Enid's 'cinema screen' technique

[Belly]

I imagine that in order to write in this way Enid would have to have gone into a trance like state? She describes closing her eyes and then her story beginning to unfold. She also says sometimes it was hard to keep pace with the events as they unravelled.

How did she manage to type at the same time? Or did a scene unfold and then she typed up that scene and so on? Her method also explains, to my mind, her anger if she was disturbed. Images etc must easily have been lost and perhaps hard to recollect at will.

I wonder if it is possible to train your brain so you can do this? I know that I can do similar, especially when I am going off to sleep. The main difference is I get flashes of scenes, this evening a man opening three different leather pouches containing rose quartz stones. I then close my eyes again and get another 'flash' but it is very hard to make sense of the flashes and group together into a coherent story. I just wonder whether you could learn to do it? I think it is possible you could.

[Ming]

I think it is possible. Perhaps you have to shut out all other thoughts and just concentrate on what is going to unfold. It is the same way in dreams - unconsciously you can let out everything else and focus on one scene in only. It does take a lot of energy, though - I wonder if Enid ever felt exhausted after writing for a long time?

[Lucky Star]

I think you would have to start with a basic idea and then allow the story to unfold in your head. Obviously not everyone could do it, just like not everyone can become a fabulous musician for example. Blyton definitly had something special in her ability to concoct storylines. It would probably have got easier for her once a series' characters were established. By the eight or ninth Famous Five she would have known instinctively how each person would react in any given situation leaving her free to concentrate exclusively on the storyline.

[Rob Houghton]

We talked about this cinema screen thing before, but I can't remember where. I've always thought that it was simply Enid's way of trying to describe the mental processes she went through in order to create her works of fiction, rather than a special 'trance-like state' which was peculiar to her.

It sounds as if I'm de-valuing what Enid said, but I'm not. Her talent was very special, but I don't exactly feel that her way of creating fiction was: at least, not in my experience.

I know a lot of folk won't like me saying this, but surely all (or most) people who write fiction go through similar processes: seeing the action unfolding in their head, as on a cinema screen: watching their characters move and talk: describing what they see?

When I write fiction I can usually 'see' my characters clearly in my head (what Enid likened to her 'own private cinema screen') and I can also see the settings plainly, so I simply describe what I can see. If Enid did this, then it probably explains why her characters weren't always very three-dimensional, because she never researched and created characters in any deeper way than just visually.

I'm sure that many novelists who, like Enid, don't work from a story-plan or plotline would write in a similar way: 'watching' the action in their imagination and writing a 'commentary' as the action unfolds (guided quite often by a subconcious imagination which is slowly prodding the characters in the general direction that the author wants them to go.) I don't believe Enid's characters played out the plot entirely of their own accord, but that Enid moulded their actions to a certain extent as she went along, very much as story-teller's would have done years ago when they weaved their stories around the fire.

This is exactly how I write, but I had always thought the process was normal, and something used by most other fiction writers, so I have always been sceptical when the question of Enid's 'cinema screen' has arisen.

Isn't this 'cinema screen' simply another way of describing our imaginations?

[Moonraker]

Isn't this 'cinema screen' simply another way of describing our imaginations?

Of course it is, Rob! I must say, I get slightly irritated by this 'harping on' about Enid's cinema screen. Everything I write I 'see' in my mind, as I am sure everyone else does. It is the same when reading, we see the scenes in our mind - it would be pretty strange if we didn't!

[Philip Mannering]

Isn't this 'cinema screen' simply another way of describing our imaginations?

Of course it is, Rob! I must say, I get slightly irritated by this 'harping on' about Enid's cinema screen. Everything I write I 'see' in my mind, as I am sure everyone else does. It is the same when reading, we see the scenes in our mind - it would be pretty strange if we didn't!

Pretty strange indeed! Fancy if you had no clue of what you were writing....

[Rob Houghton]

Phew! I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking it's nothing special!

[Anita Bensoussane]

It seems that Enid was simply trying to convey the speed and fluency of a story as it flowed unstoppably through her mind, one scene sparking another at such a pace that she didn't really have to stop and think about things - indeed it was sometimes hard for her typing fingers to keep up as her mind raced on ahead. That's probably something that a lot of writers experience at least some of the time but for her it appears to have been the norm, hence her phenomenal output.

Anita

[Viking Star]

I get slightly irritated

Really??

[Anita Bensoussane]

Good to see you posting, Viking Star. We haven't heard from you in a while and I was beginning to think you might have been seized by kidnappers and robbers on Christmas Hill!

