Blogger: Michelle Ule
Sitting in for Rachelle Gardner who is travelling to the Allume Conference.
How do you cultivate a writer’s eye?
What I mean is, how do you learn to look for stories and unique descriptions?
Where do you find them?
By paying attention to details.
My husband and I caught a red eye to Edinburgh once. He had a business meeting the next day, and we rode the bus from our hotel to Waverly Station to meet a friend for dinner.
It was rush hour, and like most Americans in the UK, we were charmed to be on a double-decker bus. So we climbed to the top deck and took seats across the aisle from each other.
We examined and commented on the neighborhood, but then I looked around the bus to see who traveled with us. The man ahead of my husband had a satchel on the seat beside him displaying a logo.
“Look,” I said to my husband, “he works for XYZ.”
The Scot peered at me. “Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. My husband works for XYZ.”
The two men shook hands. The Scot picked up the bag, and my husband joined him. They chatted all the way downtown–twenty minutes.
My husband laughed when we climbed off the bus. “How did you do that?”
“Have you forgotten you’re married to a spy?”
I’m not really a spy, of course, but I am a trained observer. Some of that came from being a newspaper reporter and editor in college–we always were on the alert for a story for the paper.
Some of it is natural curiosity–I want to know what things look like in different places, how things operate outside of my knowledge base. It’s the reason I married a nuclear engineer and not another English major. I wanted to spend my life with someone who knew different things than I did.
(After all, as Larry Burkett famously said in another setting, “If both partners in a marriage were the same, one of you would be superfluous.”)
Those attitudes have served me well in my years as a writer–I’ve had to pay attention, but it has paid off, often!
Four ways to pay attention like a writer
1. Start with the senses.
As you walk through your day, notice how things sound, taste, smell, feel and look.
Novelist Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible commented upon landing in Atlanta, “I knew I was in America because there was no smell.”
Have you noticed that?
What do you smell right now?
Look for beautiful things and admire. I once stood on a lonely corner with my dog staring at a sunrise-sparkled dew-spangled orb spiderweb and thought, “Did you put this here just for me to see, Lord?”
What’s the last thing you tasted?
Describe the largest object close to you using your senses.
2. Use a notepad or recorder
Novelist Davis Bunn told us at Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference that he liked to carry around a notebook and eavesdrop on accents.
He’d write down how they spoke, not what they said, in an effort to catch the rhythm and manner of specific types of characters–which he then used in his writing.
My colleague Rachelle Gardner has a list of blog topics in Evernote that she updates whenever inspiration strikes.
I’ve written before about using my church bulletin to keep track of things I want to write about.
Another friend plots stories into a phone recorder while driving, to have them accessible when time at the keyboard arrives.
Are you taking this down?
3. Practice describing
Whether it’s a place, a person, or an activity. While you’re enjoying it, think about what words you would use to describe it.
Conversely, try to name what you see–using different adjectives.
I’m not sure what a hooked nose looks like, but if I saw someone whose proboscis turned down, I’d ask myself, “Is that a hooked nose, or if it isn’t, how would I describe it?”
Instead of checking your email, look up from your phone at the world around you and try to paint a word picture for someone else.
Tell me, what’s closest to your right elbow–use less than ten words.
4. Concentrate on details.
Pay attention to small things–whether children delighting in something new, the variegated colors on a plant, or the logo on a stranger’s satchel.
Many times fine writing displays itself in what small things it notices and describes. It’s easy to see the elephant in the living room (even if you don’t mention it), but what color are its toenails?
What color are yours?
What else have you done to help yourself think like a writer?
Tweetables
4 tips to seeing like a writer. Click to Tweet
Senses, details, tools and imagination: needed for a writer. Click to Tweet
To be a fine writer, you have to pay attention! Click to Tweet
This is great, Michelle. I’m working on a prologue right now … and I need to get inside the head of a six year old. So yesterday, I watched a video several times of a child experiencing the situation I write about. I watched it. I closed my eyes and just listened to her. I cried.
*And one of the sweetest descriptions I ever heard was from my daughter a few years ago. We were driving out in the morning, and she said, “Mama, look at the diamonds on the grass.”
*The best thing I’ve done for myself to think like a writer is connecting here … learning from you amazing people. I know I’ll be more observant today because of you, Michelle. 🙂 You make me challenge myself.
