Writing with Sense

Ah, the senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. We delight in the pleasures of the senses, but infusing writing with sensory stimulation is not an easy task. Here is an exercise to help you write with more sense:

Brainstorm

• Start with a sheet of paper divided into five columns. You can use Excel or Word just as well. Label the columns: eyes, ears, mouth, hands, and nose.
• Spend a few minutes populating the columns with words and phrases that reflect the correlating senses. For example, in the smell column, you might write chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, a blooming rose, or the cat’s litter box.

Test

• Review your list carefully, testing each item on your list to see how it affects you. When you read something like throbbing base coming from the car in the next lane, can you feel the boom?
• As you go through your list, cross out anything that doesn’t engage your senses, but highlight everything that does.

Write

• Now, write about an event in 500 words or less, and be sure to stimulate each of the five senses in the piece. For a bonus, you can work in the sixth sense as well. You could write about a wedding, a day at the office, or a conversation with a friend. Refer to your brainstorm list if you get stuck, and use that material for inspiration as well. Note the special challenge involved with working sensory descriptions into dialog.

Have fun with it and be sure to leave a comment letting me know how this exercise works for you, or if you have any writing exercises of your own that you’d like to share.

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Poetry Starts in Childhood

It all begins with silly rhymes and frolicking rhythms, a repetition of meter and phrase. Peppered with bright imagery and words that pop, children’s poetry is a playful dance through language. The most memorable poems pay homage to cadence and keep count carefully, tenderly nudging the imagination into a soundscape of wonders and the ridiculous.

Shel Silverstein was a master of this craft. The excerpt that follows is from the poem “One Inch Tall” from Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings:

“If you were only one inch tall, you’d walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You’d swing upon a spider’s thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.”

Children’s poetry often finds it strength in simplicity, and many poets that write for children have mastered the craft of stating the obvious in a delightful manner that tickles the senses and begs to be read aloud in a sing-song voice.

Dr. Suess is one of the most beloved children’s poets. He wrote over 44 books, telling wild, outlandish stories in rhyme. His titles are among the best known in children’s literature. The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham (I Can Read It All by Myself Beginner Books), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! are just a few of his well known works.

The example below, from Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (Classic Seuss) demonstrates the bare bones of what it means to write for kids.

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

The text is rich with nouns and verbs, and the effect is direct and action-packed. Adjectives and adverbs are generally absent. Many writers heavily sauce their scripts with descriptive verbiage, not realizing that instead of adding to the richness of a piece, this will often create the opposite effect and minimize the most important element: action.

Though their poetry has begun many a journey into the world of literature, Shel Silverstein and Dr. Suess were anything but beginners. Who are some of your favorite authors of children’s poetry? Do you write poems for kids to read?

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The WGA Strike - Support from Hollywood

Have you been following the story of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike? In short, the writers are asking for a fair share of residuals from new media syndication, but the producers represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are refusing. Apparently the executives prefer to keep the cash cow all to themselves. You can read the full story in the NY Times Article, Screenwriters on Strike Over Stake in New Media.

It’s both refreshing and comforting to see writers banding together in an effort to gain fair compensation for their work. Too often, writers are the most undervalued members of a creative team, especially in the film and television industries. For some reason, there is a perception that writers do not need to be paid for their work.

What does it take for a writer to earn a livable wage? Authors such as J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown as well as numerous screenwriters have hit the jackpot with their work, but the average working writer is lucky to earn a decent salary despite the fact that the writing profession requires an extremely broad and complex skill set.

I was touched when I came across the video below, which shows that other Hollywood artists are backing the writers.

Please visit United Hollywood and Speechless for more information about the WGA strike and the Speechless Campaign.
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