In a new post on the BookBaby blog, Nancy Erickson offers advice on using sensory language to help your scenes come alive.
“Sensory language is the detail in your writing,” she says. “When you add detail to your writing, you are painting with words, and you can use all the colors!”
To develop this skill, Erickson suggests you follow some advice from Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird. Lamott tells her beginner students to start writing through a one-inch picture frame. Describe everything you can see through that small lens. This serves the dual purpose of helping you focus on your manuscript one step at a time and practice capturing specific sensory details.
“When you look through small windows, you see a lot more minutiae – the curved crack etched in the sidewalk, the one green pea that rolled under the table, the rim of grease under the fingernail of the doctor,” Erickson writes. Sensory language helps your reader experience the scene, not merely read about it.
