Tag Archive | variety

Author Confessions: Use all the Senses

Sep30
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Author Confessions: Use All the Senses

Another challenge for an author is to use all the senses in their storytelling, and if at all possible, do it without using the words see/saw, feel/felt, hear/heard, smelled, look/looked, taste, touch. Let’s take a simplified glimpse at ways to do that.

I’ll be referencing scenes from my book, Whitney’s Vow and see what we have for the senses:

Brides often entertained second thoughts on their wedding day, didn’t they?

Whitney Anderson’s sleeveless gown stuck to her back from the perspiration dribbling down. She was certain her deodorant had stopped working. The machine of a wedding day had taken over and she was a cog in its well-oiled gears. The backyard of her parents’ home basked in the sunshine as the temperature was a comfortable seventy-two degrees. So why was her body on fire?

 Her fingertips tingled and the small bouquet of daisies and roses pricked her palms. The aura of a migraine hovered around the recesses of her vision. She’d forgone her contacts and refused to wear glasses at her wedding. If she could only get through this day without passing out…Lord, please rescue me.

Sight: I could have written that everything was blurry, but instead I explained she had the aura of a migraine.

Smell: She might detect body odor as she wonders if her deodorant stopped working

 Touch: She touches the flowers and is pricked by the thorny roses. Persperation is dripping on her skin and her dress is sticking to her. She experiences heat even though the weather isn’t overaly warm

Birds chirped merrily in the tall trees, now in full leaf. An occasional trout flipped over the waterfall, tossed forth by the gush of water from the spring thaw. The men settled against the boulders, shaded by higher rocks and towering pines. The air was crisp, cool, and pure. Blake inhaled and grinned. 

Hearing:  He can hear the birds. He can hear the waterfall

Sight: The trees fully leafed out, trout flipping in the waterfall

Touch: Hard boulders, resting in the shade.

Smell: crisp, cool, pure air.

The mosquitoes started biting. The sun dropped lower in the sky, the trees casting long shadows on the path. Where were the men who were watching out for her? Every sound seemed suspicious, causing her heart to skip and race. Even the birds no longer sang. She sat and shivered.

Touch: She’s getting bit by mosquitos, it’s getting colder out.

Hearing: No birds singing. Any sound alarms her.

He headed to the bedroom suite. The bed was made up, and the room held the scent of lavender. He sat down and removed his boots. How could he sleep in this bed without Whitney beside him? It was one thing to do it overseas surrounded by smelly men on the hard ground or cots, but this haven screamed of his wife’s presence.

Smell: Lavender scent vs smelly men.

The quilt on the bed was made with scraps from their older clothes and reflected his penchant for black, blue, gray, and white mixed in with hers for pink, lavender, and a deeper purple with swatches of faded denim thrown in. He stood and dragged his hand over the quilt. She’d stitched it by hand as they’d talked in the evenings. Just patchwork squares but filled with memories. He touched one gingham fabric and remembered her wearing that blouse on their first date. Another was from a skirt she’d worn when he’d proposed. His patches were mostly solids and plaids. Did she have any specific memories tied to them as he did with hers?

Touch: He drags his hand over the quilt

Sight: Vivid description of the fabric squares and where they came from evokes memories.

Whitney was one big itchy mosquito bite. She couldn’t walk. She was rank with the odor of sweat and urine but at least they’d finally allowed her the privacy and space to relieve herself, untying her so she was able to maneuver her jeans for the task. She never saw her captor’s faces. The days were hot and her skin burned. Her hair was matted. Her scalp itched. 

Touch: Itchy. Burned skin. Matted hair. Itchy scalp

Smell:  Sweat and urine. Eww.

Sight: It’s what she didn’t see – her captors.

Whitney was only able to eat a few bites, but it was probably the best meal she’d ever had.

Taste: Well, at least she ate and it was good but that is really more telling than showing. See, even an author can find room for improvement in a story after it’s already been published.  I realized I really lacked in using more dynamic moments with food in my work, but maybe I don’t savor my own meals as much? It’s a thought anyway.

