One of my little writing secrets is being open to sensory embellishments for creating atmosphere and fleshing out characters.
These cues can come from some of the most unlikely sources: a neighbour’s random comment, an event in a park, something viewed while driving my car, standing in line to pay for groceries, the flash of a face in a passing bus. I always try to have a pen and a piece of paper or a small notebook in my purse or knapsack to write notes down with.
Sometimes a whole conversation between characters will develop in my head, sparked by a turn of phrase I’ve overheard. On occasion, physical features of characters will be inspired by actual people I’ve observed in a specific setting. A woman with an interesting style of dress. A man with a heroic Gallic nose. A crying boy in a field.
I once based a romantic lead entirely on observations I made of a man I used to see frequenting my local YMCA. He had a complex set of tattoos that lent themselves to the development of a secondary character in one of my stories. Another time I caught a short news sound bite, noted it, tucked it aside, and later was able to create a motive for the behaviour of a troublesome anti-hero in a chapter of a story I was working on.
I find depicting images from actual places in specific seasons really adds verisimilitude to a scene I’m setting. The way a window sticks when it’s a freezing winter day. The bang a wooden screen door makes at the cottage when it slams closed. Ironic to think I can use these spontaneous, realistic details to augment my imagination. The iron grey of a winter’s afternoon provided a launching point for an entire descriptive chapter.
All my stories, I feel, are greatly aided those detailed sensory cues I was focussed enough to utilize – the movement of earrings dangling from a woman’s ears as she dances at a music festival, the acrid smell of diesel , the rust on the front bumper of a teenager’s battered truck, the barking laugh of a woman on the street greeting her friend.
Record what you see and hear. Even if it’s only a few lines to nudge your memory with later.
Those snippets will be waiting for you when you sit down to write – and yes, – you will be using fact to embellish fiction, and your writing will be the richer for it.
If you are alert, and capture those sensory opportunities, prepare to find yourself reconstructing some interesting colours in the morning sky, or a sketchy alleyway your protagonist runs down. All you need do as a writer is to be open to the world surrounding you.
