The Collage Method

At the Uncon, I guided a session on right brain plotting, which was partly about music, but mostly about collage.  A few people have asked about the method since then, and as this is my last post for a bit, I thought this would be a good thing to leave you with.  I collage everything, and sometimes pretty elaborately.  The collage for Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas was a hat box lit with tiny purple neon lights and came complete with a toy Thunderbird car. (I actually tossed this in a move and have regretted it ever since.)

One of the things quite a few people said was, “If I’d know it was a collage workshop, I wouldn’t have wanted to come, but then I had this insight/experience/recognition.”  It’s a great method to let you get out of your head and let the book talk TO you.

Another thing I did for the workshop was play 30 seconds to a minute of a song, then moved to another, through a playlist that was pretty random.  You can do the same thing with Spotify or Pandora or even your own bank of songs. Set the program to randomize through a big variety of songs and listen for a minute, then push on to the next.  (The playlist I used for this session is here.  Thanks to Angela D’Ambrosio for putting it up.)

Without further explanation, the method:

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.  Some writers scoff at this process, finding it a waste 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 builds them of paper board and magazine cut-outs. I fall somewhere in-between.(This was for How to Bake a Perfect Life.)

The product is not the actual point of this exercise. It’s a process tool. Using tactile, visual, or textural materials, you get out of your logical, verbal, methodical 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 battered, 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. 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 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.  You can, however, collage at any point within the book. Whenever it feels right to you.

 

Process, step by step

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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 cup of tea, 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.

4. 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, 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.