Why it's so hard to draw (write) from imagination

[alohadave]

https://design.tutsplus.com/article...rom-imagination-heres-how-to-do-it--cms-22967

This article is about drawing, but I see a lot of parallels with writing. It might be helpful for people who struggle to write.

I know that I will frequently copy scenes and scenarios from other people and build on them. I have the most success doing that than trying to imagine something from whole cloth.

Also, the Reddit thread this was linked in has a great point. Instead of thinking in terms of 'show don't tell', think of 'storytell don't explain'.

 

[AG31]

I'll be interested to watch this thread. For my own part, I have never "made up" a story. I just record fantasies that are pretty much complete. My effort comes in finding the right words to describe the fantasy. But I see that's not the norm. I'd like to know if anyone else works that way. And I'd like to know the inner workings of more traditional authors.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I must say that this is one aspect of writing I've never had any problem with. Coming up with the plot and worldbuilding comes easy to me and is by far the thing that my readers appreciate and praise the most about my stories. Apart from some difficulties with coming up with fresh words and expressions, which stems mostly from my being a non-native speaker, figuring out the proper pacing has definitely been the most challenging part of crafting my (long) stories. It often forced me to think in some "creative" ways to avoid long expositions, but there are probably some moments where I've been unsuccessful at it

 

[BBlaketbv]

So this is about creativity and how it works in your brain.

Several of my family member are teachers. Recently one of them had a course that explained how some children are visual-thinkers.
Some are visual-thinkers, some are verbal/voice-thinkers, some can do both.
Visual-thinkers often have learning deficiencies because education systems were designed without taking such psychological aspects in mind.
Apparently lots of visual thinkers have their thoughts sort of organized in a mental drawer. They can open that mental drawer and 'see' where certain things are stored.

I've drawn, painted, and written.
I am definitely not a visual thinker, at least not for a large part.
Drawing and painting for me is much easier if I have an image as an example.
Writing is much easier for me. Finding the right words and the right way to structure the sentences is just a technique or a skill.

For me it is much easier to phrase my ideas than picture it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I'll be interested to watch this thread. For my own part, I have never "made up" a story. I just record fantasies that are pretty much complete. My effort comes in finding the right words to describe the fantasy. But I see that's not the norm. I'd like to know if anyone else works that way. And I'd like to know the inner workings of more traditional authors.

All I write for fun or profit are stories I have completely made up. There have been instances where I have been contracted to write about a certain premise or about a specific type of character, but the story comes from my imagination.

From conversations that I have had with other writers, the problem is seldom related to their inability to imagine things, it's transferring that imagined content into words. For them, I always suggest that they plug in a microphone (or other recording device), close their eyes, and dictate the story as their imagination sees it. The words can always be transcribed at a later time.

 

[AG31]

From conversations that I have had with other writers, the problem is seldom related to their inability to imagine things, it's transferring that imagined content into words. For them, I always suggest that they plug in a microphone (or other recording device), close their eyes, and dictate the story as their imagination sees it. The words can always be transcribed at a later time.

Fascinating! What a novel idea! Do you do this yourself?

 

[AG31]

So this is about creativity and how it works in your brain.

Several of my family member are teachers. Recently one of them had a course that explained how some children are visual-thinkers.
Some are visual-thinkers, some are verbal/voice-thinkers, some can do both.
Visual-thinkers often have learning deficiencies because education systems were designed without taking such psychological aspects in mind.
Apparently lots of visual thinkers have their thoughts sort of organized in a mental drawer. They can open that mental drawer and 'see' where certain things are stored.

I've drawn, painted, and written.
I am definitely not a visual thinker, at least not for a large part.
Drawing and painting for me is much easier if I have an image as an example.
Writing is much easier for me. Finding the right words and the right way to structure the sentences is just a technique or a skill.

For me it is much easier to phrase my ideas than picture it.

Fascinating take! Both I and my son, a special ed teacher, have a condition called aphantasia. That is, an inability to create visual images in our minds. It's a spectrum thing, of course -not "The Spectrum," just that some experience it more completely than others. I'm not sure it's the same thing you're talking about when you say "visual-thinkers." It sounds the same, but the fact is that the vast majority of people ARE able to make visual images. My son has done fairly extensive research on the topic, so I'm confident about what I'm saying. Again, you may be talking about something different... an absence of words, maybe? And just because your mind is populated with visual images doesn't mean you can put them into words, of course.

