Visual Thinking
By Anne Brown | March 26, 2018 |
A month or so ago, I was deep into first-pass editing. This is the stage after you receive an editorial letter that poses questions about character development, suggests adding scenes (or removing them), and encourages other “big picture” thinking. I posted a photo of what my editing process looked like for that morning, and Therese Walsh messaged me: “Please write a post about this.”
I thought that was Therese just being sweet and supportive (as is her way) because what could I possibly say about something so obvious?
But then, over the course of the day, similar comments trickled in. I was surprised, and it got me thinking that maybe…was it possible?…not everyone organized their thoughts in pictures? So I did a little digging.
Turns out, I am a visual thinker (aka picture thinker), as are 60-65% of the rest of you. When you write, do you first picture the scene in your mind, and then describe what you see? Or, do you begin to write and the scene slowly materializes as your words hit the page? If you are the former, [insert Jeff Foxworthy’s voice] you might be a visual thinker.
If you are athletic, musical or mathematically inclined, you may be more inclined to visual thinking.
Back in the 1970s,“visual” and “verbal” thinking were set up as opposites, but the brain is never that simple. Most of us think and learn in a combination of ways.
For example, Temple Grandin reports that words touch off cascades of images as her visual and language systems interact. (Otis, Psychology Today)
Poet Natasha Trethewey has such a strong visual memory that, when she studied for tests in high school, she would visually memorize her notes and then read the answers off her mental scans. (Id.)
Jessica Spotswood, an author friend of mine, gets down to editing by retyping her entire book, character-by-character, starting with page one. She says, seeing the words all together on the page visually disengages her from the specific words originally selected, and allows her to fine-tune her message.
So, this brings me back to my own writing and editing processes. Why do I do it the way that I do, and might it also help you?
When in initial drafting mode, I often google headshots of people who look like the characters in my head. I print them out and have them on my desktop, ready to pull up when I want to “hear” their voices. Same thing with natural landscapes, even road maps. I’ve gone so far as to make dioramas and poster boards. That is until Pinterest came around and made the process digital.
Mind maps are great for brainstorming all the elements you want to include in the scene and depicting how contrasting ideas will play off each other.
Once the story is underway, I need the pictures less, but the need resurfaces when it comes to editing. I cannot jump into the manuscript and immediately start putting new words to paper. It feels a bit like being dropped into a thick forest of words without a compass.
To accomplish my editing goals, I have to step back and focus on the concepts, feelings, moods, and ideas, rather than the words that will ultimately express those same things to the reader.
I might use color to conceptualize emotion, or even just to separate my thoughts and keep my mind clear. Symbols help me focus on themes.
I often use check boxes, or dialogue bubbles. Sketching my ideas helps me “see” them and think about them—sometimes staring at a wall for half an hour is my most productive writing time. The goal is to ultimately understand my ideas well enough that I can describe them to someone who hasn’t seen the picture before.
In short, picture-thinker or not, we all have our own ways of working through the editing process.
For more information on visual learning, check out these articles: Reuell, Peter, Visual Images Often Intrude on Verbal Thinking, The Harvard Gazette (May 11, 2017); Otis, Laura, A New Look at Visual Thinking, Laura Otis, Psychology Today (Feb. 16, 2016) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rethinking-thought/201602/new-look-visual-thinking; Grandin, Temple, Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism. (Bloomsbury 2006.)
What tips, tricks, or methods do you use to work through the brainstorming or editing process?
[coffee]
Anne Greenwood Brown got her start as a traditionally published author of young adult paranormal and contemporary romance. Currently, she is a USA Today bestselling author of adult paranormal and contemporary romance (both traditional and indie) under the pen name AS Green . For more information see the Contributor tab. You can also follow her on Facebook , Instagram , and TikTok .
I get myself some big sheets of flip chart paper, crouch on the floor with a bunch of coloured pencils and produce map-like structures. One paper I filled with the first ten plot-days of my story, each in a rectangle, using the pencils to colour code ideas, settings, people. Another one I used for developing the idea of a scene: it now looks like a mind map gone wild. On another I try to follow my hero’s “arc”. – I am using all of this for my first draft, but I think some of it might also be useful to come back to while editing.
I would LOVE to see a photo of that flip chart!
