Visualize the Final Product

In most cases, when we think of writing, the words we make are the final product. There is very little in the way of formatting that a novelist needs to worry about. But writing occurs in so many other forms, each with its own nuances.

When I write fiction for a novel, I see the characters in my head. I see them move and talk and act. What I write down is simply what I see happening. These characters can go anywhere and do anything. My writing will follow them around the earth.

When I write comics, it is a little different. It starts out the same way, with me seeing characters in a setting, saying and doing things. But a comic has panels. These show the world instead of my words. As such, it is crucial to be able to tell a story that fits into panels. Sometimes, the way I would normally write just won't fit. So instead, I think in terms of panels. How much can I say in one panel? What can be shown instead of told? How can camera angles express ideas? When I am doing comic scripts, I don't even write anything down until I can see all of the panels in my head.

This point has been hammered into me even more because I've been writing a play. In theory, a play is just a means of telling a story. But in reality, not every story can be told as a play. A play can't have a ton of scene changes. It has one camera angle. It can only have so many props and actors. In order to write a good play, or even a feasible play, I need to see the play.

When I was first thinking of writing a play, I could see an empty stage in my mind. I then thought, what story can I tell that fits on this stage? I didn't want to deal with scene changes, so I knew I needed a location that could fit a whole story. I came up with an apartment. A husband and wife live there. So what story could be told where a husband and wife are in the same area the whole time. One of the answers I came up with was that one of them could get sick and the other would have to be a caretaker.

Once I had the basic premise of the story, the stage did not go away. In my head, I designed the set. It is bare bones: a bed, a couch, a stove, a door, and a few props. They are laid out on the stage in a particular order. I can see the actors, too. Every line, every stage direction I wrote, they didn't exist in the aether. I saw them happening. If I had an idea, but the actors couldn't do it, I had to scrap the idea.

If I was writing a movie script, the whole story would have been completely different. I would have included scenes outside of the apartment. I would have had cameras making interesting shots and music adding to scenes and a bigger cast of characters. A good movie and a good play are very different things.

No matter what form of writing you do, visualize the final product. See your play being performed, your movie being seen, your comic being read. If you can do this, you will spot out potential problems before they become significant issues. You will also get a feel for how your medium functions and what it is and isn't capable of.