Exploring the experience of being a writer
~ I ________ you ~ I was very fortunate to have the chance to hear Damon Suede speak at the New Jersey Romance Writers Conference last fall. The topic of his talk was character development. Give Your Character a Verb One thing that stood out for me was his suggestion that before you decide on … Continue reading Characters as Verbs
~GOING BEYOND 5 SENSES ~ Remember those two hard-to-spell senses I mentioned back when I started this series? Well, now it is time to talk about them. The vestibular sense provides feedback on our body's balance, coordination, and movement in space. The kinesthetic or proprioception sense lets us know how our bones, muscles, and tendons … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 7 Movement
~Do You Hear What I Hear? ~ Crash. Bang. Screech. Nothing can beat adding sound words into one's writing. Our sense of hearing develops long before we are born. At 18 weeks, an unborn infant can start to hear sounds. By 25 to 26 weeks, the fetus responds to sounds. By birth, infants can identify … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 6 Sound
~ Take a Good Look ~ When we read, we create visual images in our heads. We picture the heroine’s dress. We see the house. We visualize the car speeding past. These visual images grow out of our own visual memory of things our eyes have seen. In describing objects using the visual sense, it … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 5: Vision
~ The Way It Feels ~ Close your eyes. Reach out and touch something nearby. Concentrate on how it feels to your fingertips. When we touch something a giant network of nerves are activated sending information to our brains. If we have touched something similar before, our brain may make a guess as to what … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 4 Touch
~ The Gustatory Sense: On the Tip of Our Tongue ~ Stick out your tongue and take a taste. Yum! Our sense of taste is probably our most pleasurable sense. It is also one of the most complex. We have almost 2000 taste sensors on our tongue, but what we actually taste is a combination … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 3 Taste
~ The Olfactory Sense: Using Our Nose ~ Smell is one of the most powerful of our senses. Smell forms and solidifies memories and evokes the emotions. A familiar odor can bring back an image or event from the past. Smells influence the choices we make and can change our mood and our behavior. Real estate … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language Part 2 SMELL
- Weaving in the Seven Senses - As you can tell from the title I am still editing. I have gone over my current manuscript for all the big things. Now it is time for me to add those little details that raise ordinary writing to the level that touches the reader emotionally. This is especially important in … Continue reading Editing for Sensory Language
ZARA WEST'S JOURNAL 