Writing for the Senses

by Charlee Vale

Everything in our life is interpreted by our senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Sense of time. Sense of distance. I would even argue that our emotions are a kind of sense—interpreting to us our state of being. How else could we perceive them?

The magical and wonderful tool that is our brain integrates all of these senses so seamlessly that we barely even notice the differences between one and another sometimes. It's just a part of being.

I don't know about you, but when I'm going along in my daily life, I don't, generally, narrate to myself what I'm feeling with my senses—I say generally, because there are some times when we do do this. We'll say, "Man it's hot!" or "I smell popcorn,"—but for the most part we don't.

There have been many times I have found while reading books, (and definitely in my own work, I am equally guilty) that most of the time things are described fairly intellectually. The character notes what they see, how they feel, what they are thinking. It's like reading a transcript of someone's experience rather than experiencing it with them.

This post came about while I was chatting with a friend about writing an action scene. She expressed concern that she felt she was using words/phrases like 'suddenly' and 'without warning' too much to indicate the pace and flurry of the scene. I told her she needed to focus on writing for the senses, but she didn't know what I meant.

Here's what I mean, and to illustrate, we have a little quiz!

If someone unexpectedly shoots a gun near you do you:

A. Think "That was a gunshot."

B. Duck.

If you stub your toe in the middle of the night do you:

A. Think about the fact that you stubbed your toe, acknowledge how much it hurts, and then hobble off for ice.

B. Grab your foot while shouting obscenities because it feels like you just broke your toe. Geeze, what did I hit with my foot?

If a person you are not attracted to tries to kiss you do you:

A. Analyze their approach and how repellent they are until they're so close you can barely avoid the kiss.

B. Push them away/step away immediately.

If you answered B to every single question, congratulations, you are CORRECT! (And the other good news is you are not a robot. Good for you.)

So if in real life, all of us would react with option B, then why do so many of our characters react like option A?

I find this very prevalent in action scenes, characters analyzing and absorbing far more of the scene around them than is physically possible. To a degree that's fine, we are after all telling a story. But part of telling a story is to make sure your audience is there.

I don't have any easy solutions for this other than awareness.

• When you read, look for both good and bad examples, and see how you can either emulate or avoid those passages.
• When you write, be aware of how your character is moving through the world, and how their senses are reacting. Is your character hot? Then don't say they're hot—say they're sweating. Are they sleepy? Look for how sleepiness affects the body and implement that.
• Trust your audience. The people who are reading your books are human. They have senses. Odds are they know the signs you're describing. Trust that you don't have to dictate cognitive thoughts for every sensation. Don't worry—we'll get it.

Remember Newton's Law—Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So let them react!

Charlee Vale is a Young Adult writer, photographer, and tea lover living in New York City. You can also find her at her website, and on Twitter, and quite possibly trying to revise a new and crazy story.

Do or Diorama: Visualizing Your Novel

by Cat Woods

I love museums. As a kid, I would sit for hours in front of the dioramas, wishing glass didn't separate me from the world in miniature. I had a special affinity for Native American scenes and those depicting the pioneer days. Often, I would fantasize about slipping into those worlds and getting lost in another place and time.

I suspect that's why many people read novels today. While reading, we can slip away from homework, dirty dishes and nagging family into a world where teens spin the tapestry of life.

But only if the author does a stellar job of painting that new reality, as Gennifer Albin did in Crewel.

Over the past week, my Middle Son was assigned a science project. He had to create a diorama of the coral reef. This is the fruit of his labors.

His fifth grade translation is enough for us to picture this underwater world with some degree of accuracy.

• Sand? Check.
• Giant clam? Check. (Double check for the pearl found inside.)
• Coral? Straight from the Dominican Republic.
• Sea anemone? Not one, but two.
• Seaweed, algae, jelly fish? Check, check and check.

In a similar way, my favorite novels can be seen as dioramas.

• The Hunger Games would have milk carton shacks with dryer lint covering everything like a fine coating of coal. On the back wall, a fence would separate the dreary gray from the vivid forest beyond. Like her or not, nobody can dispute the amazing storytelling capabilities of Suzanne Collins.
• A.G. Howard's Splintered would utilize flamboyant colors interspersed with dark shadows. Wonderland in all its splendid--and contrasting--glory. And bugs. Lots o' bugs.
• Unwind by Neil Schusterman becomes a graveyard of broken planes, while Sarah Darer Littman's Want to go Private? is a blank computer screen. Deep, dark and terrifying.

