They say a picture is worth a thousand words – and while we probably don’t need that many words, us writers can use some number of words to create our own pictures (and feelings) out of nothing, which is even better. You don't want just any picture though; you want a picture that is visceral and gripping and to create a gritty, beautiful, and emotional image, you've got to give those gritty, beautiful, and emotional details that will paint that picture you want.

These are my 5 favorite ways to create visceral images in writing.

1. Use the five senses

Most writing classes and writing advice will tell you to incorporate sensory details. This is how you “show”. This is how you paint a picture with words. This is how you put a reader in the scene, so they’re right alongside the characters.
 
The five senses: Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
 
You don’t let the reader figure these things out on their own, but you guide them. By incorporating these specific details, you paint the exact picture you want the reader to look at.
 
“He let me in the threads of yesterdays.”
I used such a small detail like threads to incorporate the element of touch. Also, think about how different this picture looks compared to something like: He told me his memories. What makes the line above more visceral?
 
“You’ve never used your teeth to drink the juice of berries.”
I can imagine what it looks like for someone to try and bite down on a berry with their teeth, then swallow the juice, but also imagine the taste of the ripe berries' juice here.
 
Part of this comes down to word choice. Pick one or a few words to focus on that strongly connect(s) to one, or more than one, of the five senses. Your readers don't know anything about the scene except what you show them. They don't know which details are significant or emotional, but by picking senses (or an object that appeals to the senses) to describe in depth, you make sure they do.
 
(Writing poetry will help you practice this, as you'll in some of my examples below see below. You’re focused on way less lines, and really hitting each of those lines home.)

2. Use the natural world

The natural world can be beautiful and dark and complex and so many things that can complicate and heighten an image you're creating. While I don't claim to be an accomplished poet (I mostly write and publish fiction), sometimes I write poems. I’m going to share three poems I’ve written because in each of them I incorporate elements of the natural world, and you can see why I did that and how those details create more visceral images. In the first, I reference honey, harvest, and sunshine to work as symbols. In the second, I use twilight, cliff, and night to offer create a strong setting for what is otherwise a piece that doesn’t have a setting (all of these poems are focused on emotions). In the third, I’m talking about lilacs and rocky hills.

Most of the poems I write are based on an experience or emotion and they try to recreate that emotion as opposed to tell a story. By using the natural world, I can still create a sense of place, and draw on the five senses (scent, taste, sight, touch, smell). Without saying “this smells like X, or this taste like X,” I still offer those sensory details by just referencing things in nature that inherently smell or taste like those things.

Like I mentioned above, referencing nature sometimes does double duty. It may create a sense of place, and it definitely incorporates sensory details. Not only do these details strengthen the picture I'm trying to create, but these images work to create that crude emotional response in readers.

3. Color
(describing colors, sure, but I’m also talking about using grapheme-color synesthesia to write texts). This one probably doesn't apply to most people, but it's definitely in the top 5 for me.
 
Yes, using colors and telling readers what something looks like is great – it’s sight, one of the five senses, but when I talk about creating visceral images with colors in writing, I mean something a little different. I’m talking about a form of synesthesia.
 
Synesthesia is when someone experiences one of their senses through another (like tasting color or seeing sounds). I have grapheme-color synesthesia. This is when someone associates a color with a symbol such as letters and/or numbers. For example, the letter e is a dark, navy blue for me. The number one is a very pale yellow, close to white. The name Justin is a blue. I don’t know why these things are what they are, they just are (and the colors associated may be different for different people).
 
I’ve noticed that my synesthesia affects the things I read and write. I find that I especially love books or stories or poems that use words with strong colors, and when all of the words in the piece tend to lean toward a cohesive color scheme (like the story tends to use words with colors that create a black, red, and silver color scheme or a variety of navies and purples). This probably isn’t anything the writer’s thinking about when they do it, and even if they were thinking about it, they probably weren’t writing words that fit the same colors I see, BUT when it works for me, it really works for me.
 
