I haven’t had a chance to visit the Loft Writers’ Collective lately, but I’ve been several times and it’s an awesome place.
One of my very favorite workshops I ever took there was with Mary Caroll Moore, about the importance of place in fiction. I took the workshop mostly because it was between two other workshops I really wanted to do, and I thought this would fill the time nicely. Turned out to be the best one of the day.
The exercise I remember the most clearly and which I still use: be quiet, close your eyes, and picture an important place in your story. What are the little details you notice? What sounds can you hear? How would you describe the feeling of this place?
When I closed my eyes, put my head on my desk and pictured my main character’s bedroom, a hundred details flooded in at me. No only could I see the room in great detail, the characters walked onstage and began doing things, just everyday living things, and details that I hadn’t considered before became apparent. The main character’s father sang while he worked in the garden out her window. It pleased and embarrassed her. Her mother hung fresh laundry on the line. She had a beautiful view of the forest behind her house from her room. She owned the only mirror in the house. Her mother made the white curtains that hung in the window. Her father had made her comb for her when she was very young, it was wooden and smooth and worn from use. She loved that comb very much. While her parents worked, she combed her hair and tried on clothes in front of her mirror — a very vain girl, this main character! Her parents wanted her to be happy and to marry well, so they encouraged her vanity.
I was AMAZED at the amount of detail and feeling and information that flooded me when I did something as simple as visualize a place in my story. I now know that while my main character is vain, she is beloved of her parents and genuinely cares for them. Up to that point I just knew she was vain and obnoxious. I realized after this exercise, though, that in order for the story to move or for a reader to care about this girl, she would have to have a good heart underneath her snotty exterior.
All this from a five minute visualization!
Try it. Go on! Set your head down, close your eyes, imagine a place in your story. You will almost certainly never use all the detail you get, but it will help flesh out your characters and give you more than you ever expected about them.
Go!
