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I'm curious how many writers here visualize scenes in their heads, play it out a few different ways, before writing it down. I find sometimes when I'm stuck with a scene I just need to "see" it in my head and play with it a few times, almost like a movie, until I get it right.
Of course, I also have an extremely vivid imagination that sometimes gets the better of me, so...
posted
I often write out a scene several different ways before I keep it. I also repeat info in many places through out the story in the first draft--just to see where it fits the story best.
posted
Confession time: my current book contains a dogfight scene between supersonic fighters. I never had trouble visualizing it, but every time I wrote what I visualized I found myself doubting my imagination. Would a plane at speed X really be able to climb to altitude Y in Z seconds? If planes A and B were at different speeds they both executed a 5G turn, how much faster would plane A be turned around? What would the pilot of plane B see?
I wanted every detail to be absolutely perfect.
I actually got out a bunch of toy airplanes, some slotcar track, and other toy vehicles. I set up a miniature of my battlefield that filled a 20' x 25' room. I worked out time and distance scales and started moving my planes around. It was very revealing.
posted
I'm another person with a very active imagination. I not only visualize scenes in my head, but I become a part of them. So I look at each scene from different angles from an outside view point. And I look at each scene from various angles from an inside view point. Then I choose whatever view point fits the story best.
Posts: 55 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Maybe a case can be made for when you visualize a scene. I've visualized scenes ahead of time and written them; other times I write without knowing where I'm going, but even then I'm visualizing as I go along. Would it really be possible to write without visualizing?
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
For me, writing's become kind of like reading: I hardly ever see the words anymore. Instead, it's like watching a movie in my head, only I control the outcome. I also have a very active imagination, so it's usually a pretty interesting movie. Too bad the novel never comes out as interesting. At least...almost never. Okay, sometimes.
posted
Obviously all writers must conceptualize before writing, otherwise they end up writing things that just don't make any sense. When you are going to describe physical events and objects, that conceptualization will probably be visualization (for those of us that predominantly experience the world through sight).
Some blind authors probably don't visualize, but then again, if they write from their own experience, the action of the story probably won't require visualization For the rest of us...well, we might write some pretty silly things if we didn't visualize our action before writing it.
posted
Well, the thing is, I'm not other writers. I'm myself. <grin> And as such, I don't *know* how other fiction writers go about writing. (I do know from taking courses in Journalism and Technical Writing that you don't go visualizing what you're writing in that case, or you'll quickly go insane with boredom. <wink> At least, not visualize in the sense that I was talking about.)
It's also nice to know that I'm not the only one with an exceedingly vivid imagination. To the point that I can (without closing my eyes anymore) play in my head how a bone will break and still be able to type it up in here. Sometimes the imagination gets *too* intense. <sigh>
posted
hmm. lately i haven't been pre-visualizing hardly at all. i know what i want to develop from a scene--a concept, a character, a mood, etc.--and then i just write. this style helped get me out of a serious case of writer's block recently. before, i would have thought out (but definitely not written--novel outlines scare me) the local of a scene before i wrote it. i just started a new scene in my baby (the one that saved me from my writer's block) that starts with a guy repairing his roof. i never would have done that if i had "pre-thought" the scene. yet there he was: the main character looks down from his roof to find the protagonist in his driveway. just standing there. made me happy.
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WHen I'm writing, and it's going well, I can watch the story like a movie, only the story is chopped up, like someone's cut up the film, and spliced all the different scenes in the wrong order. The problem comes when I try to put that movie on paper, in the right order.
The last story I wrote, I worte down all the scenes as they came, thinking i'd figure them out later. Didn't work.
The one I'm working on now, I'm writing them in order. This is wroking better, since i can keep things consistent.
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Too bad the novel never comes out as interesting. At least...almost never. Okay, sometimes.
For the rest of us...well, we might write some pretty silly things if we didn't visualize our action before writing it.
