What is image-based writing and why is it effective?
With writing that is image-based the images in the narrative or poem have a starring role, and the chief skill of the writer is creating images. The writer needs a mind that thinks in images. Without vivid image-based writing, texts are lifeless, bland, dull. They don’t seem real and lack vitality. They seem to be business reports, not literature. With image-based writing, texts spring to life. Fill your writing with images.
Practice to develop the skill of image-making. With vivid image-based writing, readers believe that characters are made of flesh and blood and what they are doing really happened. The world of your physical descriptions is real and has three dimensions. That is what you are trying to have your readers believe–and you had better do it quickly, within the first paragraph.
Here are samples of image-based writing from David J. Rogers, author of the popular post “Imagery in the Arts.”
Indian Summer Picnic
A sparrow flutters its wings just above the grass,
Squirrels shimmy up trees, a gopher pokes
Its head curiously out of a hole. The sunlight gives
The landscape a coppery hue. The sky grows dark
And threatening, and the clouds turn black.
The breeze has become surges of wind that spin leaves
In the air and drop them ten feet away. Everyone
Hurries to clear off the tables and take everything inside,
Everyone rushes around gleefully, pitching in, doing their share.
They snatch things up, and as they dash for the house
Raindrops the size of pebbles fall and soon the leaves on the
Ground are saturated. What an afternoon–
How fresh, as if floating on a pond–the dark sky,
The farm, the trees, and the people during the flight of
This passing moment.
Woman on a Hill Overlooking a Lake
As she walked
Her lithe body swayed and
The sun shone bright on her wild,
Stormy-looking hair, engendering in me
A sense of her sophistication, and not coldness,
But rather inaccessibility, delicacy, refinement,
And intelligence. For that’s the impression
Women whose beauty is beyond words make.
Welsh Men, English Woman
The men in that Welsh-American family smiled appropriately,
Frowned sympathetically, and looked as grave
As morticians at times, puckering their foreheads,
Pursing their lips, and pouting. Not for a single
Instant were they amazed, puzzled, or unsure
Of themselves, and their voices were firm.
They stood so erect, so confidently, as they talked
So earnestly, straight as if braced by rods, as though
What they were saying were unassailable truth
And could not be doubted but by a nitwit.
Or they stood nonchalantly and slack, their hips shifted to
The left or right, with nothing other between their
Hair and shoes than supreme, unshakeable
Self-assurance. But the English woman was alone against
A tree like a twig that could easily be broken in two or
An object on display to anyone who had a desire to
Stare–a scarecrow staked deep into the ground,
Impossible to budge.
Hints of Winter
The previous week’s frost wilted
And turned brown many of the flowers in the beds, but those
That are still alive are bright and straight. The farther back
You go in the yard, the stronger are the fragrances that
Come from all sides. Across the grass, close to the house,
A sprinkling of white and purple dresses the tops of
Oleander bushes.
The sun sheds light in patches on the grass.
Beside the barn, as if kneeling, is a gnarled and bent tree and
Farther away other straighter trees whose leaves are changing.
I can smell the green leaves and the dry leaves, the young
Leaves, and the old leaves that give hints of winter.
Then and Now
Chicago’s Sheridan Road ran parallel to Lake Michigan, as it does today, and when you walked down it in those days you heard the sounds of the traffic mingling with the lapping of the waves on the beaches. From the beaches on clear days you could see on the horizon’s edge the western shore of Michigan to the east, and out on the lake low in the water turgidly-moving barges carrying heavy loads of ore down from Minnesota to the steel mills of northern Indiana. On certain afternoons in July and August the sun bore down on the sand so intensely that it was painful to walk on it, so mothers and fathers with feet on fire dashed to and from the tumbling waves carrying their squealing children tight in their arms.
One by one the beaches were filled in and all the great industrialists’ mansions with ample lawns that lined the street were torn down and replaced by closely-packed towering apartment buildings with hundreds of balconies which were far more impressive architecturally, but far less beautiful. Few people remember the mansions or the beaches, but most believe that the high-rises have stood there forever. Now when you walk down Sheridan Road the traffic is so heavy and the water so far away behind the buildings that you can no longer hear the waves.
© 2024 David J. Rogers
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