Engage the Senses in Your Writing
Appealing to the senses is important not just in writing for children but also for teens and adults. In a family story, you might ask yourself: Is Grandma’s hair white and curly? Do her eyes look out from round lenses? If she’s cooking in her kitchen, what is she making? Can you smell it or almost taste it? Is Dave riding his bike with the wind blowing his hair? What is he thinking as he rides along on a spring day? What does he hear?
As in real life, each character in a story may pick up on different senses in their surroundings.
In The Best/Worst Christmas Pageant Ever, author Barbara Robinson plunges the reader right into the scene.
“The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids…”
You can almost get a whiff of that cigar smoke, even before you learn the kids’ names. There’s plenty of action as well as sensory material in that first chapter.
There’s a tool house (not their own) in flames, kids stealing doughnuts, and the description of “six skinny stringy-haired kids all alike” except for their size and their “black and blue places where they clonked each other.”
The story does not let me down. The author keeps me reading to the end because the story is so visual and she hasn’t neglected the other senses.
The questions you might ask of your own writing, once you have your first draft:
What does your character
- see
- hear
- taste
- smell, and
- feel
You know your characters well, but your reader needs the visuals and sounds to make them come alive. Employing the senses will draw your reader in right from the beginning and keep them reading, along with a good hook or important question. Much of this detail can happen in revision, once you get your story down on paper, or screen, however you write your first draft.
June Finetuned: Janet Sketchley writes about fiction and the processes that work for her.