How to draw attention-grabbing images just by using sensory words

Ever noticed how few writers draw so vivid images by their writing as if you were watching a film?

Ever smelled that mouldy basement odour, setting your teeth in the creamy coatings of that thick chocolate, hearing the screeching of that broken bench, and felt like writing with the same appeal?

Well, I’m intrigued by the idea of showing images in my writing instead of just furnishing information.

Painting moving images through our writing connects to our unconscious mind and addressing all the senses of our reader.

“When you trust images to do the work for you, most of what spills on to paper is unconscious.”

Adair Lara

Want talking about twinkling stars? Instead of telling that the stars were twinkling, show their reflection on the rippling waters.

Drawing pictures on paper isn’t that easy. It requires a great effort of our concentration, of being present in the moment to observe things around.

If we're saying that ‘The weather was inclemently cold,’ we'll do it well by showing its image – ‘My bones turned stiff, snippy snow was wrapped around the green treetops, and it was the third day without the sun.’

Showing the image and grabbing at least 3 of the reader’s 5 senses will kind of hypnotise him by our writing.

Flannery O’Connor said that if the writer touches any 3 of the 5 senses of the reader, it turns the scene real. This art of painting word pictures through our writing doesn’t necessarily need a special degree. It just needs an alert mind, ready to receive impressions. and then it needs painting them accurately on paper.

This art is more than a mere play of words. When painting images through our writing, our unconscious mind grabs the reigns and the conscious mind merely supplies words and takes care of semantics.

Like this what we capture turns to fluttering and vivid pictures when expressed with touching sensory details.

If we’re not able to rev up our unconscious mind, we may well write grammatically and structurally accurate sentences, but it won’t let the reader feel anything. We have to put on paper the images that our unconscious mind shows us. And if we’ll use our unconscious mind to appeal to the reader, our writing is naturally going to address almost all the 5 senses: Touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste.

Of all these 5 senses, the sense of smell is perhaps the most potent. If we learn the art of grabbing the attention of our reader this way, we won’t need much to get successful as a writer.

Lara suggests a great tip, which is that we must ask after writing each sentence that how can we show it. Because the reader is there to feel something, not just receive information. He is there to be with the writer – to feel what he himself feels: The blue and red and yellow birds twittering from the green treetops, the wetly smell of those sidewalk roses, the scratching of your pen as you write in freezing temperatures, the drowsy sound of a distant train, the spicy toppings on the burger and so on.

I think that a good practice would be to write with a plain mind, because I feel that we naturally are blessed with the art of expressing ourselves vividly.

I can feel this idea tapping the middle of my heart, though I can’t pull out any solid proof for it.