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People are highly visual creatures, and this holds true when we are reading. We don’t see the images in the book, we form them in our minds. Pack in brilliant verbal imagery and your readers will enjoy and remember your book.

Drawing powerful verbal imagery is a skill that defines natural-born writers, but it can also be learned. Here are five things to think about with respect to using the power of the pen to draw images.

1. Be aware of visual imagery
The first step is heightening your awareness of verbal imagery and how it works. When you read a new book, or write, take note.

We think of words as words – black ink on a white page. But they are more: they paint colorful pictures from the action, people, and settings of a story world. Check it out for yourself. Take a paragraph from any book you are reading and do an image “density test.” Count all the images that form in your mind as you read along. Is it a large and diverse number?

It depends on what you are reading, but in many books, it’ll be each sentence, or even each phrase — e.g. “Silent, he nodded and looked out the window at the windmill by the still lake.” That sentence evokes four images – a man nodding, a window, a windmill, and a lake scene.

2. Actively write in images
Many authors say they see events unfold in their own minds and then they write them down. This is a great way to get visual writing. You can heighten this by purposefully engineering memorable images into your work.

Whether or not you remember the details of any of the Godzilla movies, you know what Godzilla looks like. Often, it’s a useful technique to render an abstract idea into symbolic imagery to give it punch or make it easily understood and memorable. The scar on Harry Potter’s forehead is a brilliant example. It represents his past, his link with Voldemort, and his fate. Harry just has to show it or touch it in pain for readers to know something big is about to happen.

3. Keep the quality of your visual imagery in mind when you edit
If you can’t form an image about what is being described, likelihood is you probably don’t know exactly what is going on. So how would a reader know?

Have you ever tried editing expressly for visual content? Doing so can bring surprising rewards. You might find new ways to express abstract ideas. If you read a phrase or sentence and fail to clock an image, you might find that it wasn’t fully imagined. Editing to improve visual interest is often about making abstract things more concrete. This is ubiquitously thought of as a good thing in terms of writing advice. Why say “his car got keyed,” when you can say “his usually pristine black Porsche 911 had an ugly, uneven scar that stretched from the driver’s side mirror to the tail light.” The second one is not only a stronger image, you wince harder. Great writing is about giving a reader enough detail to let them see the world you are presenting – without overdoing it. At best, they need some wiggle room to see your story world as they want to.

4. Understand why key types of information work better as a picture
Some things just work better visually. This is because they depend on having all the knowledge at once, on some form of complex structure in space or time, or the linkages between entities. Such information clusters are hard to render in words – no matter how many you use or how artfully you arrange them on the page.

Think about a map or a family tree. These are common images printed in books – words just can’t do them justice – or fit into equal space. If you do need to describe difficult images, it’s about getting out the most important information first – the structure and the types of connection. Then come the relevant details, which a reader can now map onto a visual framework they are holding in their head.

5. Use imagery to your best advantage
We all know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” The trick of images is that they present all their information simultaneously. You might want to linger over The Mona Lisa to take in her finer details and soak in the mood, but it’s all there as you lay eyes on her.

Now imagine the many words it would take to describe The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile to give detail equivalent to seeing her in person. It’s likely not possible, no matter how meticulously you picked your words, how artfully you ordered them, or how many you allowed yourself.

So, flip this and use the power of visual imagery to your advantage. Humans have a huge range of cultural images. Save 1,000 words every time you use an apt image. Purposefully pack your writing with attention-grabbing visuals and your writing will be memorable. There won’t be any incomplete ideas or passages full of filler. It will be more fully realized and accessible to the reader.
 
To Your Success,

MG
 
 

There are many parts to all of us - our skin color, our disposition and attitudes, our occupations, our families. Plus, the plethora of other things that we see and acknowledge about one another. Often, our stance or position around people separate us and we've found ourselves hurt and hurting.

Amidst everything we've been experiencing since the death of George Floyd and too many others who have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement. I offer some words to all my friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters who have asked me "What can I do?" I read a blog from YouVersion that brought up a timeless story that many of us know.  The Parable of the Good Samaritan. Although at the time the two places these individuals were from did not get along or make nice with one another, ultimately the human race valued most important.


There is something we can do. Let's do it! Read the blog here and let me know what you think. Does it makes sense? Can you help? Although many of my Christian friends may not be protesters on the front lines all of us can DO something. What will you do? What will we all do? The best thing is to take action in ways you can to build up, promote and participate in sustainable change. It can start with a change in perspective. Enjoy the read. But when you finish, look for the something YOU can do.


Blessings

MG
​
Source:
https://blog.youversion.com/2020/06/how-can-you-make-the-world-a-better-place/

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​For business leaders, writers, and everyone in between, allowing yourself to be human, and vulnerable, goes a long way toward establishing trust. That doesn’t make it easy.

You’ve been a business professional for quite a while now and have learned a lot in your time as a leader in various organizations. Your years of experience and education and your expertise and innovative ideas are what other impassioned leaders need to attain the success you’ve achieved. But do the people you serve know who you really are? They know you are a leader, but do they realize you’re human and no different from them when the veil is pulled back? Have you ever considered that the only way to establish a genuine connection with others is to be vulnerable?