A good novel will have a distinct setting. While this doesn't mean unique-made-up-100%-from-scratch, it does call for enough detail to let readers visualize exactly where they are and what the world looks like.

Even a contemporary novel told within the confines of a school should have defining characteristics. A little extra something to set it apart from every other school in the world. Think Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. His school has 30 floors--one floor per classroom. Simple, yet effective.

However, without a connection to scene, readers can feel ungrounded. As if the story isn't quite real because it has no place to live. A poorly developed setting would be a bit like finding a giant clam on the Oregon Trail--too unreliable to trust.

All this got me thinking: what about my own novels? What would my dioramas look like?

What about yours? How much diorama potential does your novel have?

As a mother of four and an ex-preschool teacher, Cat Woods can turn the simplest objects into creative works of art--a trait she obviously passed down to her children. When she's not helping with homework or visualizing her newest writing project, she blogs at Words from the Woods. Her short stories can be found Spring Fevers and The Fall: Tales from the Apocalypse.

And on the Seventh Day—Wait, I Mean Page!

by R.C. Lewis

Ah, the perks of being a novelist. Eyestrain. Carpal tunnel. Form rejections.

But it's the best, really! Those of us who know will suffer all that and more for the joy of bringing characters to life, torturing them because we can ... in worlds we create.

Talk about power.

Sometimes, though, we get carried away with that power. We name and define enough flora and fauna to fill the planet twice over. We develop a 700-year history of the monarchy. We formulate scientific theories to support complex technology that all runs on algae.

That's great. Fill reams of paper or gigabytes on your hard drive with every nuanced detail. Go for it.

The problem comes if we throw it at the reader ... all of it.

Don't get me wrong. I love a fully realized world. And I hate one that doesn't have enough detail, lacks internal consistency, and just doesn't feel real. But having that fleshed-out world as a foundation doesn't mean we have to spell it all out within the manuscript. If we do all the hard labor of working it out behind the scenes, it can seep naturally into the story.

Some details do deserve to make the page and add to the narrative. Personally, there are a couple of situations where I feel it's worth the word count to detail things in.

It's News to Me. This is pretty typical in speculative fiction genres. The protagonist enters a new country/society/galaxy/dimension. Everything will be new, so some detailing is only natural. In these situations, I always ask myself what my MC would notice first, and what would get glossed over until they're in deeper.

It's a Matter of Life or Death. Okay, maybe not that extreme. But I'm talking about aspects of world-building that are pertinent—even critical—in that particular moment. Make sure the diversion into explanation or description is properly motivated.

I'm Right and You're Wrong. This can be a fun one. Character #1 says, "Let's do ____ to accomplish this goal." Character #2 says, "You're a moron, that'll never work!" #1: "Yes it will. If we ____, ____, and ____, then ____ will happen." #2: "No way. Nuh-uh. The ______ of the ____ will never ____ _____ _____ ...." And so on. Hopefully done more artfully than that, but you get the idea. When there are legitimate differing views on how something in the world operates, that can be a decent time to work in some specifics.

I'm sure there are other situations and a variety of factors that can play into how much is too much and what approach is best. Some genres expect world-building to be handled a particular way. Some readers can drink in pages of geography and political history, while others will skim (if they don't just give up on the book altogether).

And who says it's just the sci-fi/fantasy spectrum that world-builds? Historical fiction may call on a setting we have some passing familiarity with, but it has to make it real just the same. Just about any novel has to establish at least a microcosm of a fictional world.

For myself, the sign of great world-building is when I don't notice it happening. Whether through description, dialogue, or more subtle means, I experience it and live in the world.

Do you have pet-peeves when it comes to world-building? Tips for pulling it off smoothly? I'd love to hear them.

Keeping Your Writing Fashionable and Functional

by J. Lea Lopez

Fake pockets are the bane of my fashionable existence. Nothing’s worse than going to stash my bank card or chapstick, only to encounter resistance. No pocket for you! It’s a disappointment, to say the least. Words can scarcely describe the letdown. Don't let this same thing happen in your writing! You should be aware of Fake Pocket Syndrome (FPS), to avoid irritating your readers and turning them off of your story.

Fake pockets promise, but don’t deliver. So your hero is a tough manly man who finds himself relying on the aid of a sultry vixen to accomplish his mission. The entire book is rife with sexual tension, but in the end the two shake hands and part ways like old drinking buddies. I call FPS! You can’t string a reader along like that and not follow through. I’m not saying you have to write a torrid bedroom scene, but they had better at least kiss, or you need to at least allude to what we’re all expecting to happen. If your significant other spends an hour getting you worked up, then heads to the bedroom and ... goes to SLEEP, you’d be pretty pissed, wouldn’t you?

