Go Visual to Communicate Simply

It's easier to grasp a character
profile that's visual

I'm gradually getting converted to using more and more visual elements for communicating. Earlier, I posted about using drawings to get going on a project. But now I'm seeing the importance of going visual when one is mid-project, as a way of pulling back and getting clarity. A drawing, idea map, picture, or storyboard can help you to get back to basics, to simplify.

And so, as my collaborative novel group is ramping up on inviting people to contribute 1500-word subchapters to their outlined novel, I thought I would use some visualization to assist myself and others who wish to contribute to the novel to get a better sense of the characters they will be writing about.


Right now, the group has laid out a set of character biographies on their project wiki. This is work well done, since everyone can be on the same page about who is who. But from another angle, the very problem is that people are being taken to pages -- rather than pictures -- and so it is hard to grasp what these characters look like, or their relationships with other characters. I spent time today reading through each of those biographies carefully and then remixing / translating that information into a Prezi presentation. I know this will help me keep the characters straight when I write my segment for the novel. What do you think of the following?

Chaotic Connections on Prezi

As I was creating the Prezi, this also made me realize that this kind of character mapping can be a good way to find out holes in the story or in the relationships. It also made me crave having more images of the characters, as we have for Angelina. And since this novel involves characters adopting avatars of themselves as they go into a virtual world, it also made me wish that each character that had an avatar had a name (and perhaps an image) for that alter ego.