AUTHOR WORKSHOP: VISUALIZING YOUR STORY

Depending upon the subject of your book, it's often helpful to attempt to find images online which convey, at least in a general manner, what it is that you're personally envisioning. This is especially true when stories deal with scenes that the average reader might have difficulty visualizing.

You'll want your story to play out in your head exactly as if you were watching a video of your story on a big screen TV. When you think about it that way you'll be able to view the details in each scene.

With that in mind, describing someONE, someTHING, or some PLACE will be far easier if you have a visual aid to refer to while you're writing. It will also be a heck of a lot easier for your future cover artist (as well as for me, your editor) to make certain a descriptive passage is visualized the way you intended it to be.

On this page I'm going to show you a random collection of images gathered while I was writing The Quantum Cat.

Each is a collage, some were assembled when discussing components of a particular scene with my illustrator. That's why you'll see some image duplicates.

Much of the story takes place off-planet, which meant that a huge amount of research had to be performed first. When I was describing plant Bioluminescence, for example, I needed to know exactly what it was, how it worked, and whether or not it could be used to illuminate a garden pathway, the light from which could be seen from the terrace of a penthouse apartment.

If you don't know what something is, or how it works, you had best do your homework, because otherwise your readers are definitely going to call your bluff.

You never want that to happen.

Several of the images shown here are accompanied by descriptive passages. Some were ideas for visualizing characters in the story.

Rough Idea - Cover mock up for sequel.