Visual Imagery 2.0 / A Writer's Tool

In a previous post, I discussed how Pinterest could be used as a complex and easy to search platform to replace what writers know as Pictorial or Visual Dictionaries. These resources help writers quickly refine their words and add some granular detailing, typically about things they probably don't know well. Trains, aircraft, boats, and all kinds of technical parts that enhance the focus and the purpose of significant and meaningful detail in storytelling. 

It is no surprise that in our #CLMooc for 2017, I was inspired by a website called Sketch Lab. While there are too many connections, tools, and ideas to tell you about here, Sketch Lab is a fascinating 3D modeling site that allows you to take subjects and view them in in three dimensions. You might think that this is merely a fun, time wasting cite, but for many visual thinkers, this could be a significant source of inspiration and ideas. I like this because it allows you to look around. It allows you to see different angles. And the range of items and ideas are growing. If you are looking at buildings and locations, this is great (see example below). But if you really don't know what a Fender Strata-caster looks like, in detail - this might be the site for you. Of course you won't use the details, but you will have a better sense of what things look like, how things are made, and why they might be important for your story. 

The example below is of a house. I selected it because I like the size and the shape of the house. If you notice, you can look up under the porch roof and see the supports. You can see access points, and where windows are. You can walk up the front steps. Or find the secret back door. For me this tool is really interesting. I would also like to use this as prompting for students to write or analyze how things are made. It would also be helpful in guiding students to see things at various angles and distances. This is a great tool in looking and visualizing things. And if it doesn't replace your visual dictionary, it should be a go to resource for writers. 
Example: 

C002 by Renaud Havret on Sketchfab

CLMOOC 2017 Make Cycle #1

Being a writer, the more visual, artistic elements of creation often come to me in different ways. When we start thinking about coloring pages and books, I started thinking how would I think of a coloring page for a novel or a story. 

Honestly, I wanted to make a coloring sheet for a character -- what they look like, motivation, and outcome. People could fill in their responses and have a visual sheet for a character. But once I started creating this - I started having an existential conversation with a would-be character. I am not sure how this turned into a kind of conversation but I made some interesting comments here about how I feel about creativity - writing, the process, and the muse. Not sure if this fits into the coloring page idea completely but it showed me some insight.

What I started to think about was how this sheet could hold a variety - perhaps limitless conversations. What happens when we place out subconscious on the page (in the shape of an outline) and ask it questions, give it reason, and converse? Perhaps it would shift a visual brain? Perhaps it would inspire someone to see interconnections? I want to color one of these and accent some of the elements that are important to me. I want to use this type of creation to show and bind a visuality to words, and the ownership of words to the visual.  Thanks for your time in looking this over to everyone in 2017 CLMOOC -- it is such an important place to consider the world.

Add On: Sometimes, after making something like this, I sit and think about it or have a conversation with someone and I find more to think about. While this image was meant to be a coloring page for a character -- based on the idea from Janet Burroway concerning conflict and desire, and then spiraling out to something else -- it would be interesting to take an essay or a chapter from a book and see how it would map out in a visual diagram. What would be the focus, what would be the elements that we need to know the most? And then how would we color this in? What significant details mean the most to make the scene work? And how does it work emotionally? I could see people using scales and meters to measure emotional investment. I could see readers taking pull quotes out and adding them to make impacts around their maps. 

One of the best books on literature and creativity that I've read and admire is Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi.

It is from that influence that it is easy to see how the imagination can be very specific and wonderfully complex, needing a place for maps and signs, way-points and directionals.

In a class of thirty students, taking one scene from a book and mapping them out will create thirty unique maps. Then we could compare them, and see what elements are common in them all (characters, setting, action), but more importantly, what beats, what moment, what words specifically changed the reader? That will be unique and different. We are constantly coloring our imaginations, we are constantly rediscovering a childhood memory (recoloring perhaps), and I am constantly trying to contribute to why books, writing, stories, and literature is important. (Maybe that's just me) The black and white outlines are the form, the frame, and the logic we need to speak to one another. The colors are the imagination, the turn of a phrase, and vision. Visually, I don't think I've thought about the craft of writing this way. I've spoken a lot about form and content -- but now perhaps there is a new dimension there. The beauty is that it brings into the discussion whether writers color in the lines or embrace the infinite possibilities that blur the human experience. 




Ron's Words: On Art and Writing by Kevin Hodgson

Trying to find a poem in there #CLMOOC colored layers pic.twitter.com/KbCewxhZ4f

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) July 12, 2017