Letting the Imagination Do What It Does Best

[Teresa Edgerton]

It has seemed to me, lately, that as valuable as the technical advice here is—and it is very valuable, don't get me wrong—that we sometimes put too much emphasis on that and ignore the important contributions the imaginative part of our brains can provide. It think this is because the technical advice is something we can share, but the imagination is a rather more mysterious prospect and so we tend to leave it alone. Oh yes, we tell new writers to read, read, read, to study how other writers do it, to learn from their technique, their successes and their failures, but we don't always touch on the great point which is that by reading one can feed the imagination, keep it healthy and fit. And not just by reading, but by watching movies, going to the theater, attending the opera, listening to music, visiting museums, walking in the forest, etc. etc.

We sometimes mention, but do not always stress, the importance of writing something one is passionate about, a story that is deeply interesting to the writer him- or herself.

And so, by concentrating on the technical to such a degree, I think it is possible to lose the joy of writing, and while working on what should be, certainly, a labor of love, we may forget the love while concentrating on the labor alone. I think we need both if we are to produce our best work. Those who dash something off and say,"That's just the way I imagined it, why should I polish it or attempt to improve it?" (and I have met plenty like that over the years, though they don't tend to last long in the critique section here) are probably those who like the idea of being a writer a great deal more than they like the writing process itself, but those who concentrate so much on technical details that they forget to set their imaginations free at times are robbing themselves of a glorious experience, and their readers as well.

Opinions?

 

[Karn's Return]

I always let my imagination run wild when I'm writing. Sometimes it works out. (Tooninoot.)


Sometimes it does not. (Turning Astreaea in my Morcalian world into a vindictive bitch?)


Ultimately, do not forget that nice little aspect. Take some risks, see about bending a rule here and there, just let it flow sometimes.


Point being, don't get scared of all the technical details. You do that, and you'll not get anywhere.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think that people who get scared of the technical details become discouraged and stop writing. But I am thinking of people who become enslaved to the technical details. This is wrong. I don't mean that people should forget them. I have never been in favor of that. But I think there has to be a happy medium.

The whole idea of learning the craft well is that having absorbed what you need to know you can then forget about it (consciously that is) and just let the writing flow. Of course some polishing at the end is probably going to be necessary, but in order to have something worth polishing I think the imagination needs to have had its chance to create freely first.

 

[sknox]

I don't like to let my imagination run wild, but I do very much like challening it. I like trying to work out the details, add color to the background, come up with more than one approach to a scene.

For example. In one novel I have my characters sailing (floating, really) across an unknown ocean in the center of the world. Something comes up from beneath them. Now, the first thing Imagination came up with was your standard-issue squid monster, all tentacles and parrot beak. I could just about see Kirk Douglas.

So I sent Imagination back out and told it to come up with something better. It came back with a giant jellyfish. Better, sez I. Like moon jellyfish only huge, sez Imagination. Even better, sez I. Plus, we still get tentacles! The monster's big enough that it comes up from underneath and the entire boat is stranded on its surface (Imagination was on a roll now). What will our heroes do? And there's a giant mouth and the thing will swallow them whole!

IMO, without the initial challenge--story needs sea monster--my poor Imagination just sort of sits in the corner, humming. Your imagination may vary.

 

[-K2-]

Since this is all new to me, how I research, write, and then edit might work as a happy medium.

When I write a story, I typically let my imagination flow. Without going into detail about how I get from point A to B, for the most part, I just write. The ideas for high-points, events or dialogue of note pop into my head, and I'll add them where appropriate. Naturally, over 100k words, there will be quite a few pauses. The story might be there, but the creativity and/or energy isn't. So, I take a break from creative writing and perform research.

There is little point in explaining the research aspect past saying 'anything and everything' applicable. When I get tired of that or have some ideas demanding to be written out...then it's back to creative writing. Back and forth, the story grows and the details to make it realistic firm up. Eventually, I get to the end.

Contrary to most of you, by the time I'm done with the first draft of a 100k word story, my writing skills (technically) have improved significantly. Early chapters are horrifying. Others i can tell I was excited but tired, and they read like some obscure alien language. In any case, with the bulk of the imaginative part out of the way, now it's time for editing (just so 'I' can read it ). That's when I'm into the technical bit... The imaginative part is over and done unhindered by technical details.

Yes, I'll add or change bits which require imagination or research, but I do those things as they come up, which gives me a break from the technical drudgery right when I need it.

