Your Vision Doesn't Match Your Writing

[Philip Overby]

I think this tends to be a major problem. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea of "getting it down on paper" seems to be one that bothers a lot of people. I think sharing ideas and getting a vision of what a story is going to be may get writers excited, but when it comes time to write, they may go "Oh, this is going to be hard."

So how do you get your vision down on paper, so to speak?

Here are some things that have helped me recently:

1. Write down scenes in a notebook throughout the day. Something that just pops into your head "A dragon surrounded by cacti" or "A wizard duel on an icy tunrda." Sometimes a strong image can help propel your writing in the right direction.

2. Make sure your characters stand out in some way. I find writing characters that have a particular quirk or something different about them, makes me feel like they're a bit more real. So then I have an easier time writing them. I think the tendency to just describe characters physically may just make them feel like card-board cut-outs. Give them a distinct way of talking or physical problem or a nervous tic. Something that makes them something other that just a "robust man with brown hair."

3. Look at pictures. Find art that you think is cool and sometimes it will inspire you. Not just fantasy art, but pictures or art of real life things too. I saw this picture of children playing in the ice in Finland or something, and I thought, for some reason, "These kids look like vampire hunters." I have no idea why, but that image and that idea stuck in my head. Tumblr may be a good place to visit.

4. Whatever your vision is, don't sway from it. A lot of fiction is truly written in editing. It's a good idea to have a good first draft, but I think some writers may tend to fret with tiny things that aren't that important. If your story framework is solid, you can go back and add to it later.

I think of a first draft as a frame of a house. Editing is adding all the walls, floors, ceilings, furniture etc. You don't want someone living in your frame house do you? No matter how immaculate the wood is.

These are just some ideas. What other ideas do people have to accurately transfer their vision to the page?

 

[Penpilot]

1 I've found that understanding plot structure has help me transfer the image in my head more accurately to paper. I can plan out the major beats to the story, and as I write, those beats help keep me on the road and on target.

But getting those beats down accurately to convey what I want tends to be the most difficult part. I usually end up adjusting tweaking and sometimes completely remapping the beats on the second draft.

2 Understanding all the tools available to you and figuring out different ways to used them. I've read lots of writing books, and I've found that on the first read you only get a surface level understanding of all the tips and tools found in them. I've since reread the best of my writing book collection and I found with each read you gain just a little deeper understanding of the tools available and how to use them. So basically I'm saying know your tools and understand what they can do, because sometimes you might want to use a wrench to hammer a nail.

3 Make your prose do double duty. What I mean by this.... well. I got this from Mary Robinette Kowol when she was a guest on Writing Excuses and not a host. She was talking about the four principles of puppetry, because she's a professional puppeteer, and how she applies them to writing. It's a brilliant episode. Check it out here. Writing Excuses Season 3 Episode 14: The Four Principles of Puppetry, with Mary Robinette Kowal » Writing Excuses

But here's an edited transcript excerpt from that conversation. It's expresses what I mean, and it's brilliant. Full transcript here A Word in Your Eye - Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 14: WorldCon with Mary Robinette Kowal

[Brandon] So the fourth principle of puppetry that applies to writing?
[Mary] Is meaningful movement. That idea is that with puppetry, you generally speaking don't have facial expressions. Everything that you've got is body language. So it has to mean something every time the puppet moves. You'll see a lot of bad puppeteers who walk into a room and they bobbed the puppet's head up every time it says something. We call it head bobbing.
[Brandon] Very descriptive. Very nice.
[Mary] Thank you. Most puppetry vocabulary is in fact just that blatant. The problem is that it's conveying no information, so you're just putting a lot of mud on the stage. My feeling is that when a character... any time a character is moving... again, because I can only show the audience one thing at a time, that movement has to convey meaning. If my character decides to pick up a water glass, there has to be a reason that it's going for that water glass at that moment. So that it's conveying either an emotional content, plot content... that there is some meaning that that is conveying.
[Brandon] So no extra words is what you're saying?
[Mary] No, I'm not saying no extra words. I'm saying... well, maybe it is no extra words. I don't... it's not so much...
No. A lot of times, again, you know that there needs to be a pause in a piece of dialogue. So the... it'll be something like... the main character is talking and she says, "I don't like what you're saying to me." She looked away from him. "I don't understand it at all." Okay. She looked away is largely meaningless. Because there are many... what is she looking at? So, what you do is... "I don't like what you're saying to me." She fiddled with the knife on the table. "I don't understand it." That fiddling with the knife on the table immediately starts to tell you what she's thinking about, because she's... if she's going from "I don't understand what you're saying to me" to I need to play with this knife...
[Brandon] Yes. Put that knife down, please.
[Mary] Yes. The two things that I've done there is that I've given you some emotional content and I've also set the scene. So I'm using that one thing I can show you at a time to do two things and I've made that meaningful.

When I do what Mary suggests, I find it lets me do so much more with fewer words.

4 Past is prologue. To write good characters I need to understand them. People are the sum of their past and understanding what in the past made a character the way they are now allows me to write them convincingly, to know their voice and what moves them.

