Why Drawing Your Books Can Turn You Into a Better Writer

You don’t have to be Picasso, but drawing does give you an edge

Image by joduma from Pixabay

Generally speaking, writers aren’t known for being visual artists. Their whole deal is crafting something beautiful with words, not with color or line or visual perspective.

But if you’re not drawing out your book, you should be.

To be clear, I’m not saying you need to storyboard out every scene. And I’m certainly not saying the pictures you draw have to be gorgeous.

(To drive this home, here’s a sample of what other people do in Paint….

…aaaaaaaand what yours truly can do in Paint…

It’s OK. Go ahead. Stare at it for a second.

Done?

OK.)

What I am saying is that people are incredibly visual creatures. I’ve blogged about that before regarding the potential for authors to include pictures in their novels. And when you draw out images related to your story, even if they look like my Santa, it helps your brain sort out exactly what you want. That has enormous value when it comes to visualizing future scenes in a fun way that really helps the writing process flow well. In fact, you even can use drawing as a shorthand, more memorable outline in the planning stages, too.

Drawing pictures also can help a graphic artist who does your cover or other images get a sense of your artistic intent. Great artists can expand on your concepts even if your drawings leave tons to be desired, as demonstrated in this piece for Huffpost. When you’ve got this intent expressed well, when you can feeeeeeel what you aimed for, it’s the perfect time to pop that image on an aesthetic or vision board to keep you motivated.