I also find that when I write, and a piece isn’t working for me, it’s probably because the colors are too loose. I need to tighten up words so they create a stronger color scheme.
 
So this number is a very personal way that I create visceral images in my writing, because it doesn’t apply to most people (unless you also have this). (Side note, I love when musical artists have synesthesia because it’s great to see it in their writing. I also have chromesthesia, which is associating colors with sounds – I use these forms of synesthesia to make really great mix CDs that I’ll eventually write about on this blog).
 
Anyway, here's another poem (because it’s easy to focus on a small, complete text)

Worship these wounds at the altar,
smeared,
tender and sore,
and once the sacrifice-
a blood war that
washes me in
memories that bring me back
to a time when I should have said
yes instead of
taking the long way home-
is over,
we will host a blood drive
to share the wealth.
And as everyone leaves,
admiring their new robes
made of crimson,
Your Majesty will grin at his
sophisticated sense of fashion.
 

Many of the words in here are dark colors for me (which align with the subject matter). Worship, wounds, tender, sore, sacrifice, blood, war, memories, everyone, majesty, and sophisticated are reds, blacks, or blues that are nearly black. Words like alter, back, and admiring are lighter – yellows or browns, but paired with the majority reds and blacks it almost creates a small highlight on the colors.
 
Additionally, my short story “If the Rainbow Exploded” published on PANK leans into grapheme-color synesthesia.
 
This probably sounds wild, BUT I swear it’s a thing, and it’s an element of how I, personally, find writing that feels concise. It’s also probably why I frequently use fragments in my stories because extra, small words (like prepositions and things) add in a whole bunch of extra random colors that don’t work so well.

4. Fruit

Fruit, I’ve found, is a beautiful (and easy) way to pull in the five senses, and it also just makes writing sensual. This can lean into sexuality, or not, but I find that it definitely creates visceral images, regardless of the route you’re taking it in.
 
The poem below uses a clementine to really draw out touch, scent, and sight and provides so many beautiful images. Fruits are great symbols, and here, I’m talking about the way that fruit flies are attracted to the fruit, and this image is a metaphor for the dirty nature of having to remove the things we don’t want. Over and over again.
 
Anyway, I absolutely love cheating with the use of fruit, because it can incorporate many senses, can act as a strong symbol or metaphor, and can paint a beautiful, poignant picture for a reader.

A sweet clementine
feels tough to the
soft fingers
that strip it,
but it’s an easy peeler,
yawning open as the finger
pulls apart the skin,
ready to climb inside,
where it’s saccharine,
smooth and glossy, and
oils scented like fresh
suck the palm.

Eggs are laid
on the surface,
feeding on fermentation
and swallowing the juice.
They pull out suffering from the
vulnerability.
Hundreds of
swarthy fruit flies
swarm and infest.

Cut out the damaged flesh now.

This is the cycle of
life.

5. The body

Referencing number two, number four, and the poem above:
the body is another way to bring in the natural world, create strong images, and incorporate the senses (think of the colors, textures, and shapes of different body parts. Think of how many emotional experiences we associate with things like eyes, lips, ears, and hands). The body is also so personal. In "Bodies and Permissions: Breaking Rules & Conduct" and "How to Destroy the Body", I talk about all the ways the body can be used and broken to elicit strong feelings (and create social commentary). Consider which body part(s) you want to describe, and which details will help convey the mood you want (the thesaurus can be great!)
 
Even in the poem above, I reference fingers and talk about stripping, and climbing.
 
It’s again an easy way to do double duty and include multiple senses at once.
 
In my short story "Fat Girls" published on Hobart, I use the female body, messages American culture sends about the female body, and the insecurities this causes to write a story. I try to use the way bodies are seen and represented to create memorable imagery that helps convey the story’s themes. It's not a pretty story, but I don’t claim to write pretty stories.
 
The body does give writers many avenues though to paint a strong, meaningful, and visceral picture. Images that use the body well can create substantially thought-provoking content that invites readers to explore its impact (and your theme(s)).

