Through the Opera Glasses - 22 - Using Collage to Unlock Your Story

My writers' group started doing collage workshops as a way to let our subconscious loose, to let ideas surface. An article in the Romance Writers Report gave Pam Callow the idea to hold a collage session ourselves, and she's done them three times so far.

The article was by Jennifer Crusie - you can read about creating a book collage HERE.

I've got three collages for three of my works in progress, and I gaze at them from time to time when I need to disappear into the world of my story.

I thought I'd share them with you as a glimpse into what I'm thinking about as I write. As someone who went to film school, I'm a highly visual person, and I really need to see what's going on in my head. I need to hear the voices of the characters speak when possible. I just listen to the actor whom I've cast as the character when I need to do that. Luckily, they've all done similar scenes to ones I'm writing, meaning the characters they portray hit similar emotional notes, and when I need to hear my own characters, I often play scenes from their films or TV shows to feed my inner muse.

The first collage I did is for the novel I'm working on right now - my gardener story. Here's the full collage:














Here's a few close-up panels:
















Here's the second collage I made, of my vampire story:














A few close-up panels:













The most recent collage was done at our last writers' meeting a few weeks ago. This is my Scorpius collage, the dark fantasy:













A few close-up panels:















Kim Richardson says Oh, what a wonderful idea!! These are great!

Jeeves says Lovely images!

Kelly Boyce says They look great as always!