1. Creating with Images
Open your work from last class. In your first prompt (the one responding to the “describe” scenario, highlight the writing every time you are directly telling the reader something.

2. Guidelines for Creating Images in Poetry
Use Specifics
Focus on People in Action
Move Around In the Image
Think from Within the Image

3. Use Specifics
Concrete nouns, place names, proper nouns, active verbs: fuel that feeds an image and keeps it alive.
More simple writing activates the brain’s image-making machine.
Name the simple actual things in the world, instead of worrying about adjectives and beautiful word-pictures; concentrate on where you are, in your mind’s eye, when you write.

4. Use Specifics
“Sentences that billow with very formal language and flowery word choices might seem specific. These kinds of sentences may draw praise from some teachers, friends, or parents not trained as creative writers” (Sellers, p. 128).
Creative writing is not about the writer, but about the reader, make the reader experience something.

5. Language Blocking Image
“General, overblown language is as ineffective as thinking when you are trying to get your reader fully absorbed in your writing” (p. 129).
-Heather Sellers, The Practice of Creative Writing

6. Examples: Language Blocking Image
The pulsating rivers plunged toward their ultimate and terrible death!
This is the story of heartache and heart break, of tumultuousness and terror
And I want you to always remember, this is true, and real!
The joy of holding hands,
You are in my mind always
My heart beating and yours
Beating beating as one heart.

7. “When I First Saw Snow”
Reread “When I First Saw Snow” by Gregory Djanikian.
Highlight or circle the poem, identifying all of the specifics used in the poem.
At the bottom of the poem:
What do you learn about the speaker through the specifics revealed?

8. Focus on People in Action
Two elements: People (or beings of some kind) and Action (meaningful movement by beings)
People alone are often thinking, but two or more people catches the eye
By focusing on people in action, the author creates, with images, complex, fascinating portraits

9. “When I First Saw Snow”
Read “When I First Saw Snow” by Gregory Djanikian.
Highlight or Underline the poem, identifying all of the examples of people in action.
At the bottom of the poem:
Collectively, what do the actions performed in the poem reveal about the meaning of the poem?

10. Move around in Images Images are alive: they move, action takes place.
Think about movies and the movement of the camera.
Move to where, to look at what? The answer: What’s interesting. Keep your eye on what’s interesting, what’s dramatic, what tiny specifics you can see that will reveal so much more about this person than words ever could.
Keep the distance between the camera and the subject changing.

11. “When I First Saw Snow”
Reread “When I First Saw Snow” by Gregory Djanikian.
Highlight or draw an  in the margin of the poem, identifying every time the speaker moves through the image.
At the bottom of the poem:
How does the nature of the poem change when the speaker moves through the image?

12. Think from within the Images
Writers use thoughts sparingly and only when they are anchored firmly, deeply, in an image.
Have an image up and running before you offer the reader a thought or insight or conclusion or comment.
Different readers experience images differently.

13. Think from within the Images
Thoughts distance us from images, like a voice over playing in a movie.
Example: If your reader is thinking about what it would be like to be at the beach, but not picturing it in real time, you have created a thought.

14. “When I First Saw Snow”
Reread “When I First Saw Snow” by Gregory Djanikian.
Highlight or * the poem, identifying each time a direct thought is revealed or conclusion is made.
At the bottom of the poem:
What is the effect of revealing the thoughts/conclusions where the poet does?

15. Creating with Images Revisit one of your descriptions from last class.
Take an image from the description and extend it, moving in closer with your camera, and slowing down time, so that you expand this single moment, this glimpse, to a longer piece of writing. You may choose to start over or you may decide to use a different prompt (from those provided).
Practice actively applying the following:
Focus on People in Action
Think from Within the Image
Use Specifics
Move Around in the Image