Using Your Writing Senses

There are many ways you can add exciting details to your writing, but I am going to teach you the ways that journalists use to do it quickly.

We are taught to use our senses when we write stories to quickly add details to our stories. Most casual writers have the luxury of time on their hands, and they can take as long as they want to describe things such as setting, mood, time, and place.

If you can put yourself in a reporter’s shoes, however, they only have a limited time to gather that information. In time-critical situations such as a house fire, an accident, or a city government meeting that erupts in citizen protest, you have to size up these situations quickly and get a feel for the mood and emotions so you can jot them down quickly and remember them later.

What do you see, smell, feel? Sometimes the story is not where the action is, or where everyone else is. Who is standing around, watching? At a house fire that turns out to be arson, for instance, I guarantee you’ll find the perpetrator by watching for the person who is standing there watching the action from a distance. You’ll also feel the heat of the fire, hear the sound of chaos, smell the sooty air, even taste it. If you’ve been around a house fire, you know what I mean. Describe it.

Use your senses to describe what you want to convey. How does the meadow that you are standing in smell? Some might talk about the smell of lilacs, the humidity in the air, stillness, or the gentle breeze that they feel.

You can significantly add depth to your writing simply by adding as many details as you can. Don’t worry so much about the verbiage you choose. Part of the writing process is using your own voice to create a picture for the writer, and I urge you to develop and exercise your own personal style.