Wearing my nonfiction book coach hat, I speak from experience. It wasn’t until I got real about my true self and who I really am that I began to attract a sustained influx of clients. Because I chose to be vulnerable, it encourages my clients to do the same and its one reason they want to work with me. It isn’t easy, but I propose it could be necessary to the success of your business — and your book.
 
As Brené Brown teaches in her TEDx talk (See the full TedX talk here), “The Power Of Vulnerability,” the gateway to intimacy is via being vulnerable about your imperfections. If you try to sugar coat your story, you miss out on the sense of connection with another human being that you can only attain when you’re letting someone see your warts and your big ugly tail. Every time you expose those imperfections — even because of those imperfections — you gain trust (or as Brown calls it, you “put marbles in the jar”). Over time, the intimacy you feel with other people depends on how many marbles are in your jar.
 
What business leader doesn’t want to establish trust amongst her staff and the customers her business serves? When trust is established with your subordinates and counterparts, success in all of your departments is guaranteed. People want to work with and for someone they trust and can relate to. The beauty of vulnerability is its ability to establish a connection with people from all different walks of life. People can connect with someone who knows how to get real.

David K. Williams, author of The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning: Tying Soft Traits to Hard Results, describes vulnerability in business in this Forbes magazine article (see the full article here): “Vulnerability is a natural condition of the work that we do — it isn’t a choice but a consequence. To declare oneself ‘not vulnerable’ would be inauthentic and would leave a leader living in a perpetual state of denial and stress. So it’s better and more courageous for every leader to acknowledge the fact that vulnerability is there.”

As a business leader, you don’t need added stress to your life. Let go of your pride and expose your vulnerability.

Showcase your vulnerability through writing

You know deep down that you are a true leader. Writing a book not only helps to establish yourself as an expert, but it’s another way to expose your vulnerable side. Business leaders write books for a number of reasons:

• They have something to share that will benefit others.
• They want to leave a legacy that will impact the future.
• They see others struggle and have learned how to overcome obstacles.
• They want to showcase their businesses and their paths to success.
• They want to expose themselves as “real people” to their audiences.

 
In business and in life, trust is a must.
 
To Your Success,
MG

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Writing enough text to fill a book is one thing, but weaving it all together into a story with a strong arc, purpose, and impact is another. Here are some lessons that might help you in your writing process — whether your own book is an “accident” or not.

Writing that much prose is one thing, but weaving it all together into a story with a strong arc, purpose, and impact is another entirely. Here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way that might help you in your writing process — whether your own writing is an “accident” or not.

Consolidate
First, copy and paste everything into a single word processor document, in the best narrative order you can determine at the time. Having everything in one place will feel like an important milestone — your work will seem more like a cohesive book-in-progress and less like a collection of fragments, scenes, and vignettes.

Edit at will
As with the initial drafting of any book use what minutes you can find in between other activities to clarify the language, put pieces together, or review something you wrote months or even years ago. Sometimes that means searching for a particular scene or experience that’s been caught in your memory and reexamining how it fits into the overall story. Other times, it will mean scrolling randomly through the document and working on whatever paragraph catches your eye and the mouse falls on. Focus your time on what I can do right now to get yourself closer to the finish line, knowing you’ll get to it all completed real soon.

Label and shuffle
With tens of thousands of words and dozens of narrative episodes, keeping track of everything can be a challenge. To help, start labeling significant portions of your story with unsexy and utilitarian titles like, “Argument about green vs. black tea” and “Weird surveillance grocery store encounter.”

Will the chunks I’m currently defining end up as chapter partitions in the final novel? Probably not. But for now, functional titles help you know, quickly and efficiently, what the landscape of my work-in-progress looks like.

Having well-labeled portions of text also helps you put things in the best order for any narrative. Does a certain scene play better in the second third of the book? Does a character’s backstory suddenly become more resonant when presented after a traumatic incident involving an ex-lover? Cut-and-paste is a wonderful thing, and you use it to experiment with all sorts of structures and event orders.

Save versions-in-progress
After significant editing sessions, you save a new version of my document with a title like “Draft_v2.0,” Draft _v2.1,” and so on. This way, you can always go back and see previous manifestations of my ideas, as well as what I originally wrote on my phone. Having copious backups makes you more comfortable experimenting — you always know you can revert to a previous version if a creative risk you take doesn’t work in the end.

Fill in the gaps
If you discover that additional text is needed to make the story flow (and this will happen quite often), it’s always fun to return to writing mode. Either on the spot with your laptop or on your phone the next time you have a free minute, add the words, sentences, or paragraphs the story needs to smoothly flow and then go right back to editing mode.

Be patient and stay focused
It can be overwhelming to look at a 60,000-plus-word document, completely unedited, and realize it’s up to you alone to get it all in order. Try to stay micro-focused as you work, polishing only whatever sections are in front of your eyes at the moment and losing yourself in the task at hand. Just as the crafting of the original text happened gradually and organically, so too will the acts of compiling, editing, and revising.

Keep the big picture in mind
At this point, YOU know where your characters begin, the struggles and triumphs they go through, and where they will end up physically, circumstantially, and emotionally when the story concludes. You’ll want to keep this whole arc in mind as you’re editing, compiling, and reordering. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the big picture influences everything from word choice to plot adjustments and acts like glue, helping to stick the entire story together as a cohesive narrative.
 
To Your Success,
MG