Using visualizing as a brainstorming tool can generate amazing ideas for writing.  With four steps, participants can spring into writing, hurdling over those stubborn blocks that can sometimes halt us in our writing tracks.  The basic structure of classroom visualization or guided imagery has four steps: choice, relaxation, visualization, and return.  Consider the following guide through this brainstorming process.

1. Choice:  Guide the writers in selecting a particular remembered or imaginary scene.  Ask questions such as, “What is a memory that makes you smile?” or “Where is a place you treasured growing up?”  You can take this in directions of the imagination, as well, with questions about favorite settings in books (Hogwarts, anyone?).
2. Relaxation:  Help writers relax by establishing a mood for the exercise.  Eyes may close.  Writers should breathe calmly.  Lower your own voice to a clear, gentle tone.
3. Visualization:  Provide a series of “contentless” prompts based on the guidance during the choice step.  Ask questions such as, “Look to your left — what do you see there?” “What is the sun doing?” “What does the air feel like?” “Who else is with you?” and others.
4. Return:  Ask writers to gather their details from the visualized scene.  Bring them back to the present time.

Consider using this technique to search memories for details about past experiences, reconstruct scenes from stories (or combinations of stories), or create new, imaginative experiences. You may be surprised what you can come up with! Because guided imagery works so well, evoking vivid details which people have often forgotten, and because it requires some rather carefully worked out methods, Zemelman and Daniels wrote a whole chapter about this procedure in A Community of Writers (Zemelman and Daniels, Heineman, 1988.) Credit goes to Steve Zemelman, Smokey Daniels, and the Illinois Writing Project Basic 30 team for this content. Check us out on Twitter!