I smell a rat...

Ezra 10: 35) For I have seen that I knew not, and hear that I do not know.
36) Or is my sense deceived, or my soul in a dream?

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Ahh the senses. This weeks lesson is full of the senses. 1.Sight 2. sound 3. smell 4. touch 5. taste and the 6. unknown. That is our secret sense that no one knows about and the very reason I can smell a rat, liar, or a not so great person from miles away.

But this isn’t about my intuitive nature, this is about the use of senses in your writing. By using the senses, your writing will come alive. I know from experience that this is one lesson that made my writing, even poetry, take a leap from good to va va va voom.

Now when I write, I use the senses like a footstool. I prop other words on top, see to it that there is a sense of smell, taste, sight, or other sense in each and every sentence. If  I don’t see or hear a sense, upon revision I fix the sentence so it comes alive.

Yeah alive, literally jumps out and bites your face. Look at this sentence.

The truck went down the road. (A good telling sentence wouldn’t you say?)

The blue truck hummed down the road leaving dust in the air when it came to a complete and sudden stop. (Now the sentence has come alive. I showed you almost like a picture in your mind, what the truck did. It was a blue truck, (sight) It hummed (sound) It came to a sudden stop (maybe more sound and sight?) Dust flew in the air. (maybe sight, smell and taste as the dust flies, making you cough)

You don’t need to use every sense in a sentence but by adding the senses, the structure of your sentence and impact on the reader really hits its mark. We don’t want bland sentences linked together like sausage, we want them to be linked like a freight train, moving forward with force so that your reader is right there with you, alive in the moment.

Showing your reader a full picture, is what makes a story work. When they read, the reader wants to be in the scene. They want to feel what you the writer are trying to convey. If you miss the boat, then publishers are going to sail on to higher seas, if you know what I mean.

Now even though you’re going to place the senses in there, you need to watch the over-use of your adverbs and the word AND. Sometimes as we add life to the sentence, we over do it with too many words, leaving the reader scratching their head wishing they’d used dandruff shampoo that morning.

Don’t over-do the sentence, and try your darndest to not under-do (I don’t think under-do is a word.) But whatever you do, make sure you take the reader on the ride with you.