Writing as recycling 73fragments, if they are elided and worked together into a new text, can
create connotations which could not have been predicted from the origi-
nal sources. The more you intercut between sources, the more the new text
becomes a unique item and your ‘own’.
3. As you arrange your pieces, try to breed stimulating connections
between different ideas or points of view. If you place together an extract
from the newspaper about refugee camps, a section from an official his-
torical document which contains racist views, some fictional dialogue
between two politicians about immigration, and an account of a detainee
in a refugee camp, an effect will be created which is quite distinct from per-
ceiving each text on its own. The piece will resonate with a number of
voices and registers which either contradict or complement each other,
and your collage will be more multidimensional than if you wrote a con-
tinuous text. Similarly, if you bring together two or three pieces of text
which don’t seem to have any relationship at all—like an entry from a
computer manual and an advertisement for a coffee machine—connec-
tions may be forged which could never have arisen any other way. Such a
text might trigger ideas about mechanisation or contemporary marketing.
One approach to working on the texts is to weld them into a continuous
whole, so the seams are not apparent. But an equally valid way of tackling
the exercise is to retain a strong sense of several disparate sources, because
one of the benefits of a collage is that it helps both writer and reader to
explore the relationships between previously unconnected pieces of writing:
this is more evident when the seams are visible. An important aspect of a
collage can be (and perhaps should be) multiplicity , many themes and ideas
placed simultaneously together, to create a rich tapestry of ideas.
4. Don’t initially stick down the words on the page, unless you are certain
where you want them to go. Move them around, try out various different
relationships between them, consider cutting back some of them further.
Although you may want to put your texts together in rows to mimic
prose, you can also add another dimension to your collage by considering
its spatial design. Try one which is not entirely regular (you can place the
texts upside down, or at an angle, or scatter them around the page rather
than putting them in rows). Consider alternative ways of aligning texts:
two textual fragments might be put side by side because they reinforce or
contrast sharply with each other.
5. When you have decided where you want the pieces to go, stick them
down. Remember, as with any other kinds of writing, there will always be