Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults
“You present your story in terms of things that can be verified by
sensory perception. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch—these are the common
denominators of human experience; these are the evidence that men believe.” Dwight V. Swain
As I mentioned last week no
sensory observation is considered complete until the fictional character’s
emotional response is included. When eating new foods, or hearing new sounds,
the concrete details help the reader recognize the character as more real as he
reacts to the senses. Just as word choices need to be specific, so do the
sensory details need to be definitive, externally
as images and internally as personal
reactions.
What are the telltale
signs that we’ve moved from one neighborhood to another? What makes the
restaurant on one street so much better than the next? We also want to make these
sensory observations unique and not generic.
Picture book techniques impact all our senses
through the story by the visual images and the sound of the language. They are
crucial to their readers. By applying their principles to our manuscripts, when
needed, can impact our novels too.
One method is to pause a scene or a
description and examine it as if a frame in a movie or a photograph. For a
moment we remove the sounds or taste or touch or whatever the key focus is and
look at how else the passage influences our sensory radar.
It would take too long to do this for every scene but whenever we
feel that something is missing, or not quite what we intended, stepping back helps
clear our external perception.
Action Steps:
Choose
a movie that is age appropriate to your intended readers.
Movie Prompt
1. Take one particular scene from the movie and put it on pause.
Whether you like to write poetry or not pick out words and phrases from the
visual sight that you would incorporate in a poem, with the idea that a reader
may, or may not, see this ‘painting’ for themselves.
2. Write a poem based on your
selections just for the fun of it.
3. Do the same exercise for a visual
scene in your own novel.
Share: Did you notice anything that surprised you?
Read deep, marcy
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