This guest post is by Carles Roselló. Carles is on a mission to empower creative writing. His blog Creativity for Writers is launching soon. Meanwhile, get for free his guide “5 Myths & 5 Bad Habits That Kill Creativity” and give a boost to your creative skills

We've all been there.

Creative as we might be, sometimes our imaginations dry up.

Our scene might happen in a coffee shop, but the coffee shop in our heads is ghostly. In it, people don't talk, don't move, don't even have faces!

And that, well, is creepy.

google images for writers

So we try to concentrate. We exert ourselves. We beg the ghosts to move, to become alive.

But nothing happens.

There's no alternative: vivid writing needs a vivid imagination.

Let me make it clear: if the scene is not alive in your head, it won't be on paper. (Share that on Twitter?)

Maybe not because of what you'll say. But surely because of what you'll fail to say. Like that sugar spilled over the table, or that spoon falling incidentally on the ground.

Details like these create vivid images in readers' minds, but dry imaginations can't see them.

Fortunately, there is hope!

Awaken Your Imagination with Google Images

We all know that a relevant picture is fuel for the imagination. The problem, it would seem, is finding such a picture.

But we live in an age of wonders, and tools like Google Images can give us precisely that.

Here are some tips to take advantage of it:

1. Pick good details, not good pictures.

Good pictures tend to be too stylized. They have no stories inside them.

Amateur pictures, on the contrary, are taken in real environments and contain ugly things, crazy coincidences, and all the real stuff we are looking for.

This is, by the way, why I wouldn't recommend services like Pinterest or Flickr for writers: the pictures are too good.

So look inside the pictures, especially the bad ones, and spot details that tell you, “This is a picture of a real thing.” These details are what you want to add to your writing.

2. Don't look for THE picture.

You could easily waste a lot of time searching for the perfect picture. Don’t fall into that trap; you don't need it.

In a search for Paris Cafe, I did not find such a picture, but I found one with two women talking to a barman, another with a drunkard looking at a half-empty beer, and yet another with three fat men dressed in jogging suits.

The best approach is to pick details from many pictures. They will come together nicely in your writing.

3. Put yourself in the shoes of the photographer.

Asking, “Who took the picture?” will help you find alternative wordings that might transform unpromising searches into successful ones.

Imagine you want to describe an old man. If you simply search for the phrase old man, you will get professional pictures with few real details. Instead, if you search for “my grandfather,” you will get amateur pictures full of them.

4. Move the camera.

Keywords that specify when and where the picture was taken can literally move the camera around and give you new perspectives.

Try the following:

  • Change your point of view. For example, search for “view from Notre Dame” instead of “Notre Dame.”
  • Travel through time. Set the time of the day, the year, or the moment in history. (For example, you could search for “Paris cafe 60s.”)
  • Get closer. Search for “snake up close.”

“Moving the camera” will let you see what a snake is really like close up. That's a good point of view from which to write.

5. Use techie tricks.

Google Images offers several functionalities to assist your searches. These are my top three:

Autocomplete: You already know this one from regular searches. Also known as suggested searches, these results appear below the search box as you type. Give them a try. They are rich in results.

Related images are the thumbnails that appear next to a picture when you click on it. It's easy to overlook them, and that's a pity because they are a powerful way to go beyond the keywords you originally thought of.

google images for writers

Search by image. If you see a picture that matches your needs, drag and drop it into the search box. Google will return images that look similar to it. It's another good way to go beyond the original keywords.

google images for writers 2

It's not about making your life easier.

As a writer, words give you a phenomenal power —they allow you to display your dreams inside readers' minds.

But creating dreams worth dreaming is hard.

Pictures can help, but as with any helpful tool, they can be used in two ways: to make your life easier and let you finish faster, or to better serve your time and let you reach further.

The latter is what we readers want. We want write rich, bright, lively dreams. We want to marvel, we want to be inspired, we want to fly away into other worlds.

So use pictures to breathe more life into your story.

And let us dream it.

How about you? Do you use pictures as inspiration? Let us know in the comments section.

PRACTICE

Let's get a quick taste of what pictures can do for you.

  • Pick a setting or character of your interest.
  • Write a brief description of it without the help of any picture. Fifty words is enough.
  • Write a new version using Google Images to give it a boost.

Then post the result in the comments section. Both versions if you like.

And if you post, be sure to leave feedback for a few other practitioners.

This article is by a guest blogger. Would you like to write for The Write Practice? Check out our guest post guidelines.

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