In other words, I'm not performing the imaginative, research, and technical parts at the same time. So, one does not interfere with any other part. That said, I will perform I/R/T aspects of the work when I feel the urge, need a break from a different part, or have a part jump out at me to such a degree that it shifts my mindset.

So, none of the IRT parts are overwhelming any other. Instead, they help me to get a break from the other part, yet keep me working.

...or did I miss the point?

K2

 

[olive]

I'm not in control of my imagination, how do you people do that? It runs on by itself with a given hint, material... or it doesn't. It's a no for me to scratch something altogether I previously thought of and imagine a brand new kind of setting, characters... I am not able to do it yet at least.

 

[Boneman]

I always kinda envied those planners, who know exactly where their book will go, they've written a spreadsheet, the plotlines, the character arcs and so on. But then I wanted to ask "what happened when character A went off at a tangent?" How did you cope? Because I've always been a pantster, with good ideas for where the book goes - beginning, rough middle and end - but found my writing taking all sorts of different directions. I've always assumed this was my muse, kicking me, or my imagination.

I daydream for at least 2-3 months, writing down all the whatifs that surface. This happens day and night, letting my imagination run. Not necessarily wild, but just letting it go. The only reason I like mobile phones is the 'notepad' app that i can jot everything down on...

And my first draft is exactly that. My now crafted imagination has work to do on the second and third and fourth drafts, and they keep coming until my creative mind says enough. And as a small anecdote, I picked up and read a book I wrote in 2008. The ideas I had for how to improve it! How the story would work more satisfyingly if I did this, this and this.... working on those, now.

I find my imagination works best if I'm doing mindless things, like walking, cutting the grass, or just relaxing with music. I get great ideas on my rowing machine, with the eagles, cream, abba, chris isack and blood sweat and tears accompanying me...

 

[Boneman]

Oh, and Queen, of course... it's kind of magic...

 

[mosaix]

Music is the key for me. And it has to be instrumental. Any voices and I'm just distracted instead.

 

[Star-child]

I'm not sure if there is a real conflict between imagination and technical matters. Can anyone post an example of a writer who loses their creativity in the process of getting the rules right?

If anything I get the feeling too few writers know how to harness their creativity with any discipline, which is why we have so many posts about characters and worldbuilding "getting away from" the writer".

 

[Biskit]

I generally let my imagination have free reign and ignore the technicalities entirely. Then, my partner reads it and adds comments here and there along the lines of "this isn't English" or "this doesn't make sense", after which I edit, still ignoring the technicalities as best I can but trying to ensure that it reads more like English and fixing my failure to communicate what was so clear in my head.
Eventually, I produce something readable and entertaining.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I'm not in control of my imagination, how do you people do that? It runs on by itself with a given hint, material... or it doesn't. It's a no for me to scratch something altogether I previously thought of and imagine a brand new kind of setting, characters... I am not able to do it yet at least.

I think you are in control and...at the same time you aren't (just like everyone else)!

Okay, I can not be presumptious and know what you as a person really think, but here is what I think about the process of imagination.

Take this analogy:

There is a chemistry experiment I remember doing as a child. You'd make up a heavily saturated solution of Copper Sulphate (it's a gorgeous deep blue colour) and then hang a piece of string into it. You then leave it. The surface of the string causes crystal seeds to form and over time they grow as the crystal feeds off the solution. You can then grow very striking, large crystals.

The solution has to be super saturated because otherwise there is no incentive for crystals to form (the Copper Sulphate 'won't mind' being in aqueous solution rather than being in a solid crystal state, as there is still a lot of water about.)

And so I like to think that imagination works a bit like this!

The first stage is to 'super-saturate' your mind with ideas: pictures, other stories, films, discussions, experiences, all your reading. Read, watch and experience!

Then there is a moment analogous to dipping a piece of string in, the moment that starts the 'seed'. Perhaps it's just a question. 'What if...?' or "Why does...?" Or perhaps you get an image in your head of something novel, after hearing a piece of music. Then I believe the 'saturated knowledge' suffusing through your mind may coalese around your seed. You find answers, theories and more scenes just 'pop' into your head; if you are thinking about writing then plot lines and characters can appear; perhaps you are thinking about visual arts, so film scenes play out in your mind. Sometimes this is instantanous, sometimes this slowly accrues over time - there is no set way it will appear and will be different for everyone.

