## [Q] Seeking Writing Advice: Illustrations

* Author: u/DataPacRat  *Amateur Immortalist**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2m9mn1/q_seeking_writing_advice_illustrations/
* Score: 5

* Created: 2014-11-14T07:52:46

### Post:

It's easy to find advice on how to improve your story's prose. There seems to be a lot less advice floating around about images that complement the text. Do you have any advice yourself, or suggestions about where to find it?

A more concrete question: I've just found a DeviantArt artist with a non-childish style, willing to draw characters for the price of a cup of coffee. If we're able to work together, who or what from my story S.I. do you think I should request to be drawn?

### Comments:

> **u/alexanderwales** [+4]  *Time flies like an arrow* (9 hours later)
> 
> In my personal opinion:
> 
> * Images should always be between chapters - never within a scene, and probably not breaking up scenes within a chapter.
> * Images should be either small, simple, or both - enough that you can stop and look at it for a few seconds after a chapter ends, but you don't want to stop the reader in their tracks.
> * Images should be *suggestive*. Suggestion engages the mind and pushes a person to seek more information. If your images are leading the chapters, each image should raise some question or evoke some mystery that makes the reader want to dive in. There are hundreds of tricks here, some of them cheaper (and more effective) than others. Just the picture of a broken window at the start of a chapter will leave the reader wondering when that's going to happen within the chapter. In other words, the image shouldn't be a thesis statement, it should be a tease - an enticement.
> 
> I've always liked the way that the Harry Potter books did this. The *Stormlight Archives* also do something similar, though often it's used for exposition (of a sort) showing fighting styles or varieties of armor that would be laborious to describe. These images all exist in-universe, taken from a sketchbook of one of the main characters or otherwise as some kind of document or something, which I think is clever and helps to keep the reader grounded in the story.

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (9 hours later)
>> 
>> > In my personal opinion
>> 
>> When I imagine your points put together, I like the style that results. I'm not convinced it's the best style, but it's not a bad one, and I could do a lot worse than working with it.
>> 
>> In addition, it made me recall another genre of books that can do well with illustrations: choose-your-own-adventure books, and related game books such as Lone Wolf. Just flipping through such books, even with everything scrambled out of order, you could still get a very good feel of the atmosphere.
>> 
>> > These images all exist in-universe
>> 
>> Oddly enough, I've already suggested this approach to the artist I'm currently exchanging messages with. It seems to go well with the story being a first-person narrative.

> **u/None** [+3]  (6 hours later)
> 
> If you have access to it, I find that "[The City of Dreaming Books](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62031.The_City_of_Dreaming_Books)" handles pictures pretty good. I'm at work now, so I can't check, but I believe it shows new characters being introduced (and the fact that the characters universally look weird makes that a great help), but also complex structures. The book has a lot of weird environments (giant libraries, a house in the skull of a cyclops, a cave full of flying fish, a hollowed-out mountain...) and it helped me visualize the story and the action.
> 
> So basically: characters, and places people might not have seen themselves.

> **u/lucyfur919** [+2]  *Chaos Legion* (49 minutes later)
> 
> Action scenes. Climaxes. New characters who are just introduced. Important stuff

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (an hour later)
>> 
>> > Action scenes. Climaxes. 
>> 
>> I don't think those are this particular artist's forte.
>> 
>> > New characters who are just introduced. 
>> 
>> That's mainly what I have in mind right now; it might help compensate a bit for my noted focus on things other than descriptions.
>> 
>> > Important stuff
>> 
>> Well, yes, that's the whole idea; but what counts as 'important'?

>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Hang on, I think I recognize your username. Have you written any Shadowrun stories? I read some quite a while ago that I really enjoyed, and I think they might have had your name on them.

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> I never quite got into Shadowrun; I preferred Cyberpunk 2020 as a cyber-RPG setting, due to its lack of the supernatural. I've been using this nom de net since roughly 2000, so if the story you recall is from before then, it must have been some other username.

>>> **u/syberdragon** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> > but what counts as 'important'?
>>> 
>>> That depends on your story, and on you.  As the author, you are the best person to identify what counts as important in your story.

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> What if what I'm trying to identify is what will convince more readers to keep reading, so that I can sneakily keep promoting my 'aspiring rationalist' agenda to them? There must be /some/ sort of Dark Arts guidelines on the topic, but I'm still only an aspiring authour.

>>>>> **u/syberdragon** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Then we need to get the marketing department in on this ;)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I don't think people generally read 'not picture books' for the pictures.  I feel illustrations do something more on the lines of increasing production value, as it were.  While they do make the reading more pleasurable, I don't think they will do anything to hold the reader base.  This is all speculative.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If you want people to keep reading you'll need to have a compelling story with characters people want to follow.  All of the interest must come from the writing.  Otherwise I doubt people will gain anything about rationality from it.

>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > This is all speculative.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> After having read Scott McCloud's "Understanding/Making/Etcing Comics" books, I have a strong suspicion (~30% confidence) that inline images are heavily underused in modern adult fiction, possibly due to publishing economics or publisher culture. Since I don't have to worry about my book being printed on the same presses as hundreds of other titles, those reasons aren't a concern for me - so I have an opinion that my story is much more likely to be improved than harmed by adding imagery.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > If you want people to keep reading you'll need to have a compelling story with characters people want to follow. All of the interest must come from the writing.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I've been planning on the text of the story being worth reading on its own since I started; but that doesn't mean I can't try to leverage as much added value as possible from other aspects, from font choice on up.

>>>>>>> **u/PeridexisErrant** [+3]  *put aside fear for courage, and death for life* (5 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Agreed. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> FWIW, the main value of the illustrations in Tolkien for me was the atmosphere - nothing quite conveyed the sense of waiting menace like etchings of the Misty Mountains or giant webs in Mirkwood...

> **u/E-o_o-3** [+2]  (15 hours later)
> 
> I haven't done this *particular* thing, but in general I find that when in doubt dealing with a creative worker the best thing to do is to discuss it with them and let them take the lead to choose what would excite them the most. (You should still communicate any constraints and preferences that you know you have. The idea is to constrain such that you'll be happy with most things that fall within the constraints, and to communicate just enough that you remove the tendency to "play it safe" under uncertainty from the artist's perspective).

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (17 hours later)
>> 
>> > let them take the lead to choose what would excite them the most.
>> 
>> Hee - that's almost exactly the phrasing, and very much the method, I've ended up using when talking to artists about my earlier, furry/hard-SF setting, "New Attica". (Hm... I wonder if any economists have studied the "DeviantArt/FurAffinity/SoFurry/InkBunny/Weasyl/etc" commission micro-economy? It can't be a very efficient economy, what with the lack of information in finding artists who might be willing to draw your particular description of a sparrow-mouse micro-griffon, let alone enough to be able to compare prices, which might mean there's room to snag some cash by coming up with better ways to facilitate such transactions...)
>> 
>> However, for my current project, the artist in question has English as a second language, and I'm not expecting them to try to read through 200,000+ words of story to pick out their favorite items.

> **u/xamueljones** [+2]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (4 days later)
> 
> One thing I would love to see is a map of the places Bunny is traveling to. Maybe the map she received in the beginning for the illustration to be shown in the story instead of at the end?
> [However the map](#s " gave incorrect information on the zones.")

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (4 days later)
>> 
>> Map-wise, I'm at least partly tempted to find a present-day paper road map, which covers at least Toledo to Rochester, including Toronto to the north and Cleveland in the south, and taking a picture of that. (Digitally adding torn edges, aging, weathering, and arrows pointing to off-map areas (Montreal, Acadia, Pittsburgh, Phoenix) optional.)

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