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How to fix this problem?

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masone

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I'm what one would call a "visual thinker". Actually, I didn't know what to call it until I read this paper by Gerald Grow. Basically I have problems translating/conveying the mental images I create in my head, either verbally or through writing. I hit on all the symptoms he talked about in the article, which included:

1. Naming imprecise or lacking: "The doohickey bollusked up my thingamajig." Broad, vague nouns and adjectives.

I can't tell you how often I sound like this when I try to explain something, even when it should be so simple.

2. Words as labels for unseen pictures, labels for complex but unexplained thoughts. Effort to label large visual wholes at once, without analyzing them into their parts. Each verbal element seems to refer to more than it says; words have multiple or cryptic, rather than specific, meanings.

Words imprecise. Connections unclear. Syntax slippery. Words don't seem real to the writer. Has a "You know what I mean" quality.

Slips of the tongue can betray the visual thinker's tenuous relation to words. In the middle of a statement, visual thinkers sometimes insert a word which names some object in the room their sight just happened to fall upon, like this conversation in a kitchen: "Yesterday when I was driving to school, the dishwasher overheated and I had to stop at a service station."

In a conversational pattern I often observe, a visual thinkers stop in mid-sentence, stumped for a word: They can see it but not say it. Teachers could accuse such students of not thinking. They are thinking, though; their thoughts just happen to arrive in visual, not verbal, form.

Those are just 4, but I hit on nearly all of them that's in the article. I can see the scene playing out in my head, but I just don't know how to properly convey it to someone. The "you know what I mean" bit above explains my writing and verbal style so well, and when they don't get it, I just want to shake them even though I know it's my fault. It's because I can see it, and I think I'm explaining it correctly, but it just doesn't connect. My prose has suffered because of this. So frustrating.

Picture this - I have this vision of a scene playing out in my head, let's say this scene from High Plains Drifter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2la06bUns I'm some invisible being in this scene watching it unfold in front of my eyes, and through my writing, the only way you can know what's going on. When you hear or read how I describe the scene, it wont play out anything close to that scene. It's hyperbole, but you might just end up immersing yourself in a strip club when you read my description.

What I want to know is, is there a remedy for this? A course that teaches you how to navigate a scene so that you can properly convey it to someone? I'm imagining something that plays a live scene like above and then asks you to narrate the scene, then maybe it points out the details of the scene that you should have mentioned in your narration, the things that would have brought the scene alive to the reader. Maybe if I continually do something like this with various scenes, I'll eventually know how to guide readers through my own scenes.

If anyone has any methods or knows of any tools that can specifically help a "visual thinker", your help would be much appreciated.
 

Katharine Tree

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Someone will come along with a better answer, but since I'm here now and have time, I'll give you mine.

This is the problem all writers face, to a greater or lesser degree. Conveying action in precise, vivid prose is an acquired skill, and one acquires it through practice and feedback.

There are three rules I got from Dwight V. Swain's book that I refer to over and over again, especially when I'm trying to write a complicated action sequence. They are:

1. Set the scene. Let the reader see the environs before the action starts. Focus on relevant details; "if there are pistols over the mantel in act one, there had better be a duel in act three". Don't neglect to mention important objects right off the bat; if you don't let the reader know they're there until they're important, it will feel like backtracking. Which leads into...

2. Tell everything in chronological order. Each action, emotion, and thought should be told this way. Never, never make the reader backtrack in order to re-evaluate a sentence. Give them everything they need to understand each sentence before they read it.

3. Specific words make the text come to life. This directly addresses the problems you mention. Take time to think of a better word. This is the work of writing and there is no shortcut. It isn't a tree; it's a red oak. It isn't a bird; it's a junco. It isn't a flower; it's a white violet, shot with purple.
 

Osulagh

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If anyone has any methods or knows of any tools that can specifically help a "visual thinker", your help would be much appreciated.

Find books that have description that works well for you. Analyze them for how they do that.

Write, revise and refine it down, then have other people read it and tell you how effective it is for them.
 

Layla Nahar

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When you hear or read how I describe the scene, it wont play out anything close to that scene.

