Collages

Anne Gracie wrote a compelling comment after yesterday's post in which she explained why she did a collage for her book The Perfect Kiss.

She said, "Something about the arrangment of the pics and the selection and odd litle bits and pieces really helps me play with possibilities. It doesn't actually take as much time as I thought, and for me, it's worth it.

I'm a fly-into-the-mist writer, and collage works well with that style, I think. A lot of the time I think I'm actually excavating a story from my mind, and collage makes this process easier, as my subconscious (which probably had a clearer idea of the story) helped with the choice and arrangement of pics.

Just one last thing -- my hero and heroine's pics are not chosen for actual physical resemblance, but for the mood evoked by that particular pic. Clive Owen has green eyes and brown hair, my hero has dark, almost black hair and golden eyes. But it was the expression in this pic that I wanted.

And now, simply looking at the collage plunges me into the world of my book."

She also mentioned another romance author Barbara Hannay who was very experienced with using collages as she develops her books. I have a great deal of respect for Barbara and her work, so I tracked down a wonderful interview article Nicola Marsh did with Barbara about the idea. Check out the article if you're interested in learning more about the process.

Here's the collage of Barbara's work-in-progress at the time of the interview.

Works for me. And not just because there's a hero-in-a-towel in this collage -- he doesn't look enough like Hugh for me to immediately zero in on that -- though there may indeed be a hero-not-quite-in-a-towel in mine.

Also Anne assured me that making the collage won't take as long as I think -- and why I should be worried about this when I'm a past master at procrastination and time-wasting, I don't know. So I am going to give it a shot.

As a consequence, I've spent the last two hours prowling the web for pictures of Irish castles -- interiors and exteriors. I've found several places I wouldn't mind exploring in person (and am trying to decide if I can afford it and if I can drive on the left well enough to get there!).

I keep looking at things and imagining what they'd be like if I were seeing them through Sara's eyes -- and Liam's -- and I am increasingly eager to start putting things together. I think it may help a lot since I have a memory like a sieve and can't keep details straight. If they're on the collage, maybe I'll remember them.

But I think the most tempting part of Anne's comment was when she said she had only to look at her collage and she was :"plunged into" her story.

As I've occasionally found it difficult to pull a world out of my brain -- or plunge into the one my characters are inhabiting, I'm thinking that doing a collage might be a very useful recommendation.

If there's one thing I've learned over the past 20-odd years of writing, it's that every book is different. Maybe Flynn and Sara's book will be the collage book. Why not?

At least it justifies all those pictures of James Purefoy I've got in my Flynn folder.

See you later. I'm off to look for pictures of Irish wolfhounds.