Part 2: Write two dimensions into three with sensory details
Welcome to the second in a four-part series I’m calling “Accidental Mentors Story Craft.” This series focuses on how to write your best Accidental Mentor stories about women who shaped your life. These are inspirational stories that honor women just for being themselves and remind us that the influence we have on others who cross our path can be greater than we ever realize or acknowledge.
Engaging readers’ senses
In 1993, I visited Tikal in northeast Guatemala, the largest of the ancient Mayan cities. I climbed to the top of the tallest temple using a rickety ladder for the final leg. Green parrots flew overheard and howler monkeys played in the trees below. It was a sacred experience and one where I felt close to God.
That’s the first version of a paragraph I wrote years ago about a day I spent in one of the largest archeological sites of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization (and the site of the opening scene of the first Star Wars movie!). It’s an adequate visual sketch, but it doesn’t engage the reader senses. It’s descriptive but has no depth.
Two-dimensional writing such as this keeps the reader in their head. They can think about what you’re describing and might even develop a visual image of it but struggle putting themselves there.
Your job as a writer is to move the reader from their head to their heart, to help them see and feel what you’re writing about, to connect with memory and mood. To do that, you have to help the reader access all their senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.
Here’s the same scene with a few sensory details.
I scaled the rickety wooden ladder to the pinnacle of the Temple of the Great Jaguar of Tikal in northeast Guatemala. As I cast my leg over the top rung and onto the narrow summit, my palms scraped the limestone roof comb or headdress of this ancient funerary shrine. Patches of moss softened the crusty surface and filled my nostrils with its earthy tones twenty stories above the earth. Green parrots squawked as they circled me in the sky we now shared. A band of howler monkeys bellowed from the forest below, outraged at the invasion of their treetop territory.
In this place of honor and mystery, I breathed in God—timeless, endless, expansive—like a Mayan blanket wrapped around my shoulders protecting and healing me from the ravages of centuries gone by and connecting me to a people about whom I had much to learn.
By adding sensory details, “palms scraped the limestone,” “earthy tones,” “parrots squawked,” “monkeys bellowed,” “I breathed in God,” and “a Mayan blanket wrapped around my shoulders,” the reader can imagine being there, they can feel their own palms being scraped, smell the earth tones, and hear the cacophony of parrots and monkeys. When the blanket wraps around them, they take a deep breath and feel connected to something larger than themselves. That’s the beauty of incorporating sensory descriptions into your writing.
My writing mentor, Anne-Marie, asks her students when crafting a scene to consider questions such as these: “What’s the light like in the room?” “Is something cooking on the stove?” “Is the chair’s arm you’re rubbing with your fingers rough or soft to the touch?”
And, yes, incorporating sensory details often makes writing longer (unless you’re a poet. They have a way of cutting words that’s far beyond me!). But you can also add a sensory detail with a simple aside. In my Accidental Mentors piece about my grandmother, I wrote:
My memories of those early years are fuzzy, but I do remember how much I enjoyed crawling up on her lap while the aroma of her floral-scented perfume enveloped me.
How would it change the image, what you thought about or knew about my grandmother, if I had stopped at lap?
My memories of those early years are fuzzy, but I do remember how much I enjoyed crawling up on her lap.
By adding a simple detail: “her floral-scented perfume enveloped me,” the reader feels what it was like to be on her lap. Suddenly, my grandmother becomes their grandmother or, their imagined grandmother—the reader feels enveloped, not just by her “floral-scented perfume,” but by the arms of a loving woman. Even if that’s not an experience they’ve ever personally had, the experience becomes three-dimensional for them.
Exercise to elicit sensory details
Imagine yourself in a place that appears or will appear in your Accidental Mentors story. It can be a room, a house, a neighborhood, a school, a forest, a town, anywhere that offers a setting for your story. Describe where you are by answering the following questions:
What’s the temperature? How does the temperature feel on your skin?
What is the light like? Is it daytime or nighttime or somewhere in between? Can you see clearly, or do you have to squint?
What sounds do you hear? Are there people present? What about animals or machines? What’s making noise? What are the sounds like? What’s the silence like?
What does it smell like in the space you’re in? Is it musty or fresh, fragrant, or odorless? Why does it smell?
What does the place taste like? Warm, gooey, cinnamon buns your mother baked on a winter’s morning or stale crackers that sat too long in the cupboard?
Describe something in this place. It could be a car, a piece of furniture, or a picture on the wall. What does it feel like when you reach out to touch it? Use as much sensory detail as you can to describe it.
After you finish playing with the senses through these questions, select sensory details that contribute to creating the mood you want readers to feel—details that best demonstrate the lesson you learned from your mentor.
Get writing!
I hope I’ve given you some things to think about that will help you write and revise your first draft. Don’t try to make it perfect—just write! You’ll have plenty of time to revise it after you get your initial thoughts down.
And most importantly, have fun!
Next week, I share some thoughts about immersing your readers in a scene filled with sensory details, dialogue, and action.
Series Schedule
Each Thursday between September 28 and October 12, 2023, I’ll publish a post designed to give you some tips to help you craft your own stories. Here are the topics I’ll cover:
Sept 21 - Part 1: Connect with the heart of your story to find the lesson
Sept 28 - Part 2: Incorporate sensory details to turn two dimensions into three
Oct 5 - Part 3: Write scenes to transport readers into the story
Oct 12 - Part 4: Revise, revise, revise to make it your best work
By the end, I hope to receive a flood of submissions from you. If you feel ready, please feel free to submit sooner than that. Submissions are open now: Submission Guidelines!
Have a joy-filled week,
Annette