![]() When you see a beautiful painting, something that is so vivid and evocative, your instinct may be to touch it to know if it’s real. Readers are given both a mental and an emotional picture of the scene. Don’t you love the way ‘across the edge’ creates a visual tilting or slanting sensation to the paragraph?įrom the two short examples, we can see how writing can be richer and more visceral when we play up the visual elements. We pick up the sense of movement in the words ‘suddenly’ and ‘thrown’ and we see the colour contrast of the silver stars in the purple twilight. We also see this sense of poetic imagery in Alice Hoffman’s novel, Here On Earth (1997): The sky is already purple the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world. The image of a ‘bough’ as a long branch creates in our imagination the line of the platform or the interior of the train in our imagination. We can almost see the pale, indistinct faces (‘ apparition’) of the passengers in the busy Paris underground train station. The apparition of these faces in the crowd: ![]() Let us look at the imagery in Ezra Pound’s short poem, ‘In A Station of the Metro’ (1913): 2 | See Like A Poetįor this technique, we turn to the poet for inspiration. Of course, this kind of device works only if it suits the character and the story. NEW YORK – NIGHTĪlready I’m getting to my feet, pulling my bag onto my shoulder. In JP Delaney’s psychological thriller Believe Me (2018), the author sporadically uses a script format to show how the protagonist, an unbalanced actress, sees the scene from detached viewpoint: In fact, some novels even bring in scriptwriting techniques. Pick up just about any novel from today’s bestseller charts and you’ll find that most writers seem to be using their novels as calling cards for Hollywood, or prose auditions for a new Netflix series. 10 Powerful Visual Storytelling Techniques for Writers 1 | Think Like A Screenwriter Similes, metaphors, and other imagery can make the story less complex and more fascinating. The story world that you have created becomes realistic and believable to the reader. If you can show the world of your characters, the story becomes relatable and you create empathy in the reader. Visual storytelling helps you show and not tell. In fact, writers have used figurative language for centuries. I would go so far as to say that all stories are primarily visual. ![]() We could possibly debate the question, but the truth is that images bring stories and characters to life. Do readers expect the same visual experience when they pick up a novel or short story? Or we could argue that we live in a world where people relate more to visual stimuli. One could theorise that readers ‘see’ stories first – striking, moving pictures in the imagination that come alive in in the mind’s eye. In modern novels and short stories, there is a lot of emphasis on the ‘visual’ in modern storytelling – visual fiction that holds the same kinaesthetic quality of cinema. It will inspire you to build radiant images, unforgettable characters, and breath-taking tension. In this post, we show you 10 powerful visual storytelling techniques that you can use when writing your next short story or novel.Įach is supported by examples that will help you understand the technique. Visual storytelling translates into emotion, tension, and character in a powerful way. ![]()
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