Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Rewriting and Re-visualizing

I am a visual person. I can get inspired really quickly, but then I have to conceptualize my characters and world before I can move on.

For instance, I went to a Writer's Conference in May (Hoot Hoot!!!) and in one of my WIP's, I reworked the beginning chapter, and the character grew up three years. Suddenly, she wasn't thirteen. She was going on sixteen. Bugger. That meant all the characterization I'd done on her was changing. The new idea I had of her was different. She was older, she had a bit more pizzazz to her, and had a handicap she didn't have when she was thirteen. So, I've been working on changing her story, and I came up with a scene, probably near the end, that described her quite well:


(Forgive the off-centeredness - I took this picture with my awesome phone, but I was askew a bit when I clicked. Whoopsy!)

She looks young, sort of unsure about herself, but at the same time she seems confident that she'll be able to accomplish what she needs to do. Once I got this picture down, I suddenly had a plot twist that was going to make the story amazing. Plus, I knew more or less how my character was going to look, and what sort of style she'd be sporting. Both were super important to me.

I like to collect pictures that remind me of the stories I'm working on, as well. Things that my character might use, clothes she might wear, the way her town might look, I look for all that kind of stuff. I like to pin things to Pinterest (a fabulous way to "collect" ideas, by the way) but I also use the awesome FantaMorph to create photos of people. I like black and white illustrations (done by me, of course!), but I also like an actual photo. I posted about FantaMorph before, but I have recently used it to "update" my photo of my character.

On the left we have the main character's mum, alas deceased. (She might not be alive, but she's integral to the story, so I needed to visualize her.) On the right we have the new and improved MC, age sixteen, looking a bit uncertain of herself, yet glowing with promise. I like how they turned out similar, yet different.


FantaMorph is cool, because you can use more than one face to morph. For the main character and her mom, I used the same two people for the first, morph, then I used a different face for the final morph. A younger face for the main character, and an older one for her mum.

Do you need to visualize as you're writing? What sort of writing journal, or character journal do you keep? Any tricks you use to keep yourself excited about a project? I'd love to hear them!

Until next time, God bless.

Cat

14 comments:

  1. That is so awesome! How do you find these things?

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    1. I have a friend who showed me FantaMorph. It was love at first sight. :D

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  2. As always, I love your art. :-) And fantamorph is so cool. Yeah, it's easier for me to have a picture for my imagination to work off of.
    Can't wait to read that book.

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  3. Nice sketch there, Cat. :) I'm a visual person, too, but I keep the images in my head. I should draw them out ... however clunky I am with drawing.

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    1. Aw, thanks Claudine. It was a doodle that went "Hey PRESTO!" on me. LOL

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  4. I usually have an image of my characters in my head, but I don't typically go further than that (though I HAVE been thinking about using Pintrest for this purpose!).

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    1. Pinterest is awesome for that. I use it a lot.

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  5. Hmm, I swear I commented on this. I guess my comment was lost in the blogosphere. I love this. First, your drawing is amazing. Second that program is so cool!

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    1. No, you did comment. The weird thing is that I've been checking to see if I had any new comments, but it wasn't until today that it said I did, and there were seven. So, weird. Maybe I was having an internet connection problem. But thanks, and yes, I love FantaMorph!

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  6. I'm usually very visual, but when it comes to my characters, not so much. This Fantamorph thing is pretty cool!

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  7. Cat, you are a very good artist. I do visualize my characters. But, I'm no artist!

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    1. You never know. When was the last time you tried drawing?

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