Susan Goodwill Author of the Kate London Mystery Series
The act of collaging engages a different section of the brain-- think left brain for most aspects of writing beyond the actual magic of creation and right brain for the creative process. This technique seems to help stimulate the right brain and lasso the muse into sitting down for a latte or two with the plotting, plodding part of your writerly self.
Read more writerly stuff on my Upstaged, my blog, at :Upstaged
This is my collage for the first Kate London book, BrigaDOOM. I learned this technique in a master class at Writer's Retreat Workshop in Erlanger Kentucky. http://www.writersretreatworkshop.com/ The wonderful, fabulously funny author, and phenomenal teacher Jenny Crusie http://www.jennycrusie.com taught the class. The idea behind collage is to build a visual image of your story using elements you have pulled from magazines, dollar stores, craft shops, found items, etc.--whatever strikes your fancy and "feels" like it belongs. Warning: some things will make no sense at the time. Have no fear, they will all eventually end up a part of your story. But it's okay if they don't. The idea is to get the juices flowing, not to create perfection. The act of collaging engages a different section of the brain-- think left brain for most aspects of writing beyond the actual magic of creation and right brain for the creative process. This technique seems to help stimulate the right brain and lasso the muse into sitting down for a latte or two with the plotting, plodding part of your writerly self. In my collage you can see elements of the Egyptian Theatre. The leopard print luggage belongs to Kitty, the eccentric former B-grade horror movie star. She is Kate's aunt and co-owner of the down-on-its-luck Egyptian. Other elements include plaid ribbon, representing the thread of the looming opening date for Brigadoon, the play that the off-kilter Mudd Lake Players plan on performing; a pink plastic squirt gun; pictures of the Lake Michigan shoreline; a red rose, hands, and money. I used fiberboard and cut and taped it in the shape of a theatre. I rolled and constructed a small arch with a head of Osiris and placed it in the bottom center to symbolize the theatre which is the core of the story. There is software that allows one to do collages online, and some folks simply do image pages by clipping pix from magazines and gluing to paper. Whatever works for you!
For you writers out there, this is an interesting technique.
Copyright 2008 Susan Goodwill. All rights reserved.
