Post #196 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompts and Life Prompts – Matilda Butler
Using a Sense of Touch in Your Writing
If you frequent this site, then youre aware of how often I mention the importance of using the five senses in writing. The five elements in writing — Character, Emotion, Dialogue, Sensory Detail, Time/Place — are all vital to telling a story that brings readers into your scenes to engage them page after page.
Some of these elements require a great deal of work from the writer. To make characters more than two dimensional dolls, to show rather than tell emotional states, to write dialogue that reveals characters and moves the story forward while being true to the voice of the speakers, and to dig into the relationship of time and place to your story — involves going deep, doing research, stepping back to understand the entire situation, and more. All of this is worth the effort. But if you want to quickly change the impact of your writing, include sensory detail in the next scene you write.
SPOILER ALERT: This Example of the Importance of Touch May Make You Feel Sad
Why the focus on touch today? I recently read a note from Nancy Gibbs, Editor of Time. She was writing about the dangerous assignment of Aryn Baker, Time’s Bureau Chief who has had numerous hazardous assignments but none more so than her current one — reporting on Ebola in Liberia. I’m guessing that many of us are following the news about this deadly disease and feel empathy for the many families who have already suffered the lose of one or more family members to Ebola. But let me quote from Aryn Baker:
I never thought before how much touching is a part of how we communicate. …I saw a little girl the same age as my daughter fall down in the street the other day, and it went against every instinct I have as a mother not to rush in and pick her up. One of the nurses at the temporary orphanage I visited told me that sometimes she puts on a protective suit just so she could hug a crying child in need of comfort.
This story made me sad although I appreciated the heroism in the work that the Liberian nurses are doing with patients and those left behind by the disease. But it is when we cannot use one of our senses that we become keenly aware of it. The ability to touch is part of us and our humanity.
Memoir Writing Prompt
In the theme of this blog, I’d like you to:
Keep a “touch” journal for 10 minutes. Each time the sense of touch is involved, write down:
1. The time (1:30, 1:38)
2. What touched what (“I touched my cat.” “I patted my best friend on the back to comfort her.” “My feet touched the cold tile floor as I walked to the kitchen sink.”
3. Write down about how many times touch was involved in those 10 minutes that you didn’t log. For example, did you hand grasp a pencil when you wrote an item on your list? Did you fingers touch the plastic keys of your computer?
Yes, it is difficult to capture all the ways that touch is involved in our everyday lives. It’s not surprising because skin, our touch organ, is the largest of all of our sensory organs.
4. Write a paragraph that includes the sense of touch in a way that helps you communicate with your reader. This could be for a scene or vignette that you are currently working on. Is the touch warm or create a sense of warmth? Is there coldness in the touch, such as a person drawing back from a touch? Think about how the use of touch can say more about the scene than when you write it without touch.
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