ATT JMS: Writing and visualization.

Tue Apr 9 06:14:57 EDT 1996

Subject: ATT JMS: Writing and visualization.
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 No. | DATE        |  FROM
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+  1: Apr  7, 1996: jthorpe1 at cc.swarthmore.edu (jere7my tho?rpe)
*  2: Apr  7, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
+  3: Apr  8, 1996: dzhines at midway.uchicago.edu (David Hines)
*  4: Apr  8, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
+ 12: Apr  9, 1996: faa35 at dial.pipex.com (Jeannette Simpson)
* 13: Apr  9, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)

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From: jthorpe1 at cc.swarthmore.edu (jere7my tho?rpe)
Lines: 37

you were talking about the process of writing a B5 episode.  You said
(IIRC) that you visualize a scene in your mind, get all the movements,
dialogue, camera angles, etc. locked down just so inside your head, and
then simply transcribe what you see.

     1) Do you use this approach for novels and stories, or just for TV? 
Since TV is a visual medium, I can imagine visualization working
beautifully...but novels tend to focus on the internal, the way people
work.   We get to see more than just what they look and sound like--we get
to see inside them, rather than _deducing_ what's inside them from what we
see and hear.  I ask because I've been trying your visualization approach
in my own writing, but I worry that it comes out like a transcript of a TV
episode--everything is vivid on the page, but it all seems so
externalized.  I feel like I'm missing opportunities for delving because
they don't show up on my two senses, and thus don't get included in the
blocking in my head.

     2) How the heck do you _remember_ everything that passes in front of
your mind's eye?  I get a scene going in my head, know the characters are
_here_, then move _here_, and the bathtub is _here_, and I take
notes...but then, when it actually comes to sitting down at the keyboard
and writing it, I discover that half of the little fillets have vamoosed. 
("Now what was I thinking about a llama?")  If I took enough notes to
capture them all, the note-taking would be equivalent to the
story-writing, and I'd have the same problem.  So...how do you do it? 
Train your mind to be more like a steel trap and less like a steel sieve? 
A new and different kind of note-taking?  Hooked on Phonics?  (For that
matter, how do you take notes?  What does a sheet of note paper look like
when you're done with it?)

                                                            ----j7y

**************************** <*> ****************************
jere7my tho?rpe                     "Something..."
Physicist and Artist Guy               <Something _fell_!>
jthorpe1 at cc.swarthmore.edu                         "...fell."
(610) 604-0669                    Cerebus, _Church and State_

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 120

"You were talking about the process of writing a B5 episode.  You said
(IIRC) that you visualize a scene in your mind, get all the movements,
dialogue, camera angles, etc. locked down just so inside your head, and
then simply transcribe what you see."

That's correct.  I play it like a movie in my head.

"Do you use this approach for novels and stories, or just for TV?  Since
TV is a visual medium, I can imagine visualization working
beautifully...but novels tend to focus on the internal, the way people
work.   We get to see more than just what they look and sound like--we get
to see inside them, rather than _deducing_ what's inside them from what we
see and hear.  I ask because I've been trying your visualization approach
in my own writing, but I worry that it comes out like a transcript of a TV
episode--everything is vivid on the page, but it all seems so
externalized.  I feel like I'm missing opportunities for delving because
they don't show up on my two senses, and thus don't get included in the
blocking in my head."

I still visualize the scene, but I do it differently in a work of prose. 
The key there is to see it *from the perspective of the character*.  In a
TV script you're the omniscient camera.  I do a little of that, just to
know the movements, but the rest of the time I spend behind the
character's eyes.  How does the room look?  Can I smell the woodburning
fireplace from here?  Is the room hot or cold?  Where am I?  You have to
use all your senses in a novel.

"How the heck do you _remember_ everything that passes in front of your
mind's eye?  I get a scene going in my head, know the characters are
_here_, then move _here_, and the bathtub is _here_, and I take
notes...but then, when it actually comes to sitting down at the keyboard
and writing it, I discover that half of the little fillets have vamoosed. 
("Now what was I thinking about a llama?")  If I took enough notes to
capture them all, the note-taking would be equivalent to the
story-writing, and I'd have the same problem.  So...how do you do it? 
Train your mind to be more like a steel trap and less like a steel sieve? 
A new and different kind of note-taking?  Hooked on Phonics?  (For that
matter, how do you take notes?  What does a sheet of note paper look like
when you're done with it?)"