Fake pockets have no function. Even their aesthetic function is questionable. If you’re going to do horrible things to the shape of my bum by slapping a set of flap pockets back there, there had better be some payoff—like a place to put my credit card and ID when I don’t want to carry a purse. If your book starts with a character going on for two paragraphs about what she ate the day before, there should be a good reason for that. And sorry, but “I thought it was funny” is not good enough. For example, maybe she’s a hypochondriac who woke up with a slight cough and is convinced that something she ate was tainted and has given her a horrible disease. Well now, that could be an interesting introduction to your character. But if her eating habits have nothing to do with anything, why are you boring the rest of us by detailing them? Also, just because a passage “sounds nice” doesn’t make it relevant. Sometimes you gotta kill your darlings. It’s up to you, though, and if you can really justify something, keep it.

Fake pockets take time and energy to create. Having no pocket at all would be quicker, easier, and more cost-effective. And in the case of the awful flap pockets mentioned above, it would also be much more attractive. Save yourself and your editor some time and effort, and be aware of FPS from the beginning, and avoid it at all costs. The less junk you put in, the less you’ll have to cut out later on.

So take a long hard look at your manuscript. Are you a victim of FPS? Fear not, with a few snipped stitches here and there, you’ll have those pockets functional in no time.

The Query Quandary

by R.C. Lewis

Mention queries, and writers of all ages sprout a few more gray hairs. The first rule of #AskAgent chats on Twitter is No Query Questions. I used to think there was no such thing as a writer who looks forward to writing one or an agent who adores slogging through hundreds of them to find a few gems. Turns out Cat likes writing them, just not sending them. So there's at least one out there. But not many, I bet.

No one (or almost) really likes them, but I get why they fall under the "necessary evil" category. And it's not like there aren't resources out there to help—enough blogs to overload anyone's browser, for starters.

Even with all that help, we struggle. After doing my best to help critique several queries on AgentQuery Connect and overhauling my own query for the umpteenth time, I thought about what makes it so difficult. Boiling a novel-length plot down to a couple hundred words isn't easy, obviously. But what—above all else—stands in the way?

They say the devil's in the details. I contend that the devil's in determining the depth of the details. (How's that for alliteration?)

Boil down the plot too much, and you get something like this:

An orphan boy discovers he has unexpected power and is the Chosen One who must battle ultimate Evil.

Could be Harry Potter. Or Star Wars. Or possibly dozens of other fantasy works.

More often, though, I think we tend to go to the opposite extreme, thinking every nuance of the story is essential if the agent or editor is to understand the plot. Try this (exaggerated) example:

Milton Dauntless, a shy thirteen-year-old boy with a faithful Chihuahua-Corgi mix named Gargantuar, discovers his parents, Darwina and Ted, weren't killed in the famous So-So Steakhouse food poisoning scandal of '99 as he'd been told all his life by Grandma Gertie. In fact, his father was killed by the evil vampire lord Vladindeath, who has secretly ruled the underworld ever since defeating the werewolf clans seven hundred fifty-two years ago. As the sole survivor of the powerful Dauntless clan, Milton must now learn to harness the power of the Crystal of Purity, find out what happened to his mother when she escaped the bloodbath of her husband's murder with her long-lost brother Sherman, and defeat the vampires once and for all.

(Okay, that was kind of fun.)

That one is obviously bogged down in excess detail, including irrelevant backstory and too many names. (I have a related post on my blog on the issue of Name Soup.)

Here are some of my conclusions, and I hope others will add to them.

Get Enough Detail

• The whole point of the query is to show an agent or editor what makes your story stand out from the others. Part of this can be through voice. But these days, if you're writing about vampires or angels, for example, you've got to show your unique twist.
• Make it memorable and leave them wanting more. Again, the point of the query: get a request for more material.
• Include details that are snappy, quirky, or unexpected ... without belaboring the point.

Don't Overdo the Detail

• R.C.'s Personal Rule of Thumb: Anyone who won't be mentioned by name again in the query shouldn't be named at all.
• Avoid backstory. Plenty of time (and more creative ways) to incorporate it into the manuscript itself.
• Axe details that can leave the reader saying, "Why should I care about that?" For example, knowing all of that about Milton's dog doesn't really tell us anything substantial about the character (except maybe that he has a silly sense of humor when it comes to naming pets) or the plot.

It's a thin line to walk between too much and too little. No wonder so many of us find it so difficult.

Do you have any pointers for finding that perfect balance?