Nothing ever comes out in the readers head like *exactly* like it does in the writers. And that's great. It's part of what makes this whole process amazing. But as long as things are consistent, the reader will get a picture that works for *them*. & that's really all that counts, in the end.



What I want to know is, is there a remedy for this?

Yes. Read. Read the first time as reader, just for fun, then the 2nd - 5th, 8th, whatever times you read a piece look at how the author accomplished the things you enjoyed most.



A course that teaches you how to navigate a scene so that you can properly convey it to someone? I'm imagining something that plays a live scene like above and then asks you to narrate the scene, then maybe it points out the details of the scene that you should have mentioned in your narration, the things that would have brought the scene alive to the reader.

Well, I think you just came up with such a course. Why don't you give it a try?

What you are talking about is much more of an art than a science, and the way to become competent in it is to look at how other people have accomplished it. The books that really moved you - that's your course.
 

Mr Flibble

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Basically I have problems translating/conveying the mental images I create in my head

Welcome to writing, my friend

this happens to us all. It is NEVER as good on the page as it is in my head. I don't think it can be, so stop expecting it. Because your words will conjure an image in a reader's head that is coloured by their experience of whatever it is you;re talking about. And you cannot control the reader's head and should not try


You can only be as precise as you can. Which leads on into your other problem

You know a thing I found useful when I was starting out?

Have a notebook. Describe thins or people or places. You have only three notable things to do so. If you say tall dark and handsome, you've reached your point. So expand, delve, dig in. Describe talk show hosts, the house on the corner, whatever. Pick the three things that you think will convey them best, and use those to describe it. Then practice using those three things to ALSO convey mood/tone/inner workings that your POV cannot know....

These things take practice. Would you expect to play Rachmaninov the first time you sat at a piano? Expect to be Jimmy Page the first time you picked up a guitar? Practice makes, not perfect, but better.
 
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Bufty

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There is no shortcut to obtaining flow and clarity.

Read. And write. And the writing will get better and better through practice and experience.
 

MythMonger

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Picture this - I have this vision of a scene playing out in my head, let's say this scene from High Plains Drifter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2la06bUns I'm some invisible being in this scene watching it unfold in front of my eyes, and through my writing, the only way you can know what's going on. When you hear or read how I describe the scene, it wont play out anything close to that scene. It's hyperbole, but you might just end up immersing yourself in a strip club when you read my description.

Part of this is going to be a POV issue. Unless you're writing the scene in omniscient POV (and that's super tough for a lot of beginners) then you're not actually watching the scene like a ghost in the room.

What you need to do to put this scene in 1st or 3rd person is to experience this scene as the narrator.

For example, in the first half of the scene, Clint Eastwood's head is down and his hat obscures his field of vision. Writing from his POV means that you don't give visual descriptions of the men gathering at the bar. You use his other senses. He can hear their footsteps or their muttering. Or maybe it's his sixth sense that feels them massing against them.

I also tend to visualize my scenes like a movie, and it's taken some practice to "flip" the omni view into a closer, limited POV when I write them.
 

job

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Build visuals from the world around you instead of movies and TV programs.
Study poetry.
Use words carefully and precisely.
Know what words mean.
Know their history.
Use words appropriate to the pov character.
Never use a fancy word when an everyday word will do.
Don't just describe, make the description tell story.

Compare:

Marion's dress was a deep purple.
Marion's dress was an emphatic, intense purple that changed color as she moved.
Marion's dress was the color of a 1979 Margaux that had been stored in an expensive wine cellar.

There's a place for all of those in the writing.
There's no one way to describe.
 
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tko

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be careful

That's one paper by one academic. His opinion, based on his teaching. Interesting, but it doesn't mean it's a real issue, nor is it be something that you "have to overcome" in the sense of a handicap or a disease.

Instead, it's a common problem for all writers. Sometimes when my fingers are typing, I start thinking ahead, and strange words pop up in the middle of a sentence. Some of us are very focused and determined, and can type out perfect sentences one after another. Some of us have more wanderings minds, with strange blanks and occasional leaps of tiny brilliance.

