In advocating written literacy through visual literacy, this paper presents an overview of supporting theory and evidence and demonstrates practical application through visual compositions. The research reported in the first section of the paper includes the general theoretical stance of writing-as-process educators, who believe that the acquisition of language is a developmental process, embarked on because of the innate propensity of individuals to make sense of the world to themselves and others. The second theoretical stance--included in the second section--is that of educators investigating visual literacy, or the apparent similarity between certain visual and verbal behaviors. The third and fourth sections briefly overview current research in perception, imagery, and cerebral hemisphere asymmetry and their link to composition. A final section explains how pictures and visual compositions can be used in the classroom to aid verbal literacy development. (CRH)