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
Description
Sensual research: Go to the scene
Gain color and insight through observation
You’ve heard about MBWA, or management by walking around? Try WBHA, or writing by hanging around — going to the scene to observe.… Read the full article
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