*Sniffs Viking Star's message to see if it smells of oranges.*

Anita

[Moonraker]

Yes, good to see you back, Rob. One of my sons now lives off the Wandsworth Road, so we often get a bus into town from there, passing through Vauxhall - always looking out for you!

[Belly]

To those that don't think it is anything special when you 'see' things in your mind's eye are they in vivid technicolour and could you say it was exactly like watching a film?

I think that Enid really saw things in this way from the letters she wrote on the subject and from what she said. To me this is remarkable.

If I am writing fiction I have an idea of a character and can develop the action and character through my imagination. I don't 'see' the character act the same way I would in a dream, the crisp details, the colours, what they are wearing, how they move how the action unfolds etc. It might be the character does develop a 'mind of its own' to a point but I can't 'see' the character as if it is real, as it would appear in one of my dreams or in a movie. It will be a strong imagined entity rather than a visual image. I will know what the imagined entity is wearing and can picture it, but I will not be able to see it physically in front of me as if a real person has just entered the room. Does that make sense? It is confusing to try to explain .

When I dream I see vivid colour and the action unfolds subconciously. I always remember Enid saying that when a character made a joke she said something like 'my goodness I could never think of anything like that'. She was just reporting what she 'saw' so clearly.

I truly believe her technique meant the action and characters she wrote about she saw as if they were truly, physically in the room with her. She didn't just picture them and develop them she was literally 'seeing' them. This has to be remarkable as surely very few can do this at will. I dream vividly and I see stories play out and meet people every night when I sleep, every night is a new adventure. I see vivid details as if I am experiencing them awake. I could never conjure this up and believe it to be real whilst awake.

[Enikyoga]

I truly believe her technique meant the action and characters she wrote about she saw as if they were truly, physically in the room with her. She didn't just picture them and develop them she was literally 'seeing' them. This has to be remarkable as surely very few can do this at will. I dream vividly and I see stories play out and meet people every night when I sleep, every night is a new adventure. I see vivid details as if I am experiencing them awake. I could never conjure this up and believe it to be real whilst awake.

Belly is quite right. In fact, Enid Blyton’s imagination (which J.K. Rowling claims to have,
nowadays) reminds me of the late senator Robert F. Kennedy (who incidentally died the same year as Enid Blyton i.e 1968), who either once or oftentimes said,
“People see things and ask, why, but I dream of things and ask, why not?”
I think this is how Enid Blyton thought or imagined her book scenes. She would dream up scenes and plots and then she would put them to pen and paper...

[Rob Houghton]

It's all conjecture, of course, but if this 'cinema screen' imagination really was as marvelous as people think it was, then I must be just as gifted as Enid Blyton (how do you say that without sounding remarkably big headed?) I was just stating the facts as I see them, and thought every writer experienced things in the same way. Now I'm begining to realise they may not.

I don't consider myself to be 'super gifted' as some believe Enid to have been, but I'm almost afraid to admit that when I imagine characters they DO come alive for me, in 'glorious technicolor' and I DO see them in my minds eye: I see how they move, how they talk, what they are wearing: the colour and style of their clothes and hair. I never write a character's traits and foibles down before I start writing: they appear to me as I write. Sometimes they DO say things that surprise me, too.

Likewise, I see the sun and the shadow, the village or churchyard they are standing in, the house they are living in or visiting, and it is just as if I could go there myself: in fact, I find it hard to believe that these places and people I have created are NOT real, so real do they seem to me.

I don't personally believe that this is any different to the imaginitive process Enid was describing. I am also not surprised that J K Rowling claims she works in this way too. I really did think that everyone saw their imagination in the same way as me: but maybe I'm wrong .

I don't believe Enid's characters appeared before her as if they had just walked through the door: that is almost saying Enid 'hallucinated' her characters rather than imagined them, and I don't believe that to be the case.

We'll just have to agree to disagree: after all, everybodys perceptions of the world and its wonders are different!

[Anita Bensoussane]

You'll have to start devoting six to eight hours a day to writing, Robert!

Not long ago I read a newspaper article about dreaming which claimed that most people dream in colour nowadays but that, back in the days of black and white television, dreaming in black and white was more common! Must admit I'm very sceptical of that! We don't go around with televisions glued permanently to our heads so, even in the 1950s and 60s, people would still have been seeing the world around them in colour. And dreams have been around a lot longer than television anyway, of course!

Anita