Helping Authors Bring a Setting Alive
Authors often visualize their stories as if they were movies unreeling in front of them. This is unfortunate because it often means they focus heavily on the visual when the world of narrative offers so much more!
Namely, the other four senses—sound, smell, taste, and touch.
Using the FIVE Senses: Setting of a Novel
Sight alone does not make a reader feel immersed in a story. When authors do this, the setting often feels as if it were merely a backdrop to the unfolding story events and not an actual place where the characters interact.
My basic rule of thumb, and a place to start, is that every page of the manuscript should have a sense other than sight on it. Bells should jingle, and trash cans reek. The skin should prickle, and mouths should pucker.
Often, the challenge is that authors lack the vocabulary or language of the senses, so it can be helpful to provide resources for them. WritersWrite.co.za has some great resources on describing all five senses. Here’s one.
We can also encourage the author to show the characters reacting to their senses: “The stench of putrefying flesh turned my stomach” versus “It smelled disgusting.” This is a matter of showing the character in the setting, not just posing in front of it.
Tips for Editors & Writers
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What Kind of Work Can Editors Do?
If you’re interested in becoming an editor, you may wonder what kind of work editors can do other than editing the words on a page. Or you may worry that being an editor would constrain you to only a certain kind of work: developing book manuscripts or copyediting journal articles. But once you have grown
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Editing Romance: Getting the Plot(s) Right
In a romance, the overt plot (what the story is basically about: finding the gold, winning the election, saving the family farm) and the romance plot (the two main characters falling in love) must work together to send the story on a specific trajectory. The overt plot and the romance plot must intersect in ways
