Read it; feel it
Read the words coffee, camphor or eucalyptus, and the part of your brain most closely related to the sense of smell responds.… Read the full article
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Come to your senses
Analogy helps readers experience your story
What does an epilepsy seizure taste like?
That’s the question Paul Harding answers in this passage of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers:
“Howard had epilepsy.
… Read the full article Take me there
Observational stories put readers in the scene
For his latest book, Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee:
- Rode from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner and operator of a 65-foot, 18-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats
- Attended ship-handling school on a pond in the foothills of the French Alps, where skippers of the largest ocean ships refine their capabilities in 20-foot scale models
- Traveled by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways that Henry David Thoreau navigated in a homemade skiff in 1839
To get their stories, other writers have journeyed with a teenage boy from the Honduras to North Carolina to find his mother, eaten nothing but Big Macs for a month and traveled cross-country with Einstein’s brain.… Read the full article
Do sweat the small stuff
Find the telling detail to bring your message to life
There are two kinds of details: realistic and telling.
“If someone is bald, that’s realistic detail,” writes narrative nonfiction author Lauren Kessler.… Read the full article