Lesson 8: What triggers imagery?

Despite the word choice, it actually isn't image or vision but taste, smell, touch and hearing. You aren't supposed to see your image. You have to feel it.
That's hard for a lot of us, definitely myself included, to fight. I know my brain conjures up an image literally the minute Jon says what it is.

One thing that may be helpful and that I practice a lot with meditation and mindfulness is to NOT fight the image, but simply accept it as it comes, say hello and go back to focusing on the other four senses. I found that when I tried to fight it, that's when I REALLY could not get the image out of my head.

There's a lovely passage from the book I'm reading now called "Big Magic" that shows this kind of acceptance like a car ride with Fear and Creativity. You have to tell the image/fear "Yes, you're welcome here, but you don't get a say in this exercise. The senses have to speak first."

What I take from this lesson is that it's important to not create a scene because that's not the point of the exercise. The point (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is to take pieces of these sensory feelings and plug them into the CHARACTER'S scene/memory. If you focus too much on your own, you lose the character's essence and make it about you. Not every character will be typecast to you. If you're playing a villain they may have a TOTALLY different reaction to that sense than you would. As Jon said, "environment is a moment, not a scene or narrative", because you don't get to make up the scene or narrative. Memory only takes us out of the context of the scene.

Nicely said. Yes, allowing the image to recede into the background when it pops in too early. Allow!