Imagine Your Words

by G.Parker


(reprint from 2006)

Imagination is a powerful thing.

All it takes is a couple of words and your mind can call up images that fit what someone is describing. Memories help conjure up those pictures—they make your memories part of what someone is trying to describe. So, in a way, how we read something and picture it in our heads, depends on what we have seen and done in our lives.

Descriptions are probably the strongest tool to pull someone into your writing, provided you don't over do it. (Editors will constantly tell you something is too "wordy.") Setting the stage or scene doesn't take a lot of detail, just hints of things. Let the imagination of the person reading work for you.

Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort and sometimes it just comes to you. For example—while I was driving one day images of the fog surrounding me started words going through my mind. They evolved and intermixed until the beginning of a story came to me. It ended up like this:

The mist, settling into the low-lying meadow, blanketed the trees and caused them to become ghostly images in grey light. Drops hung from bare branches like globes of crystal, perfect in reflection--yet clinging, afraid to fall. All sound was muted, as if the mist was a giant quilt silencing the creatures that lived in the meadowlands.

Hopefully that gave you a picture of the scene in your head—it is one of the reasons you write. This is what you want to give your readers.

Creating images and thoughts in the mind of the reader is the sign of a good writer. You can do it. Go practice.