5 Allow your story to grow. What I mean by this is although it's important to try and keep the story on track and on the target, don't ignore opportunities. Sometimes interesting forks pop up along the main road. It's a writer's duty to at least pause for a moment and think about these opportunities, about what is gained and lost if they're explored. Sometimes the fork is worth exploring others it isn't because it takes the too far off course. But at least be aware it's there and make note. Who knows, it may come in handy later.

 

[gavintonks]

yes I like to look at pictures, and have a huge store of interesting images, and then look at them to describe a scene or place.
I also meditate for days on end on the story taking it down paths and trying different scenarios. I also look at fables and stories which have resonated with people to see if their is a concept which intrigues me to follow

 

[ncpendergast]

Great ideas here so far, thank you.

@gavintonks - I meditate on the story, too! Works wonders, also for creating characters. I'm usually doing that while listening to movie/game soundtracks, or sometimes classical music.

1. Sketch scenes out. Now you don't need to be an artist to do that - stick figures will do the trick. They might even be better at times, as they don't distract from your real goal with superfluous detail. This works best if you're a visual thinker, obviously, and if you can, try different camera angles for your scenes, as you might just need a change in perspective to make it all work the way you imagined it.

2. Do some research. Whenever some part of the story doesn't quite work out, I try to hunt down the item that gives me a headache (no matter whether it's a plot, character, or world-building issue), and then do some research on it. Often it's a few details I wasn't aware of that solved the problem.

3. Go with that shiny idea and see where it takes you. The last time I did that, one of my minor characters hijacked my plot, and while the actual changes ended up not being as great as I expected (apart from adding two chapters that made everything so much more interesting), the result is a lot better than the original plot. Keep in mind, if that shiny idea leads you nowhere, you can always dump it. But you will never know if it's any good unless you give it a try.

4. Always, always, remember that whatever you do write down, it is not set in stone (unless, of course, you do your writing with a chisel on a rock face, but that sounds tedious). You can always go back and change it, delete it, rip it to shreds and set it on fire (please don't try to burn your computer). In other words, you can perfect your words for as long as you need to get your vision across.

5. Writing is hard work. Yes, it's fun, too, but if you write regularly and not only when feeling inspired or something, you'll soon find yourself slogging through (sometimes seemingly endless) patches of sticky word-mud. Some of those you'll have to sit out, while at other times you may just need a break from your writerly duties. That's how it is. Get over it.

Hmm. Most of those might also help with that elusive plague named writer's block.

 

[gavintonks]

Great ideas here so far, thank you.

@gavintonks - I meditate on the story, too! Works wonders, also for creating characters. I'm usually doing that while listening to movie/game soundtracks, or sometimes classical music.

1. Sketch scenes out. Now you don't need to be an artist to do that - stick figures will do the trick. They might even be better at times, as they don't distract from your real goal with superfluous detail. This works best if you're a visual thinker, obviously, and if you can, try different camera angles for your scenes, as you might just need a change in perspective to make it all work the way you imagined it.

2. Do some research. Whenever some part of the story doesn't quite work out, I try to hunt down the item that gives me a headache (no matter whether it's a plot, character, or world-building issue), and then do some research on it. Often it's a few details I wasn't aware of that solved the problem.

3. Go with that shiny idea and see where it takes you. The last time I did that, one of my minor characters hijacked my plot, and while the actual changes ended up not being as great as I expected (apart from adding two chapters that made everything so much more interesting), the result is a lot better than the original plot. Keep in mind, if that shiny idea leads you nowhere, you can always dump it. But you will never know if it's any good unless you give it a try.

4. Always, always, remember that whatever you do write down, it is not set in stone (unless, of course, you do your writing with a chisel on a rock face, but that sounds tedious). You can always go back and change it, delete it, rip it to shreds and set it on fire (please don't try to burn your computer). In other words, you can perfect your words for as long as you need to get your vision across.

5. Writing is hard work. Yes, it's fun, too, but if you write regularly and not only when feeling inspired or something, you'll soon find yourself slogging through (sometimes seemingly endless) patches of sticky word-mud. Some of those you'll have to sit out, while at other times you may just need a break from your writerly duties. That's how it is. Get over it.

Hmm. Most of those might also help with that elusive plague named writer's block.

yes your music has a big bearing in terms of creating mood and pace good one there

 

[Zero Angel]

3. Look at pictures. Find art that you think is cool and sometimes it will inspire you. Not just fantasy art, but pictures or art of real life things too. I saw this picture of children playing in the ice in Finland or something, and I thought, for some reason, "These kids look like vampire hunters." I have no idea why, but that image and that idea stuck in my head. Tumblr may be a good place to visit.

Pinterest helps too!

 

[Guru Coyote]

What has helped me tremendously is to just sit down and write what I call "throwaways".
I set out to write 750 words in one go that I can just toss or not. The fact that I write as if it didn't matter is very freeing, and I actually generated very much useful material in those sessions.

Another thing I've done is to try and write the same scene several times... from different POVs or with changed details or whatever comes to mind. Just playing with alternatives. I have several stories on the slow burner... and sometimes I'll just sit down and play with some scenes of one for an evening...