I don't actually take notes on scenes.  If a great line comes to me for a
scene I'm working on later in the day, I'll rip out a PostIt and slap it
on my monitor, but that's about it.  Sometimes I'll write down the act
breaks on a sheet of paper, but even that I haven't done in a long while;
I usually just sit down at the keyboard and start rolling the "film"
through my head, no outline, just a sense of where I have to go.

It's just a mental quirk; how does an actor remember every line of
dialogue in a play, plus all the stage movements, prop locations, stunts,
and the rest?  I've always had a very good visual memory.  If I go to your
house once, I can usually remember the layout years later.  Take me to a
strange city, drive me across town and drop me off, and as long as it's
light, I can find my way back again on foot with very little in the way of
errors.  

I was at the hotel in Manchester UK for only a couple of days for Wolf
359...but I can remember every detail of the hotel's layout: come in the
front glass door, to your right at 2:00 are steps leading down to the
restaurant.  Straight ahead, steps leading up to the lobby.  Check in
counter is to the left.  To the right is a metal grillwork area leading to
a second lobby and the smaller conference rooms along a hall which jogs
slightly to the left.  The B5 viewing room was just before the left jog. 
Back in the main lobby, there are benches and chairs along the right wall,
then there's a door on the right to the dealer's room, a pair of
close-able doors to another sitting area (sofa on the left this time),
then the elevators to the rooms (left side).  Turning right at the
elevators takes you to the stairs descending to another floor.  Keep going
in the hall and it brings you to the main hall at the end of the hall. 
White double doors.  At the far end of the main hall are curtained doors
leading to the street.  Additional doors to the hall are at the right
side, which can bring you back to the conference rooms.  (One of the door
hinges is slightly damaged.)  Four square support posts near the stage
area, and several more on the right angling around.  The first time I
walked in, to check out the area and rearrange the chairs around the
posts, there were approximately 10 people seated there, on the left-ish
side of the room.  More women than men.  One of the men had on a grey/blue
shirt and a cap.  He noticed me as I went about my business.

I picked that one because there are some Wolf-folks around here who can
verify if that's correct.  But I can go back 10 years of conventions and
do the same.  It's just a quirk.  I *never* get lost.  Once I lock onto a
place, I can go back 20 years after the fact and find everything there. 
Don't know if it's training, or  just a trick of genetics, but I have an
*extremely* visual memory.  

I remember the look on the face of the first woman I dated when she told
me it was all over.  I remember as a kid where my cat sat and looked at
me, very strangely, almost sadly, before it went out into the back yard to
pass away, there in the high grass.  I remember exactly where I was
standing, the time of day, the number of people on the school yard the day
I took down the school bully because nobody *else* would (age 10).  I
remember the exact shape and layout of the rose tattoo on the left wrist
of a woman I dated in college.  I can remember the phone number of the
parents of another woman I dated in college by visualizing the sheet of
paper I wrote it down on because it was raining and I was at a public
phone booth and the rain smeared the numbers.  I remember exactly where I
was standing, and what was going on in the background of the campus
newspaper when I learned that my friend Chris Parker -- a good man, a kind
man, a professor with the Psych Department who wore clown suits to staff
meetings to keep things in perspective -- had just been killed in a
motorcycle accident, and the gleep who said it happened because he was an
atheist and he had it coming...though I *don't* remember what happened
between that moment and the moment they peeled me off him.  I'm told I
vaulted over the desk and tackled him full-on.  I'll take that one on
faith.

Writers are living compilations of moments, which they reinterpret and
revisit, carving them into characters and stories.  The more you can
remember, the more you can recreate how you felt, the better you can turn
around and invest those same feelings and reactions in your characters. 
The problem is that all too often, we go through our lives unaware of so
much that goes on around us, we don't *pay attention* to our lives.  And
we miss the moments.  And in the end, the moments are all we have.

 jms

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From: dzhines at midway.uchicago.edu (David Hines)
Lines: 50

In article <jthorpe1-0704961251140001 at ts5-21.upenn.edu>,
jere7my tho?rpe <jthorpe1 at cc.swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>     2) How the heck do you _remember_ everything that passes in front of
>your mind's eye?  I get a scene going in my head, know the characters are
>_here_, then move _here_, and the bathtub is _here_, and I take
>notes...but then, when it actually comes to sitting down at the keyboard
>and writing it, I discover that half of the little fillets have vamoosed. 
>("Now what was I thinking about a llama?")  If I took enough notes to
>capture them all, the note-taking would be equivalent to the
>story-writing, and I'd have the same problem.  So...how do you do it? 
>Train your mind to be more like a steel trap and less like a steel sieve? 
>A new and different kind of note-taking?  Hooked on Phonics?  (For that
>matter, how do you take notes?  What does a sheet of note paper look like
>when you're done with it?)

