Writing Post: Images

This post topic comes courtesy of Sherwood Smith (sartorias). It's something that came up in the comments of her Author Introduction last week and I agreed with her comments in the post, but didn't say anything much there. However, the magnitude of what she said didn't really hit home until I started to think about my next project (now that the revised version of Well of Sorrows has been handed in to the editor). What's the next project? Well, I need to write out the plot synopses for books 2 and 3 of the Well series, so that I can hopefully sell them.

I hate synopses. I'm not that kind of writer. I'm sorry. I like to let the novel shape itself as I write. But we've had this discussion before, so I'll leave it and get back to the point.

As I begin to contemplate writing these plot synopses, I realized exactly what it is I know about the book ahead of time . . . which is jack shit. Or rather, it's exactly two or three IMAGES from the book, which people tend to call scenes, but in fact they aren't. I work on images, and the scenes and the rest of the book grow from those images. That's how I operate, which is why writing the synopses is so hard. The growing into scenes and then into a book happens WHILE I WRITE. It doesn't happen ahead of time.

For The Skewed Throne I had exactly one hardcore image burned into my mind. It actually became burned into my mind while I was writing another book (called Sorrow, unpublished for now; this is where most of my images come from . . . while writing other books). The image? I saw the main character, a young girl, sitting on a boat in the harbor of a city. As she fishes (or whatever she's doing) a White Fire burns toward the city from the ocean, a huge wall of white flame that more or less immobilizes her with its vastness and the fact that it cannot be escaped. This Fire burns through the harbor, pure and terrifying, but doesn't actually burn anything in its path. It burns something inside you, and then it passes over the young girl and then through the city . . .

And it leaves behind a huge question: HOW WOULD SUCH AN EVENT AFFECT THE GIRL AND THE CITY? What would change if something like this occurred? How would people react, what would they do?

That was the basis for The Skewed Throne. That was its IMAGE. Those of you who've read the book will notice that the scene itself never actually made it into the book. It wasn't really the scene that was driving the book itself, but the image is what caused me to ask the questions, and the questions were the important part. Those of you who haven't read the book, WHY THE HELL NOT?!?!? But you're probably asking yourself, "Where is the Throne in that image?" Well, the throne didn't come in until later.

But back to the image idea. Part of the discussion in the comments related to whether character came first or setting or what. You'll notice that in this particular image, ALL OF THAT IS THERE ALREADY. So I can't say that character comes first. In the image, the young girl has already begun to form, and will be formed as I begin answering the questions the image inspired. The setting is obviously already there: a harbor, a port, a city on the edge of water. But again, the rest of the setting (which I tend to think of as another character in and of itself) won't be formed until I start answering the questions.

So, as I begin pondering how to write the plot synopsis for books 2 and 3, I find myself asking what IMAGE is driving the books. I know the image for the second book and the image for the third book.

For the second book, I see in my head a HUGE tree (not your standard size tree, but one even larger than the redwoods) with autumn leaves, so vivid--orange and red and yellow--and from the bottom limbs of the tree there hang cages where criminals are sentenced to death by exposure. I'm getting a strong sense of the idea of justice from this image. In the background, I see a colossal city on the hill. The city is surrounded by an army, and large portions of the city are burning. And the kicker for the image (at least for me): THE TREE IS BURNING. This is why I want to call the book "The Autumnal Tree", although according to those here on LJ when I first proposed this title, it sucks. I still like it though.

The third book's image? Well, I can't tell you that because it would spoil things too much.

In any case, I now need to sit down and start thinking about the autumnal tree and what it means. I already know the main character, and you should notice that the image itself doesn't contain any characters at all. But I need to figure out what the city is, where the army came from, why it's there, why the city is burning, how justice factors into the story, and, most importantly, WHY IS THE TREE BURNING? What is the significance of that? I can feel that there's great significance to it, although I don't know what it is.

Since this is book 2 of a trilogy, I already have things to work off of from book 1, like a few characters that have to appear in book 2 (although not many), as well as an initial concept for what the main character's main issue is. I didn't resolve a major plot thread in book 1, so of course I'll have to pick that up and mess with it more in book 2 and resolve it in book 3 (I already know how it resolves), but all of those things aren't connected to the image I have yet, and so the trick will be to figure out what those connections are.

In any case, I realize that pretty much all of my novels have come down to a single image, something so strong that it begs for me to write it. Now to get busy and get the damn thing started!