The ability to visualize things has been a great help to me over the years. Talking with others has led to the conclusion that not everyone has the same level of skill in doing this. I contemplated this to determine why I had strength in the area. I believe that particular exercises from my teens helped. Those exercises may be able to help you too.
In earlier jobs, I fixed everything from photocopiers to life support equipment. Being able to visualize the inner workings of the machine let me model exactly what caused the “break” and fix it quickly. Later jobs involved build databases and software. Again, I could visualize the patterns and avoid potential problems by seeing them in my model. My writer friends say I am very visual, and this is a manifestation of the visualization because I see the scenes in the same way I could see the inner workings of a blueprint machine.
In junior high school, the standard practice was to send me to the counsellor’s office. Apparently, awesome grades don’t make up for obnoxiousness or general weirdness. The counsellor was a great guy who taught me things like biofeedback and meditation. One of the meditations developed into a visualization exercise that I think really helped my ability to develop complex, detailed mental models.
Start here
As with all meditation things, make sure your medical people are okay with it. Once that’s out of the way, find yourself a mostly dark area where you can sit or lie down comfortably without being disturbed. Try to breathe slowly and steadily, with deep breaths. So far, this is all standard meditation stuff.
Try to picture an old, wooden ruler, such as we used to use in school. Those rulers were one foot long and had a thin, brass strip running along one edge so you could use the ruler for drawing straight lines. The hatch marks (the lines denoting the sections of distance) were pressed into the wood and filled with black paint. It didn’t take long for these rulers to develop chips on the corners or dents in the wood. The brass strip never stayed straight.
Picture this ruler just floating in the blackness of space. Don’t worry about stars or any other space stuff, you only want to have a void in which your ruler can float freely. Really look at every detail of the ruler. See every bit of the wood grain. See where the paint left the hatch marks or numbers, making them uneven. Try to hold all of those details in your mind.
This can be difficult. It seems like each new detail on which you focus causes the previous details to fade. That’s okay, keep trying. As you repeat the exercise over time, the ability to retain more of the details will increase.
As you get more of the details, let the floating ruler gently rotate so you can see the other sides. Those sides have details as well; try to see and retain them. If you want, you can try to imagine how the evidence of the wood grain on one side relates to the grain on the other.
Once you can manage one ruler, add a second ruler so they are floating end to end. The second ruler will have completely different dents and chips; the paint will be uneven in completely different ways. As you come to grips with each ruler, add another to the line. Back when I did this exercise regularly, I got to about thirty rulers at a time, though that was in much younger days.
How to use this in writing
The point of the ruler exercise is to stretch out your mind and exercise your ability to visualize. You can now apply that to writing by visualizing the location of one of your scenes. Don’t worry about action at the time, just get the details of the setting.
You can write down your details, or set up a recorder and describe the details as you see them. For this exercise, no detail is too small. Don’t limit yourself to visual details, denote what you smell, feel and hear as well. Try to get everything.
When you actually write your story, you will not use all of those details. By knowing all the details, you can pick the more relevant ones to include. The goal is for your mind to automatically build the complete model of the scene and then instinctively gather the ones that go into the story. The brain building done by the meditation makes your brain stronger and more skilled for the things you want it to do.
Example
So, here’s an example scene that I’ll describe. It’s from a short story I’m working on.
The walls are concrete. The ceiling is low and dark. The room is about eight meters by five. There seem to be heavy wood beams supporting the ceiling; they run through the darkness the length of the room. They are only about three meters above the floor.
The long wall to the right has four restaurant booths, with room for a fifth in the corner nearest the point of view. A rough wooden wall separates each booth, but they don’t reach all the way to the ceiling. The booths have wooden tables and benches. The tables have a central pedestal leg with four stabilizing legs emanating from them. The table of the second booth from me has lighter colored wood on one of its stabilizing legs, suggesting a relatively recent repair.
