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"Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief." Helen Keller

"Add sensory detail!" may be the most simple, and some would say obvious, command a writing teacher gives a student. But like everything else involving great writing it can be more complicated than that.

This week we'll explore sensory detail beyond the basics. How does the right sensory detail build voice? What effects can you create by describing smell, taste, touch, sound and the old standby what your point of view character sees? Do different readers perceive sensory detail differently? How do you avoid sensory overload?

Today let's start with why include sensory detail.
 
Janet Burroway, guru writing professor says ""Specific, definite, concrete, particular details--these are the life of fiction....(W)riting is alive because we do in fact live through our sense perceptions..." (From Writing Fiction A Guide To Narrative Craft)

Adding sensory details- the sites and sounds and smells are at the root of that other basic piece of writing advice- SHOW DON'T TELL. Put yourself in the point of view character's shoes. Bring him into the room and let him discover the smell of chalk on a chalkboard or a pan of  beans burned on a stove.

Let him hear a crying baby or a whimpering dog.

But this doesn't mean adding something like "Alfonso heard a mouse scurry under the table." That's still telling. Not horrible. Even okay sometimes. But that's not the best you can do. Try something like this-

"Alfonso dragged the chair from under the table and fell into its seat. A quiet gnawing, tiny claws across the floorboards, maybe, scurried from the dark corner beneath his feet. Alfonso pushed his plate to the middle of the table. He was never sure if he was alone in this kitchen." 

Okay, fine. I just made that example up on the spot. It's sort of silly and not the most elegant... but do you get my drift? Sensory detail shouldn't sit on top a scene like a cherry on a scoop of ice cream. Sensory detail that pulls a reader in is itself embedded into the scene. You are showing what sounds Alfonso heard, inserting those very sounds into your reader's ears, not merely reporting that there were sounds in the room.

Sensory detail is an arrow that shoots through a page, piercing a reader's heart and memory. How do you feel, suspecting there's a mouse under Alfonso's feet? Would you eat a slice of bread or a hunk of cheese from that kitchen? It probably doesn't matter to the plot of this imaginary story whether there are actually mice in the kitchen. It does matter that the kitchen has an unsettling atmosphere.
 

I constantly read tons of fiction, but lately I've been working my way through a hardcore work of nonfiction, too.

Dreaming By The Book by Elaine Scarry.
 

Scarry, a Harvard aesthetics professor, explains how reading creates an intense sensory response in the reader. In many ways- measurable with neurological and psychological tools- a reader's response to a story on the page is stronger than his reaction to dreams or imagination. Writers who use powerful description and compelling characterization create vivid worlds the reader believes in. How many times have you cried over a novel, even though the rational part of you knows it's all make believe?

One of the most essential tools of this world-building is concrete sensory detail. When Helen Keller read about the smell of a peach she was carried to another place and time. She fell into the dream of the story. You can do this too, with well written sensory details.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the what of sensory detail... making sure our literary smells and tastes are neither too hot nor too cold, but always just right.

“I've found that incorporating my own life experiences into my writing gives it more soul.”

                                                          ---Laura Resau 

Day One with Laura Resau

A little about Laura….

          Laura Resau has a background in cultural anthropology and ESL-teaching and has lived and traveled extensively in Latin America. Her first book in a new travel-adventure series, The Indigo Notebook (available October 13, 2009), has been heralded as "a poignant, thoughtful novel filled with cultural details" by Kirkus Reviews. Her previous novel, Red Glass, won numerous awards, including the IRA YA Fiction Award and the Americas Award, and was selected as an Oprah's Pick.

          Acclaimed for its sensitive treatment of immigration issues, a starred review from Publishers' Weekly calls Red Glass a "vibrant, large-hearted story." Resau's award-winning debut novel, What the Moon Saw was praised as "a powerful, magical story ... a rare glimpse into an indigenous culture" in a starred review from Booklist.