Interesting post! And I love all your pretty colours and shapes. (Do you keep a bullet journal?) The only actual pencil-on-paper drawing I do during the writing process is sketching a map of my story location. I need to see how the streets are laid out, where the homes and businesses are located, etc. Primarily so the hero doesn’t turn right instead of the usual left to get to the heroine’s house, hehe. I am a visual writer – the story plays out in my mind like a movie and my poor fingers trip over themselves trying to keep up. I’ve toyed with trying dictation since I can talk faster than I can write.
I do keep a bullet journal! Actually, I was introduced to it at the 2016 Unconference. I do something similar with the moving characters around, but I use pennies and nickles and move them around a sketch of a room.
Another visual thinker here–I doodle quite a bit in my journal (I always buy extra notebooks when buying my kids’ school supplies). And lots of post-it notes during editing.
By the way, you have beautiful penmanship. Mine’s a chicken-scratch.
What an awesome post, Anne!
I’m not sure if I am a visual learner, but I do require a ton of notes and diagrams to prompt my WIP.
For my current project, No Apology For Being, I actually went out and purchased a large laminated map. My protagonist goes on a road trip across the U.S. and although I could get the info I needed online, the map is a great way to visualize things in a different manner.
You’ve made some wonderful suggestions. I will give them a shot!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)
Yep! I have a ton of printed out road maps, too, and I’ve marked all the Waffle Houses, etc. and how long it will take to drive to each stop.
Love this! Thanks for sharing, Anne. I think I’m a visual thinker, too. I recently mapped a novel I was editing in Excel, chapter by chapter and color coded it based on emotions the characters were feeling. It definitely helped me to “see” what was going on in a better/easier way.
Fun idea, Deanna. I’d heard about doing this one time and think it’s time to start.
I sketch and make maps. I have portraits of characters and illustrations for scenes and house layouts and all manner of stuff. I’m a visual person so if I can see it I can better write it. And for big-picture work I make connection-maps. For me, writing can be very physical. Thanks, Anne, for a wonderful post. Your photo is inspiring!
I can’t even begin to write a character that I can’t visualize. I make a private Pinterest board, then find a face on Google image search (mostly a celebrity so I can get different expressions and body shots) and pin not only those but a picture of their bedroom, their car, clothes, etc. onto a board just for me. I come from an art background, so it’s not surprising my visual way of looking at the world has transferred over to writing. Also one of those who sees the scene, then writes it. Hitchcock was famous for storyboarding all his movies before shooting began. and said actually filming the movie was boring since he’d already seen it.
This post caught my attention. I don’t use mind mapping tools or draw out elaborate visual tools, but I do “see” the action in my head when writing the first draft.
Now that I’m revising, I’ve just been grappling with the material on the page. Perhaps adding a more visual component to the editing process will get me through a draft that’s been stalled for far too long.
Thank you for the suggestions!
I’m primarily a verbal thinker, but my wip is more complex that my last two novels, and I needed some new organizational tools. Colored sticky notes (one for each of a 16 characters), paper clips, and note cards became my new best friends. Those colors have made it much easier to sort through threads, space them out at a good rate, and take in the story via a bird’s eye view.
I’m so glad you wrote this post, Anne. Thank you!
Yes, “sorting through threads” is a good way to put it.
I appreciate this post in part because I realize I’m NOT such a visual thinker, after all. This really resonated: “do you begin to write and the scene slowly materializes as your words hit the page?” Yep. I can about half-see things (people, moments) and they become clearer as I work with them. I’ve often thought I’m visual, but I suspect it’s because I’m a bit big-picture (not at all the same thing) and it takes a while to drill down into the substance and detail. That and I know I’m kinesthetic: I have pages and pages of notes and free writing, but it’s partly because I need to move my hand and get things into the brain. The notes are visual reminders.
Thanks for sharing your process–I love learning about other ways of wrangling story!
I created a vision board for one of my novels. On Pinterest, I have a board for my current WIP. Because it is set in Chicago I could find examples of the apartment building where a major part of the story occurs. My use of actual photos varies. Because while writing, I can picture exactly where my characters are, the direction they are driving or walking, the hospital corridor they are working on. I think the connection between visual and the keyboard helps bring the work to the page. Thanks for this post.