If there’s anything you should take away from this: be specific.
Each number on this list requires you to be very specific in your word choices and images:
What part of nature, what type of fruit, what body part?
What is the texture or shape of the collar bone you described? Does describing the collarbone show how poor the person is because they can't afford to eat, or that this person is sick, or has an eating disorder?
How does the fruit feel? What does it taste like? Is it pulpy? Do the seeds press hard into someone's fingers?
What is the texture of the wildflower? Where is it growing? Why is that significant?
What is in your character's garage? Is it an old Santa Claus figuring? Does he have a busted nose? How can you describe that?

Once you pick those out your specific words and images, get even more specific in the way you describe their taste, sent, and feel. Do they sound like anything? What do they look like? Make sure the words you use paint this picture (and if you’re so inclined, paint literal colors too for your grapheme-color folk).

Sociopath: A Memoir by Dr. Patric Gagne is a detailed depiction of Gagne’s experience growing up, realizing she was a sociopath, learning how that affected her, and doing much of her own work to treat herself since there is very little resources about sociopaths available.

What an emotional roller coaster. By the end of the book, I was crying, like actual tears running down my cheeks (which is funny and ironic that I’d feel so emotional from this when, from my understanding, the author probably doesn’t). I don’t remember the last book, if there ever was another one, that made me actually cry. But this did.
 
To put it very simply, sociopaths have a hard time experiencing emotions like the general public does because they have a limited emotional range, thus rarely feeling “learned” emotions (like love and guilt). Based on Gagne’s experience (and research), sociopaths will partake in antisocial behavior to try and feel something other than apathy.

Gagne’s introduction ends with, “I am a criminal without a record. A master of disguise. I have never been caught. I have rarely been sorry. I am friendly. I am responsible. I am invisible. I blend right in. I am a twenty-first century sociopath. And I’ve written this book because I know I’m not alone” (xvii). What an intriguing way to start this book – it comes across sinister and dark, but also somehow inviting. I love how candid Gagne is (or seems, which I’ll explain soon). The book continues with Gagne’s childhood and how she came to understand that she was different from the people surrounding her. She did not feel the same things they did, and she had no problem doing things that others saw as bad. Through this, she learned how to develop and or manage relationships in her life. From a craft stand point, I found the way she revealed herself building relationships with other people fascinating. The details and pacing of it made me feel something, but I had to acknowledge that it probably didn’t make her feel anything, which was an odd thing to accept. It made me wonder where her relationships were going to go when her actions and other people’s reactions got increasingly conflicted.
 
Gagne writes in a way that made me feel sorry for her, empathetic, but it also made me wonder if she was a reliable narrator or if she was manipulating me. I don’t like that I thought this, because she explains that this kind of mindset is exactly what she tries to fight, but it was hard not to think it. By the end of the book, I definitely found myself trusting her, but still wondered if I should. This, however, made me acknowledge that trust is blind. Sure, people can behave in ways that give us more reason to think they won't betray us, but also everyone can betray us. We can't really trust anyone, so what makes them anymore trustworthy than her? I naturally trust everyone though, so I guess we’ll assume she was being honest in everything she wrote.
 
I found myself thinking that this book helps people understand a lot about others, not just sociopaths. Reading Gagne’s experience with wanting people to value her, even when her personality, something that's not her fault, was hard for others to understand, helped me when thinking about the conflict my husband and I face with his mental health diagnoses. He is not a sociopath, but reading this book has allowed me to stop reacting to him based on how I want him to feel, but rather, simply be there for him. I found myself wanting to be more like a David, Gagne’s husband.
 
The other existential thought I was led to have was this: what is good and bad? After studying psychology, putting in a lot of work to reflect on and understand herself, meet her own therapist, and then do clinical research, Gagne admits that she no longer wanted to be like other people; rather, she wanted people to accept her as she is... but then she did want to be like other people? In the epilogue, she ends up working really hard to decrease the anxiety and pressure she feels from her sociopathy. This means stopping certain behaviors. I wonder what made her decide that that choice and type of life was right? Especially when so many people envied her behavior and the apathy she experienced. I mean, I was rooting for her, and wanted her to get ‘better’, but what does that say about me? And who decides what better is?
 
