of the resistors who can’t see why in the world it would help? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
[coffee]
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Barbara,
What an interesting way to visualize a work-in-progress! I love making collages (I’ve decoupaged wine bottles with phrases and pictures pertinent to various friendships and given them as gifts). Although I’ve never created a collage as a means to visualize a wip, I have made them in high school for use in oral book reports. Your friends make freaking dioramas! Wow. Very intricate and impressive. I can see how they would inspire during the creative process. Thanks for this, and I’ll keep your suggestion in mind when I reach that 100-page sag attack.
You make me want to get the glue and scissors out, Barbara! As a visual person (painter in a former life) I totally get the value of doing this. I use Pinterest these days, an interesting tool I’m only beginning to understand. But it’s visual, and because of time constraints in my life, it’s something I can reach for between work sessions. Only you don’t get that nice gluey smell and the physical part of cutting and pasting that engages the subconscious mind. I love, love, love your friends’ collages! They almost look like book covers! Thank your today’s inspiration.
Hah! SO much classier when it’s photo and literary fiction. I write epic fantasy, and I paint the figurines. Even have a series about it on my blog called “It Figures”. I find it’s very evocative indeed, not just contemplating the finished product (my lovely wife lets me display them on shelves) but also the time spent “building” the characters with paint. And mistakes, and some cursing. I think I know what it means to spend time with my characters.
Highly recommended, whatever floats the boat for your own genre. Not sure about the legal issues with erotica though…
That’s so cool, Will! Post a link to your blog about the figures, will you?
I think this process works with any kind of fiction, probably even some kinds of narrative non-fiction. Your figures are the same kind of process–tactile and using color and form.
Thanks Barbara! I was a bit hesitant to intrude at first but if you insist…
https://www.williamlhahn.com/posts/it-figures-final-judgement/
I love these figures! Thanks for posting the link.
I don’t do all that work of a collage, but I have posted up photos of my characters (magazine photos of people who look like my characters) over my desk to enhance their visual presence as I’m writing. Images of places or scenes too. When writing my novel Greylock, which takes place on Mt. Greylock, I had lots of visuals of the mountain, the views, the trails, and it gave me a real sense of being there. After visiting there, I brought back leaves and tree greenery to keep on my desk. There is something inspiring about actually “seeing” the story elements all around you as you write. But all that cutting and pasting and arranging? Not my speed but I agree with the concept of visuals.
Barbara– Whatever works for you works for you, and who shall say you nay?
Personally, though, I prefer doing the R & D for my novels, not by collaging them, but by using either needlepoint or macramé. True, the learning curve’s a little steep at first, but the ROI is impressive. As the French would say, chacun a son gout.
Macrame! That’s pretty elaborate, as is needlepoint. Whatever works, as you say.
Barbara, question: Can you give us one example of a story idea from any one of your novels that arose as a result of assembling a collage?
Would love to know how it has worked for you. Cool idea, have had it recommended before (by Susan Wiggs, I’m pretty sure) and will try it with a project that’s in the formative stage.
One from the current collage in progress is the cowboy boots example. I am a Colorado native and hate cowboy boots (sorry if anyone loves them, it’s just my little weirdness from junior high school). But I saw the photo of the battered cowboy boots all in a row, spattered with paint, and thought, “I think my character would wear those boots.” More than that, her best friend hates them, along with everything else about the way she dresses. It gave me an interesting dynamic to work with between these two, and just that little photo helped me see the relationship more clearly.
Another example: in the collage above, there is a dahlia. It bugged me so much that that photo just would not go away. I thought I was using it as a color splash, a way to pull other elements together, but anyone who has read the books know that dahlias ended up being a huge plot point, and developed a character, AND created a thread of magical realism throughout the book. The girls in the basement knew I needed something, and they pointed to the dahlia.
It’s not at all scientific, but then much of writing is unquantifiable.
Sold! Thanks, Barbara.
Thanks, Barbara. I did this for one of my novels–loved the process of finding photos that captured the words on the page or then provided the opposite–visual images stimulated the writing–how do I relate in words the beauty I see in this image–or what frightens me about that facial expression. It can have so many different applications. Cut and paste on!
