Romance writing
is sensual writing. I don’t mean what you’re thinking,
so get your mind out of the bedroom. <g>
I’m talking about making the most of
the five physical senses. The more you can give the
reader the feeling of being part of the story, of being
an active participant, the better their reading
experience, and the more successful your writing.
The key is in addressing the
senses.
In every scene cover at least three
senses, bonus points if you manage to hit all five.
Don’t make the reader try to imagine how something
sounds, looks, smells, etc. The trouble with doing that
is the reader may be way off base and not imagine the
scene you think you’ve written—or worse, the reader may
not do it at all, making your story much less immediate
than it could be.
.Be specific here. Stay away from
meaningless generic adjectives like beautiful
and ugly. Give the reader the details that will
lead them to decide for themselves the impression
you’re trying to create. Susan Wiggs does this
masterfully in Home Before Dark:
. . . the maples blazed brighter
than any forest fire, in colors so intense they made
your eyes smart: magenta, gold, deep orange, ocher,
burnt umber.
Notice that she doesn’t tell us the
woods are beautiful. She lets us come to that
conclusion on our own,
When relaying the sensual details of
a person, place, or thing don’t go through a laundry
list of color, feel, sound, etc. Slip the descriptions
in so they become an invisible part of the writing. In
this scene from Friday’s Temptation the heroine
is massaging the hero’s scalp. I’ve inserted the
description of his hair by making it part of the
action:
She combed through his thick,
sandy hair noting its healthy texture and the lighter
sun-bleached streaks. She knew women who would have
killed for hair like Taylor Sloane’s
The most obvious sense and the one
most of us usually go for first in description is
visual. We don’t usually have a problem telling the
reader how something or someone looks. My book Friday’s
Temptation was the most challenging for me to write
because when it opens the hero has just been blinded in
an accident. Nothing told from his point of view could
be described using vision. I had to keep closing my
eyes and asking myself what he heard, what he smelled.
It was a real eye-opener for me. No pun intended.
<g>
If you were outside at night, but
couldn’t see, how would you know it was night? List all
the ways. If you were awake in your bed, but blind, how
would you know the sun had risen? The warmth of the sun
on your face as it slanted through the blinds, the
sound of the birds outside the window, maybe the smell
of coffee brewing somewhere? Or the sound of a garbage
truck making early-morning rounds? It’s your story,
only you know what makes it special.
Practice describing the world around
you. When you walk into a friend’s home, ask yourself
how you would describe the smell. Everyone’s home has a
unique scent. Isn’t that part of what makes our home
ours? How is the smell of a freshwater lake different
than the ocean? Be specific. Again Susan Wiggs nails it
in Home Before Dark:
She could smell the lake before
she saw it—mesquite and cedar and the cleansing scent
of air blown across fresh water.
And if you’ve had the experience of
being able to compare an Atlantic beach with a Pacific
beach, what makes them different? And they are, just as
northern and southern beaches are.
Force yourself to stretch by
describing something with a sense you wouldn’t normally
use. How does the air taste? What color is it?
Start a vocabulary list for the
senses. When you come across a great word, add it to
the list. Then you’ll never be at a loss for the
perfect description. I pay particular attention to
perfume ads. They contain a payload of words. And the
next time you’re in a hardware store, gather a number
of paint color chips. You’ll find marvelous color
descriptions in the names. For flavorful words, read
restaurant wine lists and menus. Good restaurants pull
out all the stops when it comes to describing their
selections.
In your scenes don’t choose things
to describe randomly. Go with items that will further
your plot. Every word you use carries meaning and your
reader responds on a subliminal level to that meaning.
Think of description as background music. In a movie
you are set up for the emotional punch of a scene by
the kind of music used. You can do the same thing with
words.
If your book is a romance/murder
mystery and the heroine is about to stumble over a
body, set the reader up: The heroine walks outside and
the screen door moans shut behind her. She notes the
cloying scent of the dying, overblown roses, the dank
chill of the deep shade under an aged elm. Are you
getting this?
This same scene, but a lighter
story, a picnic with a new love: The screen whispers
shut, she notes the faint sweet perfume of the new
roses just beginning to bloom, the welcome coolness of
the shade. The same, but different, isn’t it? It’s all
in the word connotations. You can become a master
hypnotist, able to manipulate the reader’s feelings
The ability to paint a vivid word
picture is one of the things that sets great writing
apart from the merely good. Description is a powerful
tool that can give your writing gut-level impact or
reduce it to banal clichés. Use it well.
About
the
author:
Cynthia
VanRooy
is
an
award
winning
romance
novelist
with
eight
books
published
by
both
print
and
epublishers.
Her
ninth
romance
will
be
released
late
2005
by
New
Age
Dimensions.
Additional
details
can
be
found
at
Cynthia's
website.