I’m not suggesting everyone run around doing whatever they want, hurting people, or taking things, but Patric is right when she talked about guilt being a learned emotion, and what does that say about people? Society? Why do we choose what we choose to be guilty about? And then we expect everyone else to feel guilty about it too? So I was rooting for her, and for her to "manage" her behaviors, but then I realized that I didn’t know how I felt about my “rooting” once she got there.
 
Really, by the end of the book I had tears streaming down my face. I don’t even know what I was feeling, but what a testament to the storytelling she did. This book paces her experiences and conflict so well, develops “characters” profoundly, and truly lets you inside Gagne’s experiences, really hoping she’ll achieve the things she wants. Like I said, I think this is great insight into the mind of someone who experiences sociopathy (which is a relatively rare experience), but also just a great reminder that we all experience things differently and should be patient with people.
 
Originally, I started my blog in part to encourage myself to continue researching and writing about how transgressive fiction can be used to create social change. Life got in the way, and that research fell to the wayside. I do think that Sociopath has given me some more things to research when I pick it back up. While books in general have been shown to support empathy, this book worked especially hard at it, and it makes me think about how strongly developing empathy in fiction might play a part in social change.

If you're interested in the darkness that is mental health disorders, understanding people, and overcoming challenges, I highly recommend this book. I found it engaging, and easy to like and root for Gagne. You just might need a box of tissues.

A few of my writing friends recently pointed out how well I maintain my writing. They said I “keep at it,” and I guess I do. I write most days, but I told them I haven’t always been this way, because I haven’t.

I do write a lot now, but there have been periods in my life where that wasn’t the case. I’d go days with struggling. Or months. Or, sometimes, years. After writing for close to three decades, I’m going to share with you what has worked for me when I’ve found myself in an uncomfortable hole, and when I’m feeling not myself because I'm not writing. While some of my ideas might seem basic and common (although I’ll actually tell you how and why to do them), many of the ideas on this list will be new ideas that offer an action plan. They should inspire you, because these will be the things you want to write about, even if you don’t know it yet.

5. Just do it
Okay, so I will steal this one from other articles. But I’ll give you some concrete ways to ‘just do it’, even when you don’t feel like you can.
 
When I realized how much of myself I was missing by not reading or writing for a few years, I decided that it had to change. I needed to write, and regularly. So I challenged myself – to write one flash fiction piece a week. This number was manageable. I could write 1,000 words or less in a week (although it did take time to figure out how to write flash fiction – I had to learn what to focus on in a story since I could *only* write ~1,000 words!).
 
1. So when I tell you to “just do it”, I also first tell you to give yourself a required word count/limit. This can be flash fiction at around 1,000 words per week, or it might even be less, at 500 words per week. Up to you and your schedule.
 
2. Then, second, if you’re still struggling with what to write about, I tell you to ask for help. If you’re not sure what to write about – ask other people. This might mean specific story prompts (from the internet, from friends), or it might mean words (I hate plot prompts – they never align with my style, so I find it so hard to use them. I like words. I ask people to offer me word they like, and then I write a story inspired by that one word).
 
Then commit to it. I used to attend a writer’s meetup on Wednesday nights for a year. It was at a Panera Bread restaurant, and I just went and sat by myself and wrote for a few hours and knocked out my once-a-week flash fiction piece. After having not written for a few years, this is what got me back into writing.
 
Having the outside location and other people there with the intent to write really helped me focus. It may have been more difficult to do at home when I was already struggling with writer’s block.

4. Give yourself an audience
I wrote a ton when back in high school, because I had friends reading it. I was also posting on websites like Fanfiction or Wattpad. Then I graduated from high school, grew distant from those friends, and stopped posting on sites. I wrote less.

When I went back to school for my third degree (Creative Writing), my classes' workshops gave me an audience which reignited my desire to write. Having people I am writing for or who intend on reading has always been helpful for me.
 
