On Sunday I attended a writing workshop entitled Texture and Emotion in Your Writing.
It was an informative and fun afternoon and we all learned a lot about word usage and creating more evocative sentences.
I would like to share my responses to a couple of exercises and then you can have a go too.
Food: 10 minute exercise. Describe the meal. Taste/Smell/Colour/Feel
Angus and Bella have gone to an upscale restaurant for a special celebration. The menu consists of shrimp on skewers with a dipping sauce, a salad of baby spinach and fruit with a lemon dressing, steak, roasted potatoes and a green vegetable.
The sizzling of hot fat spitting from the skillet of skewered shrimp heralded the arrival of their meal. There was a salty aroma as the shrimp cooked. A see-through sauce placed in the middle of the table, added a spicy smell – it’s flakes of chili visible as the liquid clung to each dipped shrimp. Vibrant spinach leave tossed with fruit glistened in white bowls and a citrus aroma from the dressing added to their watering mouths.
Thick steaks sat on oval plates, juices flowing with a meaty char-grilled lines. Roasted potatoes broke open from browned skin into fluffy white interiors. Sliced zucchini ribboned along the side with steaming broccoli and petit pois.
Odours/Smell: 5 minute exercise. Write a better, more evocative, sentence to replace the following.
Bob came in smelling of the barn.
Dusty and hot, Bob walked into the kitchen smelling earthy and of dried grass.
Verbs and Adjectives: 10 minute exercise. Make a more textured sentence so we know something more of his mood or purpose.
Ambrose stood in the dark doorway.
With his hat lowered on his head to hide his face, Ambrose stood in the shadows of the doorway, watching intently for the bedroom light to switch off. The tip of his cigarette glowed as he inhaled, the only evidence of his presence. The gun weighed heavily in his jacket pocket. When the light went out his heart pulsed harder and adrenaline flowed through his body.
Let’s see who can come up with other evocative sentences. Please share them in the comments.
Get that writing Muse working!
This quote explains it much better: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensations in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
E.L. Doctorow
Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers 