In a post on Writer Unboxed, Donald Maass explores ways we create from our imaginations. “There are three primary modes in which a story is imagined,” Maass says. “Writers may engage at different times in all three but are primarily inclined more to one than another. Each mode has strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages, and that in turn means that manuscripts will shine in some ways but be shortchanged in others.” Maass says these modes are:
- Visualization. Like a film, you might see your story playing in your imagination, beat by beat. “The upside of this mode can be a heightened sense of reality to a story’s action,” Maass says. “The downside is that this mode can lead to sequential narration, a strict chronicling of characters’ time and activities, as when in beginning manuscripts chapters start with a character waking up in the morning and end with that character going to bed again at the conclusion of the day.”
- Big Moments. In contrast to the play-by-play version of strict visualization, you might see your story’s peak moments – scenes with high drama or turning points. “The advantage of this way of imagining story is that it puts emphasis on what is dramatic,” Maass writes. “The disadvantage is that such manuscripts can wander, trying always to hammer significance into intervening action in which it doesn’t exist.”
- Word Driven. “Words draw the road map as the writer drives ahead, suggesting what should happen, what will be said, when to turn east or west, and what it means when a story does,” Maass explains. “In imagining a story like that, what happens doesn’t matter as much as the way in which a narrative voice is relating things. Our experience of the story is as much impressions as it is events.”
One major shortcoming of each type is that mundane moments might start taking up too much of the page. You might slow down your narrative with a protagonist’s breakfast, or try to create an emotional moment around what he’s eating, or describe the meal in too much sensory detail, when in reality, it’s just breakfast.
Maass shares some examples of how great writers describe ordinary life in a way that supports their characterization and theme, and reveal the hidden meaning of everyday activities. “When there is an underlying reason to show us the humdrum of life, the daily grind can become charged with meaning,” he writes. “That happens only when the writer knows his or her intention.”