Examples
Giving yourself an audience can look like finding friends who write and workshopping with them, or finding an online community through social media. It can look like using the workshop’s deadlines to motivate yourself. It can look like using your friends to bounce ideas off of – it doesn’t have to be after you’ve written. When you’ve got writer’s block and aren’t sure where to go, it can be helpful to throw the idea out there and have a friend give you an idea on where to take it that you haven’t already thought of.

If you haven’t already, consider joining a Facebook group for writers to start building that community for yourself.

Here are some I'm in:

• Writers Helping Writers
  
• Self Publishing Support Group
  
• 20Booksto50k
  
• Women Writers, Editors, Agents, and Publishers
  

3. Pay attention to everything
This includes the notes scribbled on bathroom walls. The Santa Clause figurine inside someone’s open garage. The word that you think is beautiful in the book you’re reading. The misheard song lyric that you think is genius – why did someone else write it and you didn’t? And then you find out that they didn’t write it because they wrote something else and you heard it wrong… so, score! Now it’s yours! That weird conversation you have with your partner on the way out the door. The thing you read in the news that sounded wild and you can’t believe someone did that in real life. All of this is gold.
 
The thing is, most experiences are not completely original. Besides, you can always change some things to make it new, but these experiences give a great place to start when wanting to write very specific details that help build characters or scenes.
 
Examples
On my walk today I saw two little girls in cowboy hats playing on the sidewalk with chalk. I’d have never of thought of this on my own, but how interesting. I saw them and immediately came up with character ideas and plot ideas. If I wanted to change it further to make it less specific to that person, maybe it’s one girl. Maybe she’s not playing with chalk but bubbles. Whatever. It’s a good starting point.
 
Even George Saunders used something he noticed in his neighborhood to inspire a story. See the story and his comment about the house he noticed and wrote about here.
 
Most of my stories and characters are a Frankenstein’s monster- they are usually never completely imagined, but also never based solely on one person or experience. Typically, they are made up of some imagination as well as many little people and experiences I’ve met or had in my life.

2. Internet Forums
Seriously. Whenever I need any kind of inspiration or information on a topic that I have not personally experienced, places like Reddit or other internet forums are the jackpot. People discuss all sorts of experiences they’ve had on there, which can help when trying to incorporate experiences into your own writing that you haven’t had yourself.
 
Example
I wanted an experience with fire because I was writing a scene where I wanted fire to be a symbol. I am not a firefighter, no real experience with it, but a whole bunch of people on Reddit have had an experience, and people on Reddit like to talk about their experiences. I Googled "Weird Fire Story Reddit", and on one post, a few people talked about how the smell of bodies in a crematory smell like steak or burgers being cooked. This gave me something new to write about that I otherwise would have been stuck on.

Then the thing that helps me most of all is:

1. Making a document (dun dun dun)
Seriously, this might feel anticlimactic, but the biggest thing that has helped me write regularly has been a Google Doc that I created.
 
Whenever I have any type of thing that inspires me (title ideas based off something I heard someone say at the gym, details I noticed on my walk, character ideas because of the person I saw sitting in the car next to me, etc. – really anything you paid attention to up in number 4) I list them in this document. This document has been my writing life saver.
 
When I was working on my creative writing degree and had to write regularly for workshops, I needed many things to write about. I don’t always have things to write about though, and my memory is very bad, so when I had an idea at one point, it’s gone now and I’ve got nothing. This is why this list is great. All the ideas I have had are listed in one place, and if I want to write, I already have the things that inspire me right there. I don't have to wait for inspiration!
 
My Google Doc’s list includes the following categories:

• Titles (My forthcoming story, “Who Branded Jesus?”, has a title I thought of when looking at someone’s Jesus fish sticker on the back of their car. I asked that question and then thought it would be an interesting title. That’s all I had. I wrote it down. Eventually, when I sat down to write a one-sentence story, I decided to take this title and turn it into the story. I decided to tell a story using Jesus, a religious figure, as a symbol for a complex theme about branding and how other people understand us.)
  
