Most people don't want to share their secrets, but I like to share one that I discovered along the way. The difficulty in facing the BLANK PAGE is not knowing what you want to put on the page. Not having a visual image in your mind. That's why while you sat down, you don't know what to write. They called this WRITER'S BLOCK. But I don't believe in "writer's block."
The trick to writing is that you have to be able to formulate a visual image in your head. Before I start to put words down for a scene, I find a very calm and quiet place, usually waking up in the morning. I lie down, close my eyes and visualize the scene, the location, place, time of day, the color, how the characters would act and react to each others, visual movement, the clothes they would wear, and what they will say according to the situation/purpose/goal of the scene. Also, don't forget to visualize the purpose and goal of the scene. What kind of emotion do you want this scene to achieve? Every scene has emotion and emotions. Visualize the emotion you feel while you're in the scene. If it moves you, it will move your audience as well. Your job as the writer is to arrange and rearrange the scene to have the most emotional effect.
Most often I draw them from places I have been to or people I've seen, locations/places I've seen in movies or documentaries. Did you know that we don't know what an image looks like unless we have a similar image from our memory bank to match it up. That's why newborn babies don't have anything in their heads. It's like an empty hard drive. In fact, our memory is like a hard drive. We store memories: visual images, sounds, words etc in the there, and we draw them when we need them. You can't picture or visualize something you don't know, something you've never seen. Why do you think most Aliens in movies resembled some earthly creatures? Alien, Predator, the Bugs from Starship Troopers all resembled a scorpion, a crab and/or a cockroach. I tried to picture a unique alien monster for my sci-fi horror concept, and it gave me migraine. That is why I draw them from experiences. If you look at your dreams, which I have been doing for many years now, they are manifestations of the content in our hard drive/brain; a manifestation of everyday experiences -- distorted. I could be wrong on this. But this has been true for me. I visualize the scene as many times as I need until it becomes full blown to me.
Once I have it visualized and know exactly what the scene looks like, it feels like I'm in there, in the scene with the characters, an observer, and I can see the scene plays in front of me. This makes it easier for me to translate the scene onto the page. For me, the more challenging part is translating the visual image into words on the page because of my limited vocabulary bank. I have the visual image down, but sometimes I can't find the right word to describe or match this visual image. I started learning English at the age of twelve so I missed that early 7 years of children vocabulary accumulation.
This is a technique I have practiced for every scene before I write. I do it every morning when my mind is clean, clear and fresh. Piece by piece, they come together and form the bigger picture. Like the saying, "When you visualize, you materialize." This is how I come up with my scenes. I write them in a non-linear, non-chronological order. Whether it's the ending, beginning or middle, I jump back and forth as the scene appears in my mind like putting a JIGSAW PUZZLE together. "A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order," as French director Jean-Luc Goddard put it.
Try this visualization technique, and you'll be amazed at the results. Everyone is different, and it may or may not work for you. But give it a try. You never know. How do you know if you never tried it?
The trick to writing is that you have to be able to formulate a visual image in your head. Before I start to put words down for a scene, I find a very calm and quiet place, usually waking up in the morning. I lie down, close my eyes and visualize the scene, the location, place, time of day, the color, how the characters would act and react to each others, visual movement, the clothes they would wear, and what they will say according to the situation/purpose/goal of the scene. Also, don't forget to visualize the purpose and goal of the scene. What kind of emotion do you want this scene to achieve? Every scene has emotion and emotions. Visualize the emotion you feel while you're in the scene. If it moves you, it will move your audience as well. Your job as the writer is to arrange and rearrange the scene to have the most emotional effect.
Most often I draw them from places I have been to or people I've seen, locations/places I've seen in movies or documentaries. Did you know that we don't know what an image looks like unless we have a similar image from our memory bank to match it up. That's why newborn babies don't have anything in their heads. It's like an empty hard drive. In fact, our memory is like a hard drive. We store memories: visual images, sounds, words etc in the there, and we draw them when we need them. You can't picture or visualize something you don't know, something you've never seen. Why do you think most Aliens in movies resembled some earthly creatures? Alien, Predator, the Bugs from Starship Troopers all resembled a scorpion, a crab and/or a cockroach. I tried to picture a unique alien monster for my sci-fi horror concept, and it gave me migraine. That is why I draw them from experiences. If you look at your dreams, which I have been doing for many years now, they are manifestations of the content in our hard drive/brain; a manifestation of everyday experiences -- distorted. I could be wrong on this. But this has been true for me. I visualize the scene as many times as I need until it becomes full blown to me.
Once I have it visualized and know exactly what the scene looks like, it feels like I'm in there, in the scene with the characters, an observer, and I can see the scene plays in front of me. This makes it easier for me to translate the scene onto the page. For me, the more challenging part is translating the visual image into words on the page because of my limited vocabulary bank. I have the visual image down, but sometimes I can't find the right word to describe or match this visual image. I started learning English at the age of twelve so I missed that early 7 years of children vocabulary accumulation.
This is a technique I have practiced for every scene before I write. I do it every morning when my mind is clean, clear and fresh. Piece by piece, they come together and form the bigger picture. Like the saying, "When you visualize, you materialize." This is how I come up with my scenes. I write them in a non-linear, non-chronological order. Whether it's the ending, beginning or middle, I jump back and forth as the scene appears in my mind like putting a JIGSAW PUZZLE together. "A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order," as French director Jean-Luc Goddard put it.
Try this visualization technique, and you'll be amazed at the results. Everyone is different, and it may or may not work for you. But give it a try. You never know. How do you know if you never tried it?