How I Used Pictures To Write In The Light of What We See

When I’m writing I like to collect images which ‘feel’ like my book. In the past, I’ve even made paper-and-glue collages, with small objects and found ephemera stuck into the mix.

Visual details and setting are very important to me, but the first draft tends to arrive in the form of characters talking. In The Light of What We See was no exception, so I used an inspiration board of digital images to help me. The board (like the book) includes ghost birds, the beautiful Gower peninsula in South Wales, Brighton, nurses, and the Royal Sussex Hospital.

In the early stages, I use pictures of people as ‘placeholders’ for the characters. They don’t necessarily look the same as the character, but they evoke a feeling or attitude which helps me to write them. Pretty quickly, I get to know them through the story and they take on a life of their own. Evie and Geraint look (and feel) completely different in my mind, now, but the inspiration board was a massive help in the beginning.

Unusually, I didn’t use images for either Mina or Grace (the main characters) as they arrived so fully-formed and definite that I didn’t need them.

As this book is half-set in 1938, I did a fair amount of research. The pictures serve as shorthand reminders for that research or, again, just to set a certain mood in my mind before writing a scene.

I have collected quite a few of the images I used onto a Pinterest board if you are interested.

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