fadagaski replied to your post:
Interestingly, brain scientists recently studied normal people and authors (we are abnormal, lbr) when writing. Normal people queue a visual image and then try to write it, so the two parts of the brain light up sequentially. Authors queue up both the visual image and the words, so you are finding the language to describe the image even as you imagine it. Which is exactly what I do. I don’t watch a movie in my head first; I describe the movie as I’m watching it.
Yes! I mean, I’m sure there’s a variety of processes, but “describe the movie as I’m watching it” sounds a lot like what it feels like to me.
If I can’t get the movie to play, it’s very hard for me to write something. When I’m creating original characters, I know once I start hearing their voices saying dialogue that I can start writing instead of just making notes.
And sometimes the movie keeps playing after I thought it came to a nice end. (Oh…you guys are having more sex…okay, I’ll just keep writing it down. ;-))
I think is part of why I find screenwriting to be something easy to switch to. It’s already more or less how I think anyway, just write down less description.