The act of creating “story” is an incredibly emotional experience for me. It is as much an art therapy project as it is a resulting artifact of a desire to share ideas entertain express and educate. My biggest personal challenge seems to be a variation on the theme of time management - so much content! Keeping up with the pace necessary to maintain connection with the “flow” that is the contact with the daemon of the story still keeps me up at night.
I have just about completed my second sequential art book (36 pages). I didn’t really know the full extent of why I was working on the Gnos project. It wasn’t until the second seq-art story entitled “Reason Vs Mystery”, when I rewrote the words on the final page. It was then and only then, when I got THE full message I needed to hear and so I knew then very clearly what I wanted or needed to say, to share with the reader. http://www.sethjrowanwood.com/archives/1592
I personally find it of utmost importance to first envision the overarching idea emotionally and then the conceptual forms begin to appear in subsequent stages in the visualization process of narrative frames. Set and setting, beats and scenes as described in Robert Mckee’s “Story” http://mckeestory.com audio book really gels this. It is a great way to hear/here the concepts and hear/here the images and scenes that lead to an internal representation of the emotional, symbolic and situational topography of the stage of “the scene”.
I think everyone has a way in to this beautiful free flowing space but I also do think that it can vary greatly and widely from person to person as our internal worlds can be as vastly different as our messages, expression, imagery and stories can be: i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Gilliam , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burton or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss
The juxtaposition of text to image can be supportive as in exposition or it can be an ironic counter point and everything in between when adding subtext (it is more of a sphere of possibilities not a 2 ended stick). This should not be seen as challenge or limit or even as a daunting task, but more as an opportunity to freely exhibit the heart / core of your expression and find the “golden threads” to impact your audience with your messaging.
Funny thing is this is what strategic branding is about - to elicit emotionality and to control the branches of messaging and the contact opportunities between your stuff and your audiences.
I just found this http://www.sanejournal.net I highly recommend it for those who want to get a handle on the visual story. I consider a picture book a simplified sequencial art work and so the rules are pretty much the same just a simpler and more of an account of the pivotal developments in a story’s telling. This is also an awesome course for the storyphile: https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling is an awesome free resource!
Stripped from superfluous cultural ornaments, isms, props and picked clean of “unnecessary exposition”~McKee, what is it you are wanting to say and where is the emotion flowing?
If you struggle with your imagery, get a sand box and play. Seriously! Get in touch with your predecessor awareness of beginners mind - your child somatic learner/teacher (if you haven’t already). You may find so much material in there it may lead to other work. You may also find you can “stick figure storyboard” your ideas and in the “somatic centric” visual thinking, you can better get in touch with the emotional landscape of your characters, story, plot etc… Not unlike writing or journaling with your non-dominant hand.
A question when contemplating the precipice of these impending creative opportunities: Could the biggest stumbling blocks to moving forward NOT be the ideas or the creativity, but those cherished things that plagues all expression? And which one could that be for you - Doubt, her older sister Fear? Footnote: Theorist and Nobel Prize winner, Herbert Simon (1945), asserted that “rationality … does not determine behavior … behavior is determined by the irrational and nonrational elements that bound the area of rationality” (p. 241).
