It felt a bit funny at first. The story idea that I decided to start with is one for which I know the ending (kind of rare for me, that). And I hadn’t been intending to start my prewriting with collage experiment with this story, either – but the other night, I was lying in bed and all of a sudden the entire first scene started playing out in my mind.

It’s a scene that I’ve actually written out before, but I never liked it. I felt I didn’t know my characters well enough, so everything was kind of rickety and wooden.

But that night, I got to know my protagonist a lot better. And that’s when it occurred to me that she would be an ideal way to start experimenting with prewriting with collage.

One thing I’d already decided I would do was use the collage method to help me get to know my characters better. I have tried almost every method of developing a character out there – creating character profiles, interviewing my characters, writing their journals, doing stream of consciousness writing about their lives – and nothing has really ever worked for me. Since I find writing to be so much easier when I really know my characters, I usually end up writing some wooden first chapters until the characters start coming alive for me.

So I thought it would be perfect to use the prewriting with collage method to develop my characters! And I’ve decided to couple it with the cool lapbooking technique that I learned last year when I was looking at homeschooling resources. (Here’s a great YouTube video showing a trains lapbook, to give you an idea of what can be done, if you haven’t come across lapbooking before).

A file folder for each character, and then a large collage for the entire novel – that’s my plan, anyway.

When I started tearing out the pictures, images and words that called to me, I was trying at first to focus on my main character. But after a while, I’d find images that suited other characters, or the novel as a whole. So in the end, I decided to just tear out anything that felt “right” for the book. What I’ll do is collect a large pile of images and words and colours, and then I’ll start sorting and creating the individual folders as well as the large collage.

And the most important thing of all – I started! And it’s as fun as I thought it would be.

If anyone is interested in doing prewriting with collage, I’d love to hear about your progress!

This is the collage she created for a book she’s still working on:

Jennifer Crusie’s Collage for You Again

If you click on the image, it will take you to the large-sized picture on her site. Click on that image, and you can see the details up close. It’s very intricate, and gave me some wonderful ideas and lots of inspiration for  doing my own pre-writing collages.

Reading through her process, it seemed to me to be a very good way to open up yourself to your intuition, dusting off that fossil, as Stephen King put it in On Writing.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about writing more intuitively; when you’re plotting and figuring out where you’re going with your novel, intuition can often get left behind, especially if you’re writing suspense or mystery or even fantasy. On the one hand, it’s easier to sit down and write when you have a good idea where you’re going, but on the other hand, too clear an idea where you’re headed can dampen your enthusiasm for getting your story down into words. At least, that’s what I find – I’ve always loved the feeling of writing and discovering my story at the same time. When the discoveries have already been made, methodically by the left-brained me, the writing isn’t nearly as fun.

So the idea of prewriting with collage really intrigued me. Off I went to the art supply store for proper provisions (which is a part of the fun!). I came back with a variety of supports – large foamcore boards, packages of medium-sized illustration board in both white and black, and a nice-sized pad of sturdy cartridge paper.

As I was wondering the aisles, resisting temptation as best as I could (there was a gorgeous box of oil pastels that I really, realistically speaking, didn’t need … and yes, I was very good and didn’t buy it!) I realized I could extend the process further. I would do an overview of the book I’m writing on a large foamcore board, but I would also do smaller collages for each of the major characters, and for specific locations, too.

So now I’m well-armed in the supplies area. Next up is a visit to the dollar store to see what catches my eye, then it’s going to be a day spent with a stack of magazines, letting my inner muse tear out pictures without any censoring from my logical self.

What I’m looking forward to the most? Seeing what surprises come up for me. The novel I’ll be using this technique with is one I’ve carried with me for nearly ten years now. It’s a fun book, but it’s a big book, too. I think in the past, tackling this project has always felt overwhelming – there’s just so much there, so many areas to explore. Now, however, I feel like I’ve found the way to find my way, so to speak.

And that definitely feels good.

More Links

I decided to Google around and see if I could find other authors who also use collages as a prewriting technique. It’s fun to read about each writer’s collage process. I didn’t find very many links, so I thought I’d list the ones I’d found for anyone who’s interested.

Collages with Barbara Hannay

Collaging: A Story in Pictures (Note: pdf file)

Workshop: Creating a Writing Collage

Story Collage (Yvonne Lindsay)

Tycoon’s One Night Revenge