• Details (things like upper teeth, a ladder on top of a truck, the Santa clause in someone’s garage. A lot of these are either things I notice on walks or in public, or things I think of when reading other books.)
• First Lines (sometimes I think up some random line that just seems like it’s begging to be a first sentence! So I have a category for those.)
• Plot Ideas (this can come from my real-life experiences, news stories, or random things I think of.)
• Strange Facts (random things I might learn that could be very interesting to incorporate into a story one day that I don’t want to forget but will.)

 
Honestly, this document has been my writing savior because when I want to write but don’t know what to write about, I have a treasure chest of ideas right in front of me. Ideas that I came up with. Things that inspire me. Things I want to write about anyway, so why not do it now?

So start your document today, and keep adding to it. Seriously. Then in the future, whenever you want to write something, you'll have a list of ideas.

Because writer’s block, to me, is the inability to write. Not knowing what to write about, even if I want to.
If that’s what it’s like for you, you don’t need to worry about that anymore!
They say that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That’s how I view writing. I practice. I observe. I read. I learn things from other people. I practice more. I keep this list. And when I struggle with writing and don’t know what to write about, I have my preparation (the list) and opportunity (the desire or need to write), so I just sit down and make it happen.

And that’s it. That’s my writing magic. I cheat. I make my own luck and kick writer’s block out of the way.

And, surprise, two (simple) bonus ways that have helped me manage writer’s block:

Go for a walk
This isn’t original. I’ve seen it on other lists. It probably doesn’t sound especially helpful, right? What does moving your legs have to do with writing?
 
Walking can actually be very helpful, but only if you’ve honed in on observing. Meditating isn’t useful if you don’t know how to do it, right? Same goes for walking. But once you’ve trained yourself to pay attention to everything, it’s one of the best ways to get ideas to add to your list. There are so many interesting details to notice in the world. I also find that when I’m away from distractions and technology, my mind pays attention to those details and thinks a lot of things about them – so I immediately add those thoughts to my list!

So get up right now, go on a walk, and notice strange things about your neighborhood's houses, or about someone you pass. Walk down a main road and look at the shops or people driving.
 
Examples
There’s construction happening on the main road by my house. I pass it every day on my walk. For a few weeks I noticed the crew had some coolers that they just left on the side of the road that said Do Not Open. I don’t know what story this belongs in yet, but it’s such an interesting detail that it belongs somewhere. So it gets added to my list, and then one day, when I’m trying to figure out what to write, I’ll see that and decide it fits, and it’ll find a home.
(The construction guys also left a bottle of Mountain Dew out for a few days. Another strange detail that will get added into some story eventually).
 

Eliminating the need for the perfect story
This isn’t for everyone, but this is the final thing that has helped me with writer’s block, especially when tackling a longer story like a novel (which I was never before able to finish). What I mean by that is: I’m indecisive. Picking one plot that gets developed, and having one ending that’s the best… puts a lot of pressure on me, and I struggle with that, because I’m just not a decisive person. So when I decided to write an interactive novel (that I will eventually blog about), I was given so much freedom to be more creative and write shorter, choppier things, but still develop it way more than a short story gets to experience. I was also able to play with four endings. By giving myself this freedom, I felt like I could write about a lot of different things without them having to fit in the way a normal novel would need them to fit.
 


Writing helps. Moving helps. I think more when there’s nothing in front of me and I’m moving and only have my own head to live in. So go on a walk, go to the gym, and figure out ideas you can add to your list that way. I almost never write about my ideas immediately. They get added to my list. It has to be the right time, where I’ve figured out what these ideas mean to me, or have come up with some other idea that it connects to it really well and can be combined.
Then I can work its magic.


Do you have anything that's worked for you that I missed? Let me know below.

A villanelle is a very structured poem made up of nineteen lines, with five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by one quatrain (four-line stanza). Additionally, many poets use iambic pentameter (which is when a line has five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each line then has a total of 10 total syllables).