But the end product, taking this analogy, will be a large 'crystal' of new imagination. The more saturated your mind was at the start, the bigger and more complex this will become. The full process of creativity is about taking those starting seeds and allowing them to grow - the latter stages become a bit more technical as you try and put your initial vision down into words, film or dance.

Note that if the mind is not saturated...then the final idea that forms will be tiny or may not form at all.

So you are in control - about what you read or chose to experience, about trying to 'saturate' your mind with what excites and interests you. And you can also hone the process of trying to encourage creative thoughts to grow (i.e. dipping the string). Ask questions, follow intuitions, follow your heart.

The more experiences, ideas and images saturate your mind and the more you practice creative thinking the better you wil become at making these 'mind crystals'.

The unknown part is that the mind is huge and complex, so there can be no guarantee that this process will work 100% of the time, so yes, this is the part where we are not in control. We are not aware of how fertile our minds are to certain seeds. We may need many more experiences, or perhaps we need to think things a little differently. Perhaps we can't quite grasp what answers you are getting, so we need to comtemplate and work them out. If it was easy and obvious, everyone would be doing it well.

Anyway, I'm waffling. Hope the above makes sense!

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I think that people who get scared of the technical details become discouraged and stop writing. But I am thinking of people who become enslaved to the technical details. This is wrong. I don't mean that people should forget them. I have never been in favor of that. But I think there has to be a happy medium.

The whole idea of learning the craft well is that having absorbed what you need to know you can then forget about it (consciously that is) and just let the writing flow. Of course some polishing at the end is probably going to be necessary, but in order to have something worth polishing I think the imagination needs to have had its chance to create freely first.

There isn't a strong enough emoji to express my feelings for this and the original post. They sum up everything I aspire to.

I'm not sure if there is a real conflict between imagination and technical matters. Can anyone post an example of a writer who loses their creativity in the process of getting the rules right?

Yeah. Me. When I started as a new writer, I was all creative energy and to hell with the technical detail. I was (quite rightly) shot down pretty fast for this, as my lack of discipline and inability to follow the basic rules undermined any quality in my work. So, I set myself the task of learning the craft of writing, and I took this very seriously. I'm not, and probably never will be as confident with the rules as, for example @chrispenycate and @The Judge, but I became obsessed with trying to get the detail right.

And I lost my creativity. I was so focussed on punctuation, grammar and the Three Act Structure (plus a whole lot more) that I lost track of the sheer joy of writing fiction and letting my imagination take flight.

I hope I'm on my way back to a happy medium now, and the acceptance rates of my subs suggests that editors agree, thank goodness, but it can definitely happen.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think that if you can engage your imagination and put it on paper just right, that can help the reader to engage their imagination and that combination is always a winner.

 

[Toby Frost]

A few thoughts on this. First, much of the inspiration I've had when writing SF and fantasy hasn't come from SF or fantasy. It's come from other genres, other writers in those genres, from myth and history. While it's quite easy to transplant cliches of a genre (weary private eyes, silent gunslingers etc) into SFF, it's harder and I think stronger to capture something of the feel of those genres: the murkiness of noir, or the grand scale of a western, say.

I make a lot of SFF models. While I'm not a great painter, I am fairly good at converting models: ie customising them with other pieces or scratch-building entirely new models from bits. One of the techniques I've found myself using is to forget about the purpose of a part and concentrate on its shape. For instance, on its own, a gun can be an interestingly-shaped bit of tech whose barrel could be an exhaust, or part of a larger machine. I think something similar can happen in writing when the imagination takes over. The brain turns the accepted "pieces" of the genre around in an interesting fashion, sometimes with good results. What if the story doesn't pan out the way they usually do, or it's told by someone else, or some new variant is added?

For me, all the exciting ideas have to be filtered through the technical stuff: will it work for this story? And of course things like grammar need to be correct - that goes without saying. It has to be a polished piece of work, and the bigger the story and the more potential there is to go wrong, the more polishing that's required.

There's certainly a level of technicality that stifles imagination. I think it comes when writers focus too much on the manipulation of the reader or perhaps when they value the effect of a book over its contents, although this varies a lot from author to author. The risk is that you end up following some plan too closely, so that at page 50 the hero has to receive bad news in a letter, or the like.

 

[The Big Peat]

I think there's two things here.