Real Life

Think about what happens when you walk into a room. Do you instantly register a scent? I’ll tell you if one of my dogs left me a nugget, I smell it before I enter the room. It is an odor I detest! Maybe a candle that is lit and burning. Much of our sense of smell is tied into taste and since we don’t eat all the time we won’t always have the sensation of taste in every scene. Not all senses need to be represented on every page, but hopefully enough that the reader will feel like they are experiencing everything the character is experiencing.

Consider that, smell, touch and taste cannot be experienced watching visual media (unless we’re talking physical art), but when a reader is experiencing the adventure of your character, they can connect to all the sensations that character is experiencing. Experiencing all the senses in our fiction can bring more realism to our readers, but we don’t want to overdue it either and take away from the story itself. It’s a balancing act but something I realize I need to grow in as well.

 

Author Confessions: Attributions in Dialogue

Aug26
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Author Confessions: Attributions in Dialogue

When an author is writing a story he will often include dialogue and there are two ways to give information about not only the tone of the conversation, the activiting surrounding it, and the person speaking.

Dialogue Attributions

When referring to who is speaking it is called a dialogue tag. An example might be: “Welcome to my party,” Meghan said.

If it were a question it would be written perhaps something like this: “Are you coming to my party?” Meghan asked.

There are some uses of a tag within dialogue as well. For instance: “The car lights,” she explained, “aren’t bright enough to drive at night.” These should be used sparingly because they slow the reader down.

There is a debate amongst some who say that you should only use said (or perhaps asked if it’s a question) for a speaker tag and nothing else. I personally disagree. The speaker tag can give so much more information when used appropriately. I have a lot of different images I’ve collected over the years on my Writer’s Toolbox board on Pinterest and I invite you to check them outas some pertain to this topic but don’t translate well to posting here.

There are a lot of other words that can be used to describe what is going on in a scene using dialogue tags.

“How dare you?” Harry threatened.  This says a lot more than said would have done, right? You get a different feel for what’s going on between the characters in a scene by the change of one simple word from said to threatened.

“Why won’t you come over?” Sarah pleaded. This has a different tone than simply asked.

There are over 190 different words to use as tags instead of said.

Having given that information, it is not necessary to put a dialogue tag on every instance of diaglogue when characters are conversing. This can be a bit of an art. As long as you can’t lose track of who is talking it isn’t necessary. If someone refers to the other person by name, for instance, as they talk, we know who is and isn’t speaking. Sometimes too many tags can drag the conversation down and we don’t want the reader to become frustrated.

Action Attributions

Another way to give information about a scene and to keep the reader informed is through an action attribution or tag. Sometimes this is good because we don’t necessarily want them to be stagnant as they converse, even if they are on the phone someone can cough, or rustle papers, click a pen, take a sip of coffee.

For example: Jill twirled around the room, and expression of pure bliss on her face. “I love French toast.”

Or: “If you don’t  get this thing out of my face…” The corner of Gary’s lip pulled back in a sneer.

Both of these examples not only tell you who is speaking but some action and adds a depth of emotional color to the scene for the reader to enjoy.

Beats

I was confused when I first heard an author use tags and beats when referring working on edits to a story. I had no clue what she was discussing. It took some time before I began to understand that she was going through and doing the attributions. Whether it was going to be action or dialogue tags she was considering the “beats”, or rhythm or pacing of the story and how best to keep it moving forward during those scenes with speaking. The author doesn’t want to drag down the reader with too much action or description and definitely don’t want to detract from the content of the dialogue when giving attributions.

Caution

I’ve done this more than once where I put an attribution before a dialogue. For instance, this would be wrong.

Percy yelled, “Hey, get out of there!” Why is this wrong? Because he hasn’t yelled yet.

The better way to write it is: “Hey, get out of there!” Percy yelled.

What do you think? Should a writer only use “said” for an attribution in dialogue, or do you agree with me that the variety can add so much more to the telling of the story if the writer can use those skillfully?