We are all visual thinkers to a certain degree. Most beginning writers have problems writing an organized, well thought out sentence using precise words. I'm not sure if there is any specific technique to overcome this except for self critique and practice.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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I'm am intensely visual thinker too, and it definitely makes for a higher learning curve when you first start writing, since it's harder for us to make the words flow together smoothly. However, once you've developed the skill of turning images to words, I think it becomes an advantage. I have a much, much easier time with action scenes and descriptions than my friends who hear their stories in words. My prose may not come out quite as precise and polished, but that's what editing is for.

There's no trick to learning how to translate images into words, though. You just have to practice doing it.
 

beccajw2

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Sometimes when I'm stuck on figuring out how to describe a scene or convey something properly, I try to set aside my mental image of the place or thing as a whole and focus on one of the five senses other than sight. I don't often think about how a room might smell to my MC, or what they might feel as they walk around, so coming up with those details can help me bring out something more unique about the setting than the furniture in it or the level of light the windows let in. I don't necessarily write all those details in, it just helps me get into a different, fresher perspective.
 

Wrenware

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So there's a quote from George RR Martin that I think is somewhat comforting to people experiencing this problem:

And I can see a scene in my head, and when I try to get it down in words on paper, the words are clunky, the scene is not coming across right. So frustrating. And there are days where it keeps flowing. Open the floodgates, and there it is. Pages and pages coming. Where the hell does this all come from? I don't know.

This is a problem that even the pros suffer from with their prose, as it were, and alas I think the only solution is just to bore on through. First time through, write down the events you want to convey as coherently as you can manage, in roughly the order you think they should occur. It may come out as clunky garbage. That's okay. As long as you have the events down, you can finesse their portrayal later.

(I've found finessing scenes on subsequent drafting tends to be easier, because the first time through it's easy to get caught up in the emotional heat of the events you are writing, which can get in the way of clearly constructing things.)

There are of course some writers who can produce appreciable poetry the first time they scrawl down a scene, but this is mostly achieved through practice. And in any case my cruel dystopia is going to condemn all such folk to toil in the salt mines.
 
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Debbie V

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Write picture books (or other highly illustrated work). The artist will fill in the details in the actual images. You'll need to have the other senses and actions covered. It's most important that you bring the emotion.
 

CathleenT

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Be careful with overused verbs. My particular Achilles heel is walked, often accompanied by over. Strutting, strolling, and sauntering all bring more vivid pictures to a reader.

But that's also really a concern for revision. When you're writing your first draft, just get the words down. You can make it pretty later. And as others have said, rereading your favorite authors critically, to see how they've done this very thing and then adapting it to your style is a very good approach.
 

Myrealana

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I am also a very visual thinker. My prose style is often called "cinematic." I write excellent dialogue, and my action moves at a fast pace with good choreography.

However, I suck at transcribing the people and environment I see in my head onto the page. It takes a lot of work. I have to have someone else read my stories and ask the questions that come to mind. What color is her hair? How old is he? What kind of a house is it? I don't understand how she got from point A to point B.

These are usually things that were perfectly obvious to me, because I see them with such clarity, but I didn't put it on paper.

The first thing to do is have other people read your writing and ask them specifically about what you need to describe better,

The second thing is to read books and stories with good descriptions that are not overly-wordy. I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books. Think about books like that where you can see everything happening in your head. Go back to them and read them for this one factor.

The third thing to do is practice. Describe something or someone without using the name. Expand your sensory vocabulary. Visit a new place and focus on a sense other than sight. The more you exercise your descriptive muscles, the stronger they'll grow.
 

masone

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Thanks guys. This is all great advice. It's great to know that this problem is common and can be overcame. :)
 

blackpaws

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Masone, I just started a thread called "Description" - because I have the same problem you do. I can clearly see scenes in my head, but translating them into precise words is hard work for me. I find that when I have a lot of emotion together in a scene, it helps to get those words out a whole lot.

I try to think back therefore to experiences in my own like similar to the scenes, and plug into the emotion to get my flow going for the words to come out. Still not easy, but better than seeing the same old scene and feeling the frustration of them just sitting there in my head.

If you find something that works for you, please let me know!
 
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