Anyway, my stories have very little physical description. I don't even know what my MCs look like, except that they are handsome and well built.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I can't draw a pile of do-do, but I can write a little. Hopefully, my writing isn't do-do.

Edit; changed is to isn't. SHEEZUS!

 

[AchtungNight]

I can't draw a pile of do-do, but I can write a little. Hopefully, my writing is do-do.

According to certain trolls here, mine is do-do! Ugh.

 

[Omenainen]

I'll be interested to watch this thread. For my own part, I have never "made up" a story. I just record fantasies that are pretty much complete. My effort comes in finding the right words to describe the fantasy. But I see that's not the norm. I'd like to know if anyone else works that way. And I'd like to know the inner workings of more traditional authors.

I think this is kinda amusing. So what do you think your fantasies are? Divine manifestation? Of course they’re something you made up, even if you’re not sitting down to consciously do it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm a very visual thinker, but also, highly proficient verbal/ written. My left and right brains are very integrated, inter-connected, I think. From what readers tell me, my word flow somehow creates a visual response in their minds as they read - cinematic, like a film, paint a picture - they're all expressions I've seen, describing my style. I write stream-of-consciousness too, tapping deep into my psyche. That's where my story-building goes on, in my subconscious.

 

[AG31]

I think this is kinda amusing. So what do you think your fantasies are? Divine manifestation? Of course they’re something you made up, even if you’re not sitting down to consciously do it.

OK. Not "consciously" made up. The distinction still stands, I think.

 

[AG31]

That's where my story-building goes on, in my subconscious.

I think that's why I suggested that most of your stories strike me as "authentic."

 

[PennameWombat]

OK. Not "consciously" made up. The distinction still stands, I think.

Why is it important?

Creation is both conscious and subconscious. For this year's Valentine's Day contest, I had the conscious idea that I wanted to incorporate an actual human heart into the story. Because it's Valentine's Day. Hearts. With that as the prompt, developing the story as a revenge tale that wasn't exactly revenge, was both conscious and subconscious, the latter simply as I let things percolate. That became The Way to a Man's Heart.

My Nude Day story, Books, Butts and Bare Bodies. I had a subconscious view of a library. But, if you read the story, it's very specific to the books and section, because those books have long been in conscious thought and I've referenced them elsewhere. Why? I like the idea of referencing sixteenth century books on accounting in erotic stories and I've done that before. Through the Woods was similarly triggered by a dream snippet, but only the bare bones (a couple in a wooded area.) That could've led to a thousand different stories, so it was conscious choices that took the story where it went, even if subconscious musing contributed, as it always does.

Finally, my best received Literotica 25th Anniversary tale, Scotland's Finest, was very much an intentional process. Around the turn of the century I was sitting at a bar and a man and woman walked in. They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary and asked if the bar had a twenty-five year old Scotch. It did, and they toasted each other. They left. That's it. That was the whole real experience. The subconscious part was that I've long had that memory, and had the desire to work it into a story, but clearly reality was lacking in this case. So it was conscious intent working on long-held subconscious musings that led to the story that's there. Again, there were plenty of other choices that could've been made, the story didn't pop fully formed into my mind.

I'm not claiming I'm unique in any of this. And clearly, I've "made up" stories. If that means my stories aren't "authentic," whatever exactly that means, so be it.

 

[AG31]

Why is it important?

Creation is both conscious and subconscious.

It's not important. It's just interesting.

 

[tenyari]

I must say that this is one aspect of writing I've never had any problem with. Coming up with the plot and worldbuilding comes easy to me and is by far the thing that my readers appreciate and praise the most about my stories.

Similar here but my thing is character depth and world building. Putting the character through a struggle / protagonist's journey is often a challenging task for me. My stories often start as "a day in the life of" journals, and then I have to add in some antagonistic element and figure out why we have a story here rather than just some random kink.

I can weave together a very complex individual with all sorts of life goals, personal drama, and erotic aspirations. And I can put together a setting with a vast library of lore - in mere moments. And if all I wanted to do was have my character exist within some particular fetish or kink I could spin out a 30,000+ word story every day. But plot gets me.

I have piles of stories in my inwork list where a character ends up being my protagonist and set into an erotic situation and I then have them 'exist' for a bit until I realize there's no antagonist, there's no plot, there's just "explore the life". I've read countless stories on here that do that for their entire story - but I need long form plot in mine.