Great post. This got me thinking about what I do. Pinterest works well for finding and keeping pictures of characters on hand. I call this board “fiction elements.” It also holds other images I need to refer to, i.e. buildings for settings, sailboats or knives for prop descriptions. Google Maps proves invaluable. I drag their little man along the roads to keep things accurate when placing my characters in real towns or cities. Scrivener is awesome too. I insert the images I need most often right the Binder under Research for quick access.
Funny about these blogs. Last night was the first time I can remember doodling on paper while exploring a whole new plot twist. It helped. I plan to do more visual “thinking.”
Yes! I use Pinterest to create a research file for each story I’m working on. It is filled with images of people, places, and things that help build the story world’s authenticity. It is almost always the first thing I do when I begin writing. And I look at it often as I’m drafting and editing. Really good for when I’m stuck and have forgotten a mood or theme I was going for. Very visual learner here.
I used to be a FiloFax junkie, but primarily for scheduling. Now I do keep a journal for some notes. As a former costume designer I used to have folders of magazine tear sheets, called a swipe file, that I used as a visual, and from there create story boards for the characters. So, I use the same principle but happily now there is Pinterest which is Brilliant and better!!! I still have my Pinterest board for The Sleeping Serpent which now includes a Playlist! Google Maps and Open Table and Yelp are how I created locations. And save all the web pages in separate folders on One Note – including a long drop down menu of articles and blogs on my desk top for my WIP on the hiking the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu, and other research data, cities and places my characters inhabit. I found my main character’s family home on AirbnB.
The blog ate my first comment, so I’ll try again! I think there’s a real difference between what Anne describes so well — thank you — and gathering visual images to feed the stories, as many of us do. I too am largely a verbal thinker, but maps hang on my office door and walls; I keep a sketchbook of architectural details in Seattle, where one series is set, since I no longer live there; I’ve sketched out my MC’s shop and loft, and murder scenes, pasted in pictures of dresses she might wear, and even furnished her bedroom and chosen the wall color. And yes to the private Pinterest boards!
But that’s very different, I think, from using drawings and shapes and colors to process the story, as Anne does, or from visualizing a scene and transcribing it, as some of you do, rather than discovering it as I write it. I’m in awe.
So the real question for me is how — or if — we can learn from others’ processes to enhance our own. Besides getting out my colored pencils. :)
I’m an art director who has to think visually. I’m illustrating my middle grade novel. Once I finalized the plot, I thumbnailed tiny sketches for all the chapter on two sheets of paper–I can see the whole plot at once. Too bad there is no photo attachment to comments so I could share.
I used a chess board to map out my first novel – different pieces playing different roles/locations, and other items being added to the board to denote particular events or significant items. It was so helpful to be able to physically move the pieces representing the main characters around the board, seeing where they were in relation to everything/everyone else.
I also had files full of faces and places and timelines and spreadsheets and all the rest of it. Although that can become a great way to procrastinate!
I also think “visual” when writing. I have poster boards for each of my books, and like you, I google images of people I think my characters resemble. It helps me to get inside their heads. My poster board also has a list of my characters’ names and their relationship to one another, and always some sort of inspiration that keeps me going. I pinned an old quilt square of my mother’s on the board I made for my novel about a quilter’s club. (Think tiny stitches, color blending, etc.)
I too am a visual learner. I have a notebook for each book I’m working on. I have a set number of pages for each character. I find pics online for the characters, cars, setting. I write questions about the pics that may become part of a story line. I too have a Pinterest page. I have showed this method to some of my students and for my visual learners letting them sketch, use mapping or whatever else they can come up with helps them.
I’m a visual writer first and then I will write high-level notes. If I get too detailed I feel like I stifle the muse. I really like the idea of drawing pictures but I’m the worst artists. Anything I attempted would be a sad stick-figure interpretation.
I’d love to see an example or explanation of bullet journal if anyone could share?
Thanks, Anne!
Angela here’s a link to Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal website. https://bulletjournal.com/ Watch the brief video. Warning: you may become irrevocably addicted.
Completely agree with everything above. I’m pretty left-brained, which is weird because I’m def a visual learner. I force myself to get the right brain involved. Bullet journaling, mind mapping, Sunni Brown’s The Doodle Revolution, and all related tools really help me tease out ideas and solutions when I’m stuck. Plus, they’re fun!