I’ve been working hard on my novel this past month as part of NaNoWriMo and making great progress. I am at a stage in my novel where my characters are about to enter a labyrinth so I spent most of yesterday sketching a labyrinth on a piece of paper to help me better visualise how my characters will proceed through the labyrinth in my story. I’ve found many times in the past when writing stories I like to sketch elements of my story to help me get a good visual image in solid form. In the past I’ve sketched the layout of the houses in a street, creatures appearing in a story and characters. I nearly always sketch characters for my story, I find it helps inspire me when describing them, because sketching them first allows me to consider all aspects of their physical appearance. As for things like street layouts and labyrinths, I’ve found it helps me keep all the details consistent when I am writing a story.

I don’t know if any other writers out there are inclined to do the same thing, or something similar, but it is just a little something I do to really immerse myself in the story I am writing. I remember when I was younger and I wrote stories I would actually dress my Barbie dolls up as my characters so I could give my characters physical form. I’ve also used the Sims video game to give physical form to my characters too.

In regards to using visual imagery in my current novel, ywriter (the program I’ve been using to set out my story) has a great little feature that allows you to include images in your character bios, location descriptions and even with your scenes. This feature really appealed to me and I have been using it to its full extent. I’ve had a lot of fun googling images I think suit the various locations/characters/scenes in my novel so I can put them into ywriter.

I guess I should stop procrastinating now and get back to my novel… back into the labyrinth I go 😉