The seats of the benches are padded and covered with cloth made up of different colored pieces. They are sewn together much like a quilt. Some of the patches sit proud of the surface and have rougher stitching, suggesting that they are repairs. Some parts of the cloth has stains. (NOTE: I’m seeing individual stains. I see their shapes and colors. Many haver the dark color of wine. Some have the crusty pale color of gravy or dough. A couple have the dark brown of dried blood.)
A candle sits inside a tin holder on the middle of each table. The holder is crudely shaped cubes with holes punched in the sides to let air in and the light out. Soot covers the insides of the holders. The candles flicker, providing some light in strange patterns in the rest of the booth. Black smoke rises from the holder, suggesting a tallow candle and explaining the slight acrid stench in the air.
There are three round tables in the middle of the room, making a row in the long direction, though not perfectly aligned (the middle is further away from the wall with the booths, but less than half a meter.). Each has five wood chairs around it. The chairs all have backs with an open framework, but they are in different styles. A heavy rope leads from the central pedestal of the table to each chair. The rope is long enough for the chair to slide out to accommodate customers, but would not let the chair be used as a throwing weapon. The tables are rough wood, though they may have been smooth once. There are signs of impacts and gouges. Each of these also has a candle.
The bar runs along the other wall, with a little over a meter of space behind for a bartender. The top of the bar is wood. The support is faced with old metal sheeting of some sort. A geometric pattern of diamond shapes covers the metal, with some dents in it here and there (if you look down its length, the surface looks more like the cracked surface associated with dried mud). On the employee-side, there are wood shelves with ceramic mugs and a few bottles of about a liter in size. Two small, wood casks sit on stands made of crossed boards. The cask closest has a wood tap but the other still has the bung in place.
The boards of the floor behind the par show signs of a lot of wear. The boards close to the wall are dark with age and they fit well. The ones where the bartender walks are lighter, newer, and ill-fitting. The repairs were obviously cheap and done at different times. That part of the floor sits lower than the rest of the floor just from the damage over time.
Several post rise from the floor, through the bar and to the ceiling. Each is about two hand-breadths square. They seem to be support posts, holding up part of the ceiling. Thin wires wrap around the posts and up to the joist that runs over the bar. Small lights hang from the wire at regular intervals. The wire comes down to a wood box behind the bar. A crank handle protrudes from the side of the box.
In the center of the wall behind the bar, there is a small, wooden door, a little lower than head height. This is the door to the neighboring restaurant where the bar has contracted to get food if one of the bar patrons wants something. The cement of the wall around the door has been patched in a way suggesting a much larger door was there at one time. Now there is the wood frame, the hatchway, the sturdy metal hinges, and the latching mechanism. The wood is stained old and shows signs of regular polishing. The area around the latch is a lighter color and is worn into the surface from years of use. I think the restaurant is closed; I can’t hear any sounds from there.
At the far end, opposite my position and aligned with the bar, there is a large door. The vertical planks seem thick. Horizontal planks cross just below the top and just above the bottom. There is a diagonal plank from one horizontal to the other, bracing the door. The strap hinges reach far into the door, held on by large bolts or rivets. The other parts of the hinges are bolted to the cement of the wall. A large plank bars the door shut, suspended by iron brackets on the walls. A small puddle of water has built up at the bottom of the door, probably because of the rain outside.
The air feels slightly damp. The slight odor of the tallow mixes with the scents of alcohol, the fresh stuff as well as centuries of spills. The seats also carry the oils and sweat of countless patrons who’ve visited over time.
The lights over the bar dim a little. I turn the crank on the box and the lights brighten. The scent of ozone joins the others for a moment, and then it’s gone.
I know that there is a sidewalk outside. It is made of blocks of stone and cement from different places. Looking up from the walk, the outer wall goes up several stories. The old windows are boarded against the rain. This is an old building, maybe even built before the Storm. Who knows how all of its room has been used in those centuries. The bar was an early occupant and will probably stick around. There is always a need for a bar.