          Resau now lives with her husband, toddler, and dog in Colorado. She is donating a portion of her royalties to indigenous rights organizations in Latin America.

          Laura, Congratulations on the October 16 launch of Indigo Notebook! the first book in your new series. You also have a book for younger readers, Star in the Forest, coming in Spring 2010.

 
          Thanks, Zu!  And thanks for inviting me here—this blog is an amazing resource for writers… I'm honored to be a guest!

          You’ve said that you see your fiction “as a mosaic, bits of life, myth and dreams pieced together that hopefully tells an engaging story and speaks to deeper truths.” Can you talk about how life, myth and dreams come together in Indigo Notebook and Star in the Forest?

          I've noticed that my writing is much stronger—and resonates with readers more deeply-- when it has a mythological underpinning, usually a mix of the universal, cultural, and personal.  For example, in Star in the Forest, a girl whose father has recently been deported to Mexico believes that the abandoned dog she befriends in the junk yard is her father's spirit animal.  In this way, she feels some sense of comfort and control in a situation apparently out of her control.  While living in southern Mexico, I heard many variations of nahual (spirit animal) stories, which to me, seemed to speak to some deeper truths about the human psyche.

          Many bits of folklore appear in The Indigo Notebook as well, based on tales I've heard—some unique to the Otavalo region and some which are told all over Latin America.  There's the man rumored to have made a pact with the devil, the cave of treasures hidden inside tunnels in the mountain, the rich man's hacienda drowned in a lake, and others.

          I think that we all have our own personal mythologies, too, which can be treasure chests for writers.  In The Indigo Notebook, there's a recurring image of a blind beggar who carries a blue wooden chair with him so he'll always have a comfortable place to feel at home.  This character was inspired by a man from the town in Oaxaca where I lived.  His blue chair became a rich metaphor for me.  I've thought of it often over the past ten years, and finally found a good place for it in this book.  

          I also borrow from my friend's personal mythologies.  A good friend from southern Mexico grew up in a Nahuatl community, where he would get up before dawn as a young child and walk through the forests to gather firewood for that morning's tortillas and tea.  It was cold and scary in the dark, and he found that his "star friend"—a special star that he felt a bond with—would comfort him.  During the daytime, too, his star friend was up there watching him, even though he couldn't see it.  The "star friend" idea comes up in The Indigo Notebook as a metaphor for Wendell's birth family thinking about him throughout his life, even if he hasn't realized it.

          I love listening to people's real life experiences and weaving variations of them into fictional stories.  One major plotline in The Indigo Notebook was inspired by my indigenous Otavaleno friend's experience of discovering a biological half-brother he never knew existed.  The boy had been adopted as a baby by foreigners, and he returned a teenager to the Otavalo region to find his birth family.   

          I've also found that incorporating my own life experiences into my writing gives it more soul.  As I was writing The Indigo Notebook, I was in the process of adopting my own son from Guatemala, often wondering how he might feel about his adoption at different stages of his life in the future.  This helped me get inside Wendell's head and heart.

          You’ve always loved to travel, and your books and travel essays reflect a delight of other cultures, their stories and the magic of their myths. Beyond this, you seem especially drawn to speak for those who might not otherwise have a voice, such as Pablo, the five-year-old Mexican boy in Red Glass who is the only survivor of a dangerous border crossing. What is it about such characters that draw you?

          Writing about people who have been marginalized by society wasn't exactly something I set out to do.  It so happened that fortuitous life circumstances led me to friendships with people who fit that category.  Living in rural Oaxaca, Mexico, I became close to a number of indigenous families, and had the opportunity to learn about their lives and issues facing them. 

          Here in the Southwest U.S. (Arizona and Colorado), I've taught ESL for many years, which has given me a close-up view of undocumented immigrants' lives and challenges.  Many of my friends' stories are fascinating and touching and important, yet hadn't been widely heard.  I hope that my writing can generate more interest in their experiences and open another doorway for their stories to be appreciated.