Imagery in Writing

[Louanne Learning]

It seems to me one of the important goals of good writing is to form images in the reader’s minds.

Maybe it helps for the writer to imagine they are watching a video of their story and then describe in words what they see.

Maybe it’s about appealing to all the senses, or using metaphors.

It doesn’t mean describing things you don’t need to – everyone knows what a car looks like, and is it relevant to your story exactly what kind of car it is?

But imagery is especially powerful when the writer attaches a picture to abstract things. This, I think, really fosters reader engagement.

It’s about not just telling, but showing.

So, instead of writing - The fire crackled.

Here it is, with imagery –

“What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.”

― Thomas Bailey Aldrich



I love to hear your thoughts and pointers about incorporating imagery in your writing.

 

[Louanne Learning]

“The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

 

[Banespawn]

I think mood is a very important part of description. We don't just want to describe a thing so that the reader can see it. We want to describe it so that the reader can feel it.

There's a guy on Youtube who breaks down writing by well-known authors. I've been watching some of his videos on GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss.

They are definitely worth a watch.

 

[Louanne Learning]

We don't just want to describe a thing so that the reader can see it. We want to describe it so that the reader can feel it.

I love this! Such an important point. Quintessential writing - images that move a person.

They are definitely worth a watch.

Thanks so much for sharing.

 

[Dogberry's Watch]

Everyone always talks about how Tolkien loved his trees, but we all know exactly what those trees look like, don't we?

I keep trying to say what I mean, but it's not coming out right. I think there's a vitality to the simple descriptions. I think with the example you gave above, with the crackling fire, the context of the fire is where the imagery becomes important. If I were to read "the fire crackled," it's a sound I know and love, but if it's meant to be a specific kind of crackle, then the rest of the room needs to be seen. Is that where the abstraction comes in? A character can hear the fire crackle, and maybe it spawns the living room of their great-aunt Margaret who's always cold. Or it's the summertime hunting trip with Pops. Maybe it's a solo hike through a state park and a stop for lunch at one of those grills that sits outside every single shelter.

So, in that regard, the fire needs to be seen, and heard. We'd need the crackle to kickstart the rest of it. This is not to disregard the example you gave, of course. I think oftentimes it's down to a writer's personal style that shows their use of imagery the best. I remember writing my essays at school where I'd be asked to discuss certain elements of a story we'd read in class, and one of the things we'd be required to touch on was the imagery used. It got to be tedious in some cases because in the world of literary fiction, those elements are well established, and thoroughly pointed out by hundreds of students. I think I once asked a professor why the fish couldn't just be a fish, and why we had to make it mean something to the writer, and the answer was something vague, but I think it's a good question.

Do we as writers want the reader to see what we see and feel? Or are we hoping what we write gives them the chance to associate their experiences with the scene we're setting? I think it's a bit of both, for me. I want a scene to be clearly defined, but not so defined, as you asked, that the make and model of the car is given. A red sedan with a busted hubcap does a far better job than a rundown Mercedes in terms of setting a scene (in my opinion, haha).

I don't know if any of what I've said is what you wanted, but it's what I thought of and tried to articulate. Maybe I did it well! I don't know. It's late, haha.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Do we as writers want the reader to see what we see and feel?

I think this is what is at the core of art. It's what makes a painting, or a story, a piece of art - that the receiver of the art feels what the artist felt while creating the art. Quoted below is how Tolstoy defines art in his book What Is Art?

If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.

I suppose this means that the writer must feel what they are writing, and those feelings are then passed on to the reader.

 

[Banespawn]

Do we as writers want the reader to see what we see and feel? Or are we hoping what we write gives them the chance to associate their experiences with the scene we're setting? I think it's a bit of both, for me. I want a scene to be clearly defined, but not so defined, as you asked, that the make and model of the car is given. A red sedan with a busted hubcap does a far better job than a rundown Mercedes in terms of setting a scene (in my opinion, haha).

Brandon Sanderson often talks about this in what he calls the pyramid of abstraction.

Specific details draw the reader in and ground them in the setting, enabling the author to present their more abstract ideas without losing the reader. If you can paint a clearer picture without adding more words, why wouldn't you do that?

One of the examples he uses is a dog. A dog is a fairly abstract idea because there are so many different breeds of dog. One person might imagine a chihuahua while another imagines a rottweiler.

Sure, you can say that the character has a dog, a fish, and a red sedan with a busted hubcap, and let the reader imagine all of that however they want, but that doesn't tell us a whole lot about the character. The specific details can help to show us who this character is. Maybe he has a rottweiler because he lives in a dangerous neighborhood and wants the added protection. Maybe he has a rundown Mercedes because he was once wealthy and has since fallen on hard times.

The specific details matter. They give us a clearer picture not just of the thing being described, but of the character and the overall setting. They help the reader to engage more with the story.

 

[Dogberry's Watch]

Well, yes. The busted hubcap in my example last night was on a sedan outside that the narrator saw, not necessarily the character's car. So, yes, the specifics matter, but they then matter to the character viewing those specifics.

It gets to the point where I ask myself how far into a detail I want to go. If the image I'm trying to show is for one character or all of them. Maybe my narrator doesn't know the man who used to be wealthy and has a rundown Mercedes because he's down on his luck. To my character, it's a busted hubcap.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm firing back in defensiveness. I think you raise a good point, but it also asks further questions that I then wonder if we need to go that far with it. For that answer, I think it depends on the writer and the kind of story they're telling.

 

[Banespawn]

Well, yes. The busted hubcap in my example last night was on a sedan outside that the narrator saw, not necessarily the character's car. So, yes, the specifics matter, but they then matter to the character viewing those specifics.

It gets to the point where I ask myself how far into a detail I want to go. If the image I'm trying to show is for one character or all of them. Maybe my narrator doesn't know the man who used to be wealthy and has a rundown Mercedes because he's down on his luck. To my character, it's a busted hubcap.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm firing back in defensiveness. I think you raise a good point, but it also asks further questions that I then wonder if we need to go that far with it. For that answer, I think it depends on the writer and the kind of story they're telling.

In that instance, yes, the specifics probably aren't important. The perspective character may not know the specifics, such that providing them would be a break in POV.