Prepared by: Rhéal Nadeau
Posted on: January 5, 2003
Reposted on: February 8, 2004
Reposted on: January 9, 2005
Reposted on: February 12, 2006
(This is an expanded version of a previous
"Involving the senses"
exercise
first posted on January 7, 2001, then again in a revised version on
January 7,
2002. You should review those exercises, and the other "involving the
senses"
exercises, at
http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/pwarchive/topics.shtml#senses
- pay
attention to the wrap-ups in particular.)
All writing, in the end, is about sharing
an experience - real or
fictional.
And we all experience life first of all through our senses - all our
senses.
However, in writing, people tend to focus
on two senses: sight and
hearing.
Even more, these are often given as description and dialogue, with an
occasional sound effect - showing the experience from the outside
rather than
sharing it with the point-of-view character. Think of what happens
every time
we step outside. A flood of sensations rushes in: we feel the air
temperature,
the breeze, the ground under our feet. We smell, perhaps, flowers and
fresh-cut
grass, or the exhaust from our neighbour's lawnmower. We see that the
sun is
out, even as we feel its warmth on our skin. We hear a car go by, a dog
bark,
our own footsteps. Instantly, we recognize the familiar setting, while
noticing
any changes.
When we ran the first "Involving the
senses" exercise, I wrote in my
wrap-up
that we had only scratched the surface. In particular, there was still
a
tendency to tell rather than to describe what the character was
experiencing -
look out for words like "feel" or "sense". As well, before posting your
exercise, review it to make sure you did involve all the senses.
Here is the exercise: in 400 words or
less, describe a character
entering a
location (familiar or not) and experiencing that location through all
the
senses. Let us see what effect those sensations have on the character.
Does the
character feel welcome or like an intruder? Relaxed or worried? Pleased
or
displeased? (Remember - let the description of the sensations tell us
that!)
Do not try to write a full story, just a
single scene, to ensure
that the focus
remains on involving the senses, not on story-telling.
When critiquing a submission, highlight
good uses of the senses
(especially
senses other than sight and hearing), and point out opportunities to
add
sensory information.
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: January 12, 2003
Another interesting week of submissions
and critiques. Once again,
the various
submissions demonstrated the power, and the pitfalls, of involving the
senses
in our writing. Certainly, involving the senses can help a scene come
to life,
making the reader feel "there", involved in the scene.
Unfortunately, doing this correctly is not
trivial. Too often, we
use a
descriptive word or phrase, like "hot" or "smooth glass", and think
this is
enough - but those are too generic, too vague. For example, saying a
cup of
coffee was hot isn't enough - how hot was it, how did the character
experience
that? Was it just hot enough, or dangerously, painfully hot? Did that
first
sip taste good, or burn the lining of the month and cause the drinker
to spit
the coffee out? There's no way just using the word "hot" can convey
that - it
doesn't evoke the experience.
I still believe one of the key assets of
the successful writers
(from Stephen
King to Marcel Proust) is the ability to visualize the scene they are
writing
in great detail, to *live* that scene in their minds, then to put the
important
details down on the page to allow the reader to do the same. So keep
working
at this - when writing a scene, try to imagine exactly how thing seems,
feel,
smell, sound, to the characters involved. Then remember to put the most
significant and evocative details down in writing (too often, we forget
to
write down what we are picturing, because of course, it's obvious to
*us*!)
The submissions this week did a great job
of trying (and often
succeeding) to
do this - even with the difficult constraint of having to fit all five
senses into a few words (in our usual writing, we will ideally use all
of the senses, but not necessarily all at once.) So, good work
everyone!
Rhéal
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: February 17, 2004
I always enjoy running the "Involving the
senses" exercises, and
this week was
no exception.
As always, the submissions and critiques
allowed us to learn more
about the
opportunities, benefits, and pitfalls of using all the senses. Well
done, it
adds richness to the text and increases the reader's involvement with
the
characters.
I did observe how much the success of
involving the senses depended
on how it
was tied with the main character's point of view. As an example, we
can't just
add the smell of flowers out of the blue - this will only work if that
smell is
meaningful to the character(s). For example, think of the difference
between a
woman receiving roses from a lover, and a mother smelling the flowers
at her
child's funeral...
Great work everyone - I look forward to
running more "Involving the
senses"
exercises soon!
Rhéal
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jan 2005
This is always one of my favourite exercises
to run, for a number of
reasons, and it always yields interesting results.
One of the things I noticed this week is
how hard it is to involve
all the
senses in a short piece and not coming up with something that looks
like it
was forced. In our regular writing, of course, we'll have more room and
more freedom to introduce various senses - but the key point of the
lesson,
I hope, is to remind us not to forget to do so!
I think it's also in the nature of the
exercise that some of the
submissions overdid it. Some submissions were so full of sensory detail
as
to be overwhelming; others relied too heavily on adjectives or labels,
diluting the impact. To me, the submissions that worked best were the
ones
that relied on one or two concrete words to achieve the effect. In
particular, the most successful submissions were the ones that
described
how the character perceived the sensory input, rather than describing
those
directly.
Everyone did do well, though, in various
degrees, and I hope we've
all been
reminded of how much sensory details can add to our writing.
Rhéal
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.