Shelli, one of my boys has a natural way of describing things too. I love when he comes up with something. I try to write them down, just in case I can use them one day. 🙂
One son, then 5 years old, when we were driving through mountains for his first time:
“Mom! My ears just turned off!”
Great ideas of how to get into a child’s head. I’ve always loved my exasperated 8 year old’s remark, “there are shards of LEGO all over my floor!”
Good use of video, too, Shelli!
Diamonds on the Grass sounds like a good women’s fiction title. One finds beauty and contentment in the ordinary things of life; our own home turf.
It surely does. I’m going to have to find a way to use that in at least one of my works! 🙂
Ohh, GREAT post, Michelle!
I try very hard to use all my senses when I’m somewhere new. Or when I’m travelling through airports, I take stock of the “look” and then compare it all at the next airport.
In the Dallas and Houston airports, I could tell a real, bona fide cowboy/local, from a wannabe with a new hat.
The real deal were all men who owned the space around them. They carried themselves in such a manner that nobody would be stupid enough to challenge them to anything. And they were well mannered beyond what one could hope for. They wore Wranglers, or Levi’s.
Don’t ask me how I know.
I didn’t have the nerve to ask what brand of tightly woven straw hats they wore. Mostly because I was wondering how to politely suggest sunscreen as a life choice.
And you know, doing the Levi’s check.
Hey! It was for RESEARCH!
Ahem…fans self…anyway…
The wannabes all looked the same. The sparkling belt buckles holding up their Gap jeans may as well have said “Trying hard and failing, y’all”.
Did I mention Levi’s?
Maybe I should go back to discussing the jungle?
There’s a certain smell that takes me far, far away. It needs July or August’s humidity to make the trees and blooming plants more pungent. It needs sunlight to heat my face. It needs forest fire smoke blown in from a great distance to evoke the sadness of destruction. And it needs an unhurried time of observation to make it stick.
All of it combined, an incredible rarity, takes me to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. A beautiful, bustling city on the very edge of the Amazon rainforest.
You’ve been reading Becky Wade. 🙂
#typorterlives
You took me from Texas to Bolivia in two seconds flat. Arm chair travel at its best, from an amazing tour guide. Thanks, Jennifer! 😉
See how the senses help?
And why you need to travel to your locales? 🙂
Michelle, great post. I’ve been more places with my husband where someone knows him, or one of his brothers. Even at the airport when he came home from an overseas trip this week, a man called to him as we were riding the escalator to baggage claim. It cracked me up.
*I love the questions you encourage us to ask ourselves. I have tried to describe things in my mind since I was a teen. Even still I do. As I write, I’m sitting in Panera, and asking myself the questions you shared. Now to put myself in places where I can do this more. 🙂
*One other thing I’ve done to help myself to think like a writer is to keep an emotional journal, where I write what I’m feeling, describing them. And I do this before writing scenes so I can better understand what my characters are feeling.
Love how you describe your own emotions before writing a scene. Great idea!
Michelle, I love this. I notice details and like to describe them in interesting ways. It was a thrill to me when I learned that my mother’s sight impaired friend was enthralled by my book’s descriptions of nature at a lookout point where I visited for personal renewal, describing the changes of the seasons in vivid detail that I was observing in the canyon. Both she and her husband are in their 90s and he would read a chapter a night to her. She said she could see everything through my “eyes.” She then invited me over for a visit (her husband made delicious oatmeal raisen cookies for us and the sent the extras home with me). Finding ways to say it differently is a fun challenge.
What a wonderful affirmation, Norma.
Absolutely, Norma, giving pictures to people who cannot see. Well done!
While I love the idea of having a notebook and writing things down, I’m deficient in that. 🙂
I find that trying to describe things to my children for which they have no paradigm is hugely helpful in getting me to use more precise and evocative words. And I can do it while smearing peanut butter on bread 🙂
Children take us to the basics; we can learn a lot about description from explaining things to them. Excellent point–and good multitasking with the peanut butter! 🙂
“Did you put this here just for me to see, Lord?”
YES!
We walked through Parvin State Park in South Jersey one crisp morning, and every holly leaf held a single frozen drop at the tip. A magic moment that wouldn’t have been there a few moments earlier or later. I am sure Jesus enjoyed my delight in his creation.
