Jun 28 2008
Using Visuals To Stimulate Your Writing
I am a huge fan of visual aids in my writing. Though I very rarely add pictures to my posts or my writings, I find a lot of inspiration in pictures. I’m sure you’ve heard to old addage, a picture is worth a thousand words, and it’s more true than you might think. A good picture can be the basis of a good story, or even a great article.
There are hundreds of stock photo sites online. Most of them are free to use, but that’s only if you’re planning on posting them with your work. You can find thousands of pictures through search engines, and a variety of other places. A friend of mine has just started a new blog displaying his own photos, which give me a lot of ideas for my writings. I’ve written stories based on landscape photos, articles from advertising photos, and have even written a couple of poems from pictures in catalogs.
Look through some of your own family photos and see if there isn’t a ton of ideas right there in front of you. I’ve got a lot of pictures of old cemetaries that my dad took many years ago. Looking through them gave me the idea to write a story about a girl searching for her roots. On the other hand, someone else might have taken those same pictures and created a horror story or even a story about a lost love.
If you’re suffering from writer’s block, photos can also be a good way to get past that. Choose any picture and write something about it. It doesn’t have to be good, just something to get those creative juices flowing. Keep going until your muse takes over and creates a whole new world. There a million stories out there, all you have to do is see them in order to write them.
Thank you honey. I love photo sites. I’ve created a lot of fun writing stuff just from looking at pictures.
Thanks for the stumble, and you’re welcome for the post.
Interesting… ideas and inspiration comes to me by way of music. Sooner or later music that interests me will start evolving into a story in my mind.
I’ll have to try using photos as well!
This is awesome! I’ve used many things for writer’s block (which I’ve been getting a lot recently- I’ve just been feeling lethargic with my writing), but not this. This will definitely go on my remedies list!
I wish you both the best of luck. I use visual stimuli as much as possible.
Oddly enough, it’s usually the strangest photos that strike a chord.
One of the most amusing writing contests I ever entered involved writing to a word and a picture; people got some seriously nifty ideas out of it.
Excellent concept; I’ll be sure to make more of an effort on that in the future.
Thanks Ravyn. It’s always been one of my favorite idea creators.
Let me know if you do this and if you post something from it, I’d love to read your work.