I'm a "natural" at character in situation moments. But moving forward from situation to challenge to setback to conclusion <--- your classic story arc. I struggle there.

The longest I've gone without having the plot show up was a few hundred thousand words. Which was just a story where a character showed up in a place and explored around.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Fascinating! What a novel idea! Do you do this yourself?

Frequently, especially when driving and ideas come to me. (I don't close my eyes at these times)

 

[Omenainen]

And to answer the question, I don’t find it difficult to write something from imagination. I think it would be more difficult to write something based on, say, someone else’s scenes and scenarios, and it would be very boring to only rely on personal experience for inspiration. I guess it’s a factor of imagination, maybe not quantity but quality thereof. But for me, imagining stuff out of (my subconscious) thin air is precisely what I love about writing.

 

[StillStunned]

But for me, imagining stuff out of (my subconscious) thin air is precisely what I love about writing.

I agree. There's something immensely fulfilling about transforming something that's floating around in my head into a story. It begins with a scattering of wispy thoughts, and when you're done you have something vivid, something that you can share with others, something that will be with you for the rest of your life.

 

[samhasstories]

I find the parallels/contrasts between drawing and writing to be fascinating. I like to do both. I don't claim any particular prowess in either, but I'm a better writer than visual artist (I flinch to even use the word 'art' anywhere near my drawing).

Drawing and writing use different parts of my brain. I can't really draw from imagination - or, I can, but the result is unlikely to look like anything (there's something fun about that too, but that's a different story). What I love about drawing is looking at something that my brain wants to resolve into a cohesive, indivisible whole - a person, or a horse, or whatever - and breaking it down into its constituent shapes. The process makes me see the world differently, and the focus it engenders can be therapeutic.

I think that's a useful exercise in writing, too, but in a much more abstract way. You look at a person - a personality - and see if you can break them down into their constituent parts. Rather than the circle, triangle, trapezoid, etc. that can be cobbled together to make a face, it's the interests, flaws, humor, etc. that make a complete person. And just like with drawing, you gradually shade it in, add levels of detail and style, and keep tweaking it until it looks something like what you're going for.

I'm not particularly interested in taking the parallels too literally - I don't really want to look at a specific person or situation and try to transcribe them onto the page. I prefer to make stuff up. But the points about learning how to build from reference apply - you learn to identify what makes the world you see the way it is, and you can use those ingredients to build your own.

 

[intim8]

I'm a very visual thinker, but also, highly proficient verbal/ written. ... . I write stream-of-consciousness too, tapping deep into my psyche. That's where my story-building goes on, in my subconscious.

Same here. I have a movie in my head, and I transcribe it, poorly. I'm rarely able to describe the scene perfectly as I see it, (which wouldn't make for a good story even if I could), but I try to go for the underlying meaning of it.

Yeah, that "movie" in my head pulls memories of things I've seen, but those are generally just pieces of the full picture that emerges, and only once in a while am I consciously drawing on a specific memory. Actually, the most common case of that is writing female characters in sex scenes. There was another thread here about "seeing" the character where that was talked about. I'll often, though not always, scour the internet for a nude picture of a woman I'm picturing in my head to use as a reference for the body of the character (a truly horrible task ).

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Not much of an artist, so I won't go there.
My writing though is a combination of things. Sure, I have some stories that seemed to just appear in my head completely formed and I just transcribed them. Just a Walk in the Park was like that and is probably my favorite story of all the ones I've published here.

Most of them though, started off as a glimpse of an idea that I had to manually nurture and tend to get them finished. Sometimes it's a lot easier than others. I have a few stories that I started and then dropped for a while before getting the inspiration I needed to finish.

I try to inject myself into my characters, imagining how I'd react or how I'd feel about a certain scenario. This is sort of like transcribing, but less letting go and more taking control, if that makes any sense.

And before you ask, no, not everything I write is autobiographical, I just find that injecting myself helps me clarify the scene. That's not to say that I don't touch on some personal issues in my writing. I will also readily admit, and do so in my author's notes, that some stories are inspired by specific instances I my life. I'm not anywhere as big a slut as a lot of my characters are, though.

 

[AG31]

I try to inject myself into my characters, imagining how I'd react or how I'd feel about a certain scenario.

That's what I imagine is missing when I read a book (not necessarily erotica) that doesn't seem alive. There are probably authors who don't need to do that. Who have a repertoire of knowledge about people's behavior they can draw on, but maybe not many?