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Strong sensory imagery helps your readers actually feel what you’re presenting on the page. Sensory imagery describes how things are experienced in the body—physical perceptions of touch, taste, smell, and hearing (visual imagery is usually considered its own category). Sensory imagery also includes impressions of a proprioceptive and an interoceptive nature (how the body experiences itself in space and how the body feels inside, respectively).
Functional MRI’s taken of the brains of people reading reveal that strong sensory imagery actually sets off chains of synaptic activity identical to those that would be set off were we to physically experience the thing described by the text in real life. But weak writing, with ineffectual imagery, does not elicit the same response.
So, how does one create this kind of magical imagery? My advice is to start with precision, word choice, and speed.
This scene from Kafka’s Metamorphosis offers a great example of these three qualities in action. Here, Gregor Samsa, transformed into an enormous