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30 Part I: Getting Started with Creative Writing Exercises
Finding images related to your project
Images can help you to clarify what characters look like, pinpoint and
describe exact locations, and dramatise your story. They can also act as symbols.
Collecting photographs and pictures of certain objects that appear in
your story can help you to focus your imagination and develop ideas before
you begin writing.
With mobile phones and tablets, you can snap images at a moment’s notice,
wherever you are, of meals, buildings, views, rooms, houses, streets and situations.
Store or print these photos, because they can prove invaluable when
you need to describe something later on.
I have a huge collection of images, which I use for writing and teaching. I’m
an inveterate collector of postcards – of people, places, objects and scenes of
all kinds, all filed by subject. They’re just so useful for sparking the imagination
and getting going whenever I feel stuck.
Museums and art galleries are fantastic places for finding images and adding
to your postcard collections. I prefer paintings of people and landscapes to
photographs, because they’re less specific and tend to trigger my imagination.
For more ideas on creating the appearance of your characters, flip to
Chapter 5.
Alfred Hitchcock referred to ‘the thing that the
spies are after’ in spy films as a ‘MacGuffin’.
The MacGuffin is, in Hitchcock’s own words:
‘The thing that the characters on the screen
worry about but the audience don’t care.’ The
thing can be unspecified government secrets,
papers or information – it really doesn’t matter
what it is as long as the characters want it and
are prepared to kill other characters or risk
their own lives to obtain it!
Using a MacGuffin
In Hitchcock’s classic 1959 film North by
Northwest, the main character, played by Cary
Grant, is the victim of mistaken identity. He’s
pursued across the USA by agents of a mysterious
organisation, who try to stop him interfering
in their plans. It finally turns out that the spies
are attempting to smuggle microfilm containing
government secrets out of the country. But the
precise object everyone wants doesn’t really
matter.