Lights, Camera, Action! Rolling...

Fade in...

Images. It's all about images. From billboard commercials, radio and magazine ads, even to television series and film, we live in a world were images prevail. Buy this...because you'll look like her if you do! Buy that...he'll like you if you do! Buy this...it'll change your life, I guarantee it!

Image. If we don't buy the product, we probably still buy the image.

Images are a primary, and international communication device. We use images in everything. Have you ever bought a book for its cover? Or not bought a book for its cover?

I know I have.

I'm a writer, as you've probably guessed. And let me tell you, being a writer in this day and age isn't easy. Everyone tells you that the more you read, the better you write. But does that mean the more you "watch", the worse you write?

Writers who view extensive amounts of media, as I myself do, simply think differently.

I am not your average bookworm writer. I read when I can, absorb the vocabulary and the style, and write when the words come to mind. I am, however, a moviegoer. I enjoy the visual effects, and the fast paced action. I revel in image-based media. I crave it. So yes, it has affected my writing style. But then again, I am an image-based thinker. Everything plays back in my head like a motion picture. Was I born this way?

In my Mass Communications course this past winter I learned that television, movies, and the Internet has caused us to think less linearly, a.k.a. we are less able to read from point A to point B. We tend to want to click, or flip, from A to Z, to Q, to C and so on. In a sense we are only getting a piece of the whole, so the experts say. Does this more abstract, image-based, thinking cause us to be less literate, though?

In some ways, yes. In some ways, no.

The most notable result I have found to the consumption of movies and the Internet in my life has been the fact that my writing has become quite visual. I think and write as if I were making a movie. I still have to ask myself, though, whether this was a natural tendency, or the result of media.

Linear thinking does stretch us more than the "read a sentence, get distracted by an image, go read something else" state of mind that most Internet and television surfers are facing today.

Getting distracted by images and flashy technology isn't the end of the world. So we think less linearly, as long as we are still reading, and writing, we should be ok.

My personal words of wisdom are this: Read whenever you can. Try to balance your electronic media consumption with books. If you can successfully indulge in both film or television and a good old fashioned paperback or hardcover, then you should be ok.

Instant gratification will only take you so far. Writing, as I have learned all too well, takes patience, not to mention time. If you're reading, you'll learn to put up with distractions, which hopefully will be transferred into your writing.

But then again, these words are coming from a media addict who does not think altogether linearly. So what do I know?

Fade Out.

Kimberley May Maurice (C) 2000. All Rights Reserved.

A native of West Vancouver, BC, Canada, Kimberley dreams of being a freelance writer, writing an Oscar worthy screenplay, and travelling to such places as Spain, Ireland, and Africa. She is currently a Communications student at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC.

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