Social Novel Writing: Steampunk Imagery

Steampunk Watchman, steampunk-pics.com

Every writer should have an image library

Looking at art and photography spurs my imagination when I write. The details of other artists' creations spark my creative side, giving me ideas for my own writing: unique touches, emotions, scenes, and plot twists. I develop those sparks into full-fledged concepts and weave them into my stories, making them uniquely my own.

I think every writer should make a habit of collecting images that speak to them. I have an entire library of images that I've collected over the years, including photographs and drawings of people, places, and things. When I'm developing characters, designing settings, or am just plain stuck, I'll flip through my collection. It never fails to inspire me.

For characters, I make a file with the photos and drawings that remind me of the character in some way. Comparing my mental image to real images clarifies my mental picture and nails down the details of the character's appearance and personality. When I sit down to write, I display the pictures that are closest to my mental images on my screen. (My screen is usually half images and I put the MS Word window on the right side.) The images ground me, improve my descriptions, and help me make better and more consistent decisions about what my characters say and do and how they react to events.

The same goes for setting. Looking at setting images while I write helps me pretend that I'm actually there in the scene with the characters. The visual images help me imagine the sights, sounds, tastes, textures, details, and spacial relations as I write. Also, I can't tell you how many maps I've drawn of rooms, ruins, and cities. Even if I don't describe a characters' surrounding in depth, I, as the writer, need to know where everything is spacially so that my descriptions make sense to the reader.

These are a some of the images I've collected as inspiration for our setting. I've also posted more steampunk images on our Social Novel Writing Facebook page.