First - what is discussed here - I agree we concentrate extensively on the technical side here and that this can give the wrong impression of how much weight to put on it, but I think that the topic skew here is just a natural expression of what we need help with. We have ideas. We've got imagination. We need help bringing it to life. So we talk technical. There are occasional discussions here on inspiration and imagination but they rarely seem to get that far.

Second - what writers should be doing to get their best experience and what we should encouraging them to do - best experience is a piece of string thing, but I definitely think that yes, we should be encouraging writers to not get too far away from what they love most about writing. I do think some writers are happier than others treating it as a labour than others but yes, in general I think there needs to be an element of joy in it. And I think getting to use the imagination is a big part of it. Possibly why - personally - I don't like editing that much as my imagination's not really involved.

I always kinda envied those planners, who know exactly where their book will go, they've written a spreadsheet, the plotlines, the character arcs and so on. But then I wanted to ask "what happened when character A went off at a tangent?" How did you cope? Because I've always been a pantster, with good ideas for where the book goes - beginning, rough middle and end - but found my writing taking all sorts of different directions. I've always assumed this was my muse, kicking me, or my imagination.

I wonder how many of those start at the beginning and how many of them start at the end. It's a lot easier to stop Character A going off on a tangent if you come to the scenario where they might go off on one, having worked out what needs for them to happen to go on your decided course.

Of course, working from the back like that does risk making the writing process a little sterile for some, but it can work.

I'm not sure if there is a real conflict between imagination and technical matters. Can anyone post an example of a writer who loses their creativity in the process of getting the rules right?

If anything I get the feeling too few writers know how to harness their creativity with any discipline, which is why we have so many posts about characters and worldbuilding "getting away from" the writer".

There was a girl at my work who wanted to be a writer - think she'd done a few short stories, a short film proposal - but who found herself paralysed by all the writing advice saying "don't do this".

I know a few others who've found a certain relief in realising the rules are there to be broken. For some people, there's a definite conflict.

 

[Lumens]

I come from a place of running wild with my imagination, writing mostly for the sake of pleasure, doing freewriting or stream of consciousness type stuff. Now that I'm getting into the craft of writing, I'm learning how to express that in a way which communicates better, and what works in a storytelling context - and that's just as exciting to me.

It's all about finding a balance in a constantly changing world - a bit like surfing; know when to paddle and when to flow.

 

[tinkerdan]

As to the mechanics or technicality of writing having anything to do with the creativity or imagination, I tend to think this has more of an impact on the reader than on the writer. Something mechanically incorrect will impact one way, while something mechanically perfect will go another, where something in-between might take the reader to a totally different level. A writer who has several edits can decide which direction they want to go after they get the story mapped out and they can fix the technical aspects in the editing process.

However I suppose for someone who might lay claim to never having to edit,it could become an issue; since they have to consciously decide if they are going to go all technical or if they are going to mix it up artistically and they have to do this on a more direct and immediate level since they are not going to go back and correct things.

The Write Story:
'Being an Author means never having to say you edit."

 

[The Big Peat]

Also something that just occurred to me while walking -

The visuals and ideas and 'what ifs' aren't the only way to use your imagination and creativity. Like, hugely important and satisfying.

But for some of us, the joy of trying to get scenes to marry up, or ensuring we get our big scenes in at the right moment (or how to satisfy the reader if we want to delay or go early), is a fun way of using imagination and creativity in its own right. Right now, I've hit about 5k in on a new idea, and it was starting to feel a little lacklustre so I decided to stop and think about what could be improved structure wise - that and I have editing to do on other projects - and it's been a lot of fun in its own right. And just because I'm thinking a lot about structure and 'rules', doesn't mean I have to be bound by them. If thinking hard about it makes me think I'm best off ignoring a rule, then ignored it is! And one of the ways I've approached it is "Screw thinking about what works, think about what you actually really want this to look like... and then think about if it works".

It's also made me think a lot deeper on the characters, and who are they are and why they're doing what they're doing, and what's actually interesting about it.

I'm not saying this is for everyone, but it is for some.

 

[Luiglin]

I'm a pantser at heart with a dash of plotter to keep the pantser from getting lost, and no doubt hoisted up a flagpole.

I love letting my imagination run free. Some characters personalities beyond what I intended them to be while others struggle.

For example, I had a halfling druid called Artichoke and his pet rat, Sprout, in my dwarvern gumshoe tale. I enjoyed writing the scene between them so much that I extended the role, especially Sprout's.