LitCharts provides further information and an example:

“Jean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (I lost my turtledove)," [is] the first fixed-form villanelle ever written. The formal aspects of the villanelle are highlighted: the first line of the poem is repeated as a refrain at the end of the second and fourth tercets; the third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth tercets.”
 
For those that are more visually inclined, this is what the villanelle looks like (all the lines with A must rhyme, and all the lines with B must rhyme. Additionally, the first lines repeat as lines 6, 12, and 18 as noted by the asterisk below. Line 3 repeats and lines 9, 15, and 19 as noted by the caret below.):
 
A *
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
A ^
 
It’s literally the same two sounds happening over and over, and two lines that get repeated multiple times.

I learned of the villanelle poem and challenged myself to write a poem in that form (which is, in fact, pretty challenging). Although I did it, and am pretty happy with it (for what it's worth), I’m not the biggest fan of writing form poetry. I'm a free verse kind of woman. I do, however, love thinking about how to apply unique form to fiction. This led me to consider the villanelle’s use of repetition in my fiction writing.

I obviously wasn’t planning on rhyming or iambic pentameter-ing my story, but I could repeat an idea, or a line, instead.

This forced me to consider what kind of story would be best suited to include constant repetition.
Like I mention in my article “Stalking Women: Transgressive Fiction Topics” that I wrote last week, I stumbled across a docuseries on stalking that gave me an a-hah moment. Stalking is obsessive… and repetitive… this form would perfectly lend itself to the obsessive behavior a stalker has. Repeating ideas over and over and over.

So I did some research on stalkers – specifically female stalkers – and after better understand who my character might realistically be, I started to plan my own fictional villanelle.
 
This is the outline I came up with:
 
 Villanelle Form Outline
 
A* I used to live on the tenth floor – (of the Watterson towers).
B I saw you in class - you talked about the importance of words.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A My unfriendly roommate (roommate starts conversation about mom dying and boyfriend leaving).
B My window faced West.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A Last day of class.
B Thought about missing him -  'Part of me wishes I hadn't passed my test, because I would have got to spend more time with you'.
A^ I want to see you again - email him.
 
A Show boyfriend breaking up - spiral downward.
B It was small, but from the tower I could see your classroom across campus.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A You didn't answer your email that night, so sent another in the morning, two more that afternoon, and three more that night. Why are you not answering?
B I found your number on the internet - and so I called. Needed to hear your voice to fall asleep. Left a voicemail. Each night for seven days - didn't sleep for a week.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A Now I’m in my car - next to your building on campus - it's easier to see this way. It's west, but it was far.
B I showed up at your house first, and threw a rock at your window - but you weren't home. Window cracked.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor, but now I'm in a car waiting for you.
A^ I want to see you again.
 

Based on my research, my character was less likely to stalk a stranger, so it should be someone she knows. She was motivated by a desire to having a more intimate relationship with someone who is older. I decided to make the person she was stalking a professional who she desired being closer with after she experienced great loss in two areas of her life.

On any given day, whenever I come up with story ideas, I write them in a document (I will write about this on the blog soon.) One of my random line ideas I had in this document was “I used to live on the tenth floor” which, as I was looking through the document for inspiration, I decided would be a focal point for the narrator. I also decided that part of the repetition had to be from her obsession, so “I want to see you again” became the other chorus.

In traditional poetry, all the As would rhyme and Bs would rhyme. There’s nothing ‘rhyming’ about the other lines, but instead they are just scenes that help develop the story.

While a different kind of difficulty, this project definitely challenged me like when I was writing the villanelle poem. These very specific parameters to write this story under forced me to be very intentional about how I structured this plot.

If you're interested in working with this form for a fiction story specifically:

• Repetition needs to make sense. Does your plot lend itself well to obsession?
• Do you need to do research to develop your character? Your setting/location?
• Make sure that what happens in your plot lends itself to return to the chorus/repeated idea

"I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor" is the draft I ended up writing.


It was a fun exercise and I encourage you to try playing with this, or any form.
Are there any unique or experimental forms you have tried? Anything you’re interested in playing with?