Monday, July 6, 2009

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!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, what a wonderful idea!! These are great! Happy and peaceful summer to you!

Jeeves said...

Wonderful. Lovely images!

Kelly Boyce said...

They look great as always!

Julia Phillips Smith said...

Kim - Hope your busy schedule still has time for summer fun.

Jeeves - Thanks!

Kelly - Thanks!

SandyCarlson said...

These are really excellent, Julia. You inspire me to give it a try.

Julia Phillips Smith said...

Sandy - Cool!

Travis Cody said...

Interesting. I've never thought of doing something like this.

Susan said...

I've done collages too for my writing. I find it very interesting that yours feature almost exclusively people. I did see alot of *richard Armitage* there!!! When I did mine, I had forests and magical creatures and shells and images of places. Interesting isn't it, how our minds work? I really find yours fascinating. Plus the Richard photos, of course!! would he be the template for a few heroes???

Dorothy said...

Your collages are great. Lots of inspiration in them.

I don't exactly do collages but I do cast actors as characters in my stories and do make story boards.

I think collages or storyboards are great tools in writing. Especially for us visual types.