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I know many of us do this already, but lately with the
rewriting of areas of my book, my mind drifts to many places. I think people usually take their senses for
granted as they go about daily life. Did
you ever think about using all the emotions and senses that invade you daily to
create things in your writing? We smell,
taste, see and hear things everyday and probably pay no never mind to any of it,
or to the emotions it may stir in us.
But what if we were deaf, blind, or unable to speak? How does it feel to walk around in the dark
bumping into things? We come to expect
things in our daily life because it has always been there for us. What if this familiarity was suddenly
gone? When you turn out the lights at night,
you can still see the room and you know what is there because you can see it in
your mind. This is remembering what we
have seen earlier and recalling it, the same as a blind person would do if they
had sight before they went blind. You
can use this imaginary picture to draw upon when writing your stories. How does this room look and smell? Is there a feeling of comfort, or is it
sterile and cold.
Do you have a “seeing in your mind” act that you perform
daily on a regular basis? In a room you
know well with the lights off you can still maneuver across the room, around
the furniture, and find the light switch because you are seeing the room in
your mind. Can’t you get to the bathroom
or even the refrigerator in the dark?
But what if the room is unfamiliar and you have to navigate
it in the dark. You walk slowly with
outstretched arms so as not to bump into anything, probably still knocking
things off as you go, maybe even stubbing your toe as well, or slamming into
something causing excruciating pain.
This is the difference between seeing something in your mind that you
know and something foreign that you don’t.
Visualizing something, seeing your mind, is the way writers
write and painters paint. Musicians and
photographers may use this as well without thinking about it. We can see the way things will be before we
start out. We have to organize
everything that flows through our minds daily and make use of these feelings in
our writing. All of the senses play
important roles in the minds of creative individuals.
If you come upon a fallen tree in the forest, did it make a
loud crash when it fell even though there was no one was there to hear it? If you get out of a chair and turn the light
off, does the chair still exist in the dark?
You can see it in your minds eye and you’ll find it if you walk towards
it in the dark. When you run into it and
hurt yourself, you’ll know that it exist, even though you can’t see it there,
except in your mind.
These things are what we need to call upon in our
writing. We need to use all the senses
to make the reader envision the way the characters in our stories are
feeling. We would use this same
technique with anguish and joy. Step
back to a place where you are in tune with your character and remember those
feelings you have had in the past, so that you can bring them to light through
what is happening to your character. In
my opinion, this will bring your reader into the story, having them walk
alongside your characters and feel what they are feeling, whether it’s disgust,
sadness, delight, or confusion. This
works the same way for the other senses.
If we, as writers, are able to successfully “be” the characters in our
stories, it will be much easier to use all the senses in our work through
“seeing in your mind” techniques and personal experiences. It’s all about putting you there and staying
there for the entire book. To achieve
this will take digging deep into your inner self. This is what makes a good writer with a story
the reader can’t put down.
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