It’s humbling to think he put it there just for you, isn’t it? 🙂
Good ideas! I notice details but then I forget. Need to carry a notebook to jot down impressions and details as I receive them, otherwise they are lost in the mist.
I’ll come and sit next to you and we can talk about what we sense. 🙂
Great post, Michelle – useful and succinct tips.
* I tend to use a lot of dialogue to flesh out characters, with minimal description. I never really looked for this – but must have had something of a sixth sense for hearing it, as it’s one part of my writing that readers generally enjoy. I’m now homebound, and the opportunities for intentionally developing this focus are limited; I may talk to one person a month besides Barbara, and even my conversations with my wife are very brief, as it hurts to talk, and I find that I can’t keep up to a ‘normal’ pace of exchange any more. I do get some honing for the Dialogue Ear by watching movies, and by listening to the impromptu give-and-take that is sometimes found when Trinity Broadcasting is doing a fund drive. Yes, I admit it…I listen to fund drives.
* One method I do use is to watch the commentaries frequently offered on movie DVDs. Some are excellent for writers – such as the Spielberg/Abrams film “Super 8”. They talk about pacing, and the methods used to illuminate both character and setting, given a limited running time and the need for today’s audiences to experience a much faster pace of storytelling than in the past.
Yes, Andrew, movies can be helpful–though only for the sight, they don’t give you the full effect for the smells of the jungle as Jennifer demonstrated above.
Still, you take what you can get.
I’ve been amazed at the colorization of WWI photos–it all comes alive when black and white turns to full color.
“I’ve written before about using my church bulletin to keep track of things I want to write about.” Ha! I’m not the only one with bits and blurbs jammed into the back of my Bible!
I keep a pocket sized notebook in my car and have had it there since my youngest was a toddler. Now, it is full of funny, mixed up sayings and pronunciations, interpretations or random bits of conversations. There are also observations of other drivers or pedestrians.
The free phone app I use for voice recording is necessary for me, as I tend to forget that “perfect” bit by the next stop light. I’m not willing to take it into the shower with me, though. 🙂
If you don’t have a notepad handy, most smart phones have a notepad feature. I’ve used it several times at school games or on public transportation when I saw something and wanted to be a bit more discreet than blabbering into my recorder. Or, you could simply email yourself!
Sarah, my Bible is like a filing cabinet … papers jammed in … not a very orderly filing cabinet. But … one could learn much about me by reading what’s inside. 🙂
Those notes will be precious later, if they’re not now.
I notice how sunset rays drip like honey down the redwood tree trunks outside my window. The syrupy perfume of osmanthus blossoms at dusk, the crackle of eucalyptus bark underfoot…
So glad you brought this up today, Michelle.
I work at a physical therapy office where we treat patients from 4 months old to 90 years old. I’m so thankful for the exposure I have to mannerisms, facial expressions, and body movement, not to mention the reactions of people in pain, or relieved of it. People watching at its finest.
You always do a nice job with your sense-filled descriptions, Jenni. I admire your FB posts for that reason.
Thank you for the encouragement, Michelle!
I love your descriptions, Jenni! 🙂
Bless you, Shelli!
Your posts are pure inspiration. Fantastic, uplifting ideas and advice to develop the most important aspect of writing, the writer.
Thanks, Leon; I’m down in the trenches with everyone else!
It’s been said that the devil’s in the details. Nope – it’s delight in those details. I’m guilty of making setting a character, but I like to do it with few, well-chosen words of sensory perception. Great tips and examples, Michelle.
Great tips Michelle! Sometimes I’ve been so caught up in writing notes or thinking thoughts about what’s around me, I actually have forgotten where I am for a moment. The worst is driving…I’ve been lost a time or two when my mind wandered off in its own little story world. And I’ve followed the wrong person in a crowd…thank goodness for cell phones!
Hope everyone has a Tea-riffically creative writing day!
Really enjoyed this post, Michelle! Great reminder! Thanks! I need to remember to put on my listening ears and eyes to glean more from what’s all around me.
Noticing details is second nature for me; it’s why my “day job” is as an artist.
Describing what I see in words? Now, that’s a lot harder. I keep working at it because I like to tell stories. In my head, there’s always a narrative to go along with each of my paintings. Maybe one day I’ll do a graphic novel.