A fellow collager! It’s funny how many layers it can have.
A few months ago, I created a Pinterest collage for my House Tales collection. I must say I was obsessed doing it at the time. It was fun adding descriptions and noting that this pic is what a character might look like in this novel, or here’s what you would find in that novel. I had a blast.
Pinterest is definitely a big way to do it now. I collect things into files there, but I still love the cut and paste portion.
I’m 70 pages into a new ms., a very different kind of book for me, and one based strongly on memory. I have a few photos on a private Pinterest board, but b/c I felt I knew the place, I hadn’t created a bulletin board, like I have for my Food Lovers’ Village series, or a sketchbook, as for my Seattle Spice Shop Mysteries. I’m exactly at the point where the visuals will start to make a difference — so, thank you! (I do admit to fearing this could take a lot of time and become An Art Project, but you’ve given me some ways to limit that, so — double thanks.)
I love the titles of your series.
It could be a bit of an art project, but there’s nothing wrong with letting it accompany you through the writing of the book. Have fun!
I remember on the FB WU Community page I was really excited about creating a collage for my WIP and a member poohed-poohed the idea. It left me somewhat deflated. But I created a visuals file in Scrivener and I access the file using the freeform corkboard. I love it. And now that I am doodling on a regular basis, I might storyboard the story and add cut outs to it as well.
It really is one of those ideas that some people scratch their heads over, but can be super powerful for those of us who use it.
Glad you created a visuals file and maybe now can do a collage on paper if you feel like it.
I love this. For my last story I wore a bracelet that I imagined was worn by my main character and the constant presence, rolling the beads without thinking, over morning coffee gave me a dimensional insight into her world.
I think a collage may be a great help with the WIP I’m working on. I’m at a place that was supposed to be a final and easy draft. Easy? How naive I was…
Thank you for this.
I love the idea of having a tangible element of a character to carry around/wear! I’ll have to think of one for my character.
I worked as a consultant on a movie some years ago and was interested to see how story boards were utilized. Since then I’ve created a collage for every one of my books and can vouch for its helpfulness as a creative tool. During the writing I often refer to mine and if I get into a slump will take time to return to the initial process, adding to the collage. I see writing as art so it’s all part of a collaborative process.
I know several people who make a collage for their wips and although I collect maps and pictures, I’ve yet to make one. I’m going to give it a try since I’m in revision mode. Perhaps I’ll receive some more clarity regarding a couple of characters. Thanks also for that great answer to Benjamin Brink’s query.
I used to lead a writing retreat every year and one of the things we always did was to make collages. It was such fun–everyone got a piece of poster board. I had a huge stack of magazines, National Geographic, Women’s Mags like Redbook and the like. My writers would add to the pile with their contributions. We also had markers and crayons and colored pencils–some of the writers (not me, sadly) were spectacular artists. We’d make the collages and then write a scene or short piece based on our creations. Amazing words came out of it.
Great idea. Thank you. I should be doing something like this.
Scotch Repositionable Glue Sticks (blue label) are the best for me, because I can move elements around when the narrative changes.
Oh, yes. I have used those, too. (At your suggestion!) They haven’t become part of my ritualized buys yet, but they really do make life easier, and I’d like them to be part of that.
I love this idea and can’t wait to share it with my writing partner. I’m also a fan of using another art form to help the writing process. I create posters (using colored pencils, ink, magazine photos and letter stickers) of time lines, setting and characters. Doing so gives me clarity and helps me remember details through the revision process. My next project will include collage, and I love the place you suggest – around 100 pages, where I tend to need a fun push forward.
I love that you create posters. I use giant Post-its to make maps of my towns if they’re made up, and timelines, as you do. The visuals really help.
Giant Post-its – what a great idea. I didn’t know there was such a creature… Staples, here I come.
You will be smitten.
I took your class a number of years ago, while I still worked at a day job. I discovered the collage helped me jump right back into the middle of the WIP whenever I had an hour or two to work on it. Now I write full-time but still do the collages. They tell me things about character relationships I don’t know until I stand back and look. Thanks for teaching such a great tool.
Andrea, how great to hear that you write full-time now!