Interesting. I see a writers' thread coming up here.

I've tried the "visualization" approach that JMS utilizes as well;
it doesn't work as well for me. Generally, I tend to visualize the
key scenes or moments and build around them; sort of a beads-on-the-
string approach. Here's *this* scene, a coherent unit unto itself, 
and now here's this one... but there's a fair amount of play in between, 
and that's where I wind up doing most of the tweaking.

This works, but for me, it's limited. Things start to blur together, 
and it's only by writing stuff down that I can actually make the 
story gel. Perhaps this is because I don't have as strong a visual 
memory as JMS does; I tend to get lost easily, and have a horrible 
inability to remember faces, just to name a couple of examples of the 
differences in our respective mental processes. (I can't see the 
whole story in my head, only parts of it - because I just don't
have the wiring to keep the whole thing straight. My *storage*
is okay, but retrieval is well and truly lousy.)

My beads-on-a-string approach works adequately for stories of which the 
intent is evoking a mood in the reader - but not for complex plot-oriented 
stories. For those, or for what Campbell called "concept" SF stories,
I have to sit down and outline. Sketch out the ideas, the ramifications,
the possibilities... and only after that, start visualizing. (I can't
keep everything in my head. I used to think I could, but some bitter
failures at the keyboard taught me the folly of that. *NOTHING* is 
worse than a good idea marred by horrible execution.)

Now, it may be that I haven't been working enough at my visualization,
but I don't think that's likely: I do physical anthropology, so
I use visualization a lot.

David Hines                 | Unsolicited polls, surveys and commercial 
dzhines at midway.uchicago.edu | emails are unappreciated. I will deign to 
                            | read such email for a rate of US$25 per word.

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 13

"Do you find that music or sounds can have the same effect? Hear a line
from a song and lock into a moment in time? Remember not only the
visuals but the emotions of that moment?"

Absolutely.  I think everyone has that experience.  If you want to get
technical about it, it's probably a version of state-related learning.

 jms

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From: faa35 at dial.pipex.com (Jeannette Simpson)
Lines: 38

raasch at nwu.edu (Christine C. Raasch) wrote:

>Hot damn!  What an interesting thread...I keep coming back to reread it.

>Someone mentioned "older" senses such as smell.  Have y'all read
>Cytowic's "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" (or "Could Taste", maybe) about
>synesthesia?  Synesthesia is a kind of co-mingling of certain senses,
>but more than that.  The author uses it as an illustration of the
>complexity of human sensation, how we are not passive recipients, but
>our thoughts are integrated in such a way that emotions and anticipations
>must color (if you will) our reality.  He argues against traditinal
>notions of "higher" (cortical) and "lower" (limbic).  Really thought-
>provoking stuff; check it out.

Actually I would have thought it obvious that our "emotions and
anticipations" affect our view of reality, as does our language.

On a similar note, I once watched a TV program on autism. The young
autistic woman who was featured had a most unusual and incredibly
creative way of seeing and relating to the world and of expressing
herself. Her use of language was fascinating.

And while I'm here, I have another question. Does our brain work like
a computer putting tasks into background mode? How many times do we
rack our brain for an answer that eludes us, only to have it pop out
sometime later when we've totally forgotten that we were ever thinking
about it in the first place? Like the chemical messages have taken the
round trip to Jupiter to get to where the answer's stored. Like the
core story of B5 just popped into JMS' head one day. The way I go home
from work with a nagging problem and find the answer pops into my head
when I wake up the next day.

Jeannette
_______________________________________________________________
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,
 and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
					Nietzsche

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 27

"do you ever find your characters almost outright refusing to go where you
 want them to?  this happens to me from time to time, where I want her to 
go one way, and she decides to go another.  It's rather annoying."

Yes, but it means you're doing it *right*.

Yeah, it happens.  Every once in a while, a character will go left instead
of right in my head, and I'll try to yank him back, and he'll refuse to
go, and I'll get into this sort of weird mental dialogue trying to find
out what the hell's wrong and what's going on.  I've now created the
characters sufficiently well now that they're alive, and I've come to that
point now where, if a character says "I want to do X" in a script, I'll
tend to go with it, figuring it may work and take me in some new
directions.  Every once in a while, we'll get to the end, and it won't
work, and I'll have to backtrack to where we went off the road...and,
natch, the character just sits sullenly in the back of the car, refusing
to admit he read the map wrong.

But when it *works*...the character surprises me, and if I'm surprised,
the odds are good that you're going to be surprised.

 jms

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