Ep160: Using Imagery in Your Writing

Writer Craft Podcast

Listener comment: suggestion to timestamp if the video is about a specific thing (Main Topic starts at 24:58)

Announcements:

• PNW inspired horror [e-mail]; Submissions closed. Reading stories now.
• 2024 Writer Craft Writing Retreat and Workshop registration open; https://valerieihsan.com/retreat (Day Passes $400)
• Three Story Method: Writing How-To Books out now.
• Focus and Finish: Goal-Setting and Strategic Planning for Writers (First in Series; out now.)
• Black Springs Saga Book 1 out now (it's the prequel) 99 cents (Accidental Stranger Book 2 preorder this coming week)
• SWWC and Write in the Harbor (Erick teaching.) (Valerie will be at Write in the Harbor this year, too!)
• Host of Ghost Story Weekend for Wordcrafters. (Erick)
• featured on KBOO radio (link coming soon)

Author Update:

Erick:

• launched new book series (Black Springs Saga)
• writing and client work
• list of short stories for the summer
• Valerie:
• back much better (still stiff) and knee improving, but slow (ultrasound tomorrow); seeing the need to focus on my health needs (physical and mental)
• speaking Alaska Writers Guild conference in Anchorage in October and Write on the Sound in Gig Harbor, WA in November.
• Working with my Burnout Recovery plan; Updates through my Patreon page.

• I'm reading:

• Thunder Song by Sasha taqŵšeblu LaPointe
• In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
• The Manor House Governess by C.A. Castle

Erick:

• Cold Victory by Karl Marlantes
• You Like it Darker Stephen King
• Anders Fager "Grandma's Journey" Swedish Cults (HP Lovecraft on acid)

Notes:

Imagery can be intimidating if you think it has to be beautiful, flowery, lurid, prose. Think more realistic expectations.

It's a tool. Imagery as tone setting. Character interacting with environment. Relevant to the action. More vivid images.

Use concrete sensory images to "explain" feelings.

Get unique with imagery. Use different senses besides visual.

Layer senses. Work in reverse in heightened scenes (tactile first?). Maximize effect. Cinematic thing. Sound cue, reaction cue, visual cue.

Cliches come from not having a grasp of a moment or character when use simile. Remember to use character's POV, not yours. Metaphor is more powerful than simile, often. Imagery progresses from simile to metaphor (personal style choice), character development. Using the old comparisons to make sense of the new thing, but as they continue exploring the new, it becomes more metaphor than simile.

The movie in my head will always be different than the reader's movie.

Set up imagery so the reader is allowed to watch their own movie.

Co-create with your reader.

Find the balance. Fresh but familiar.

Imagery can be (should be?) intentional. Happy accidents. ;-) What's new and unique? How can I riff on that?

Find Us:

Valerie's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/valerieihsan

Erick's Linktree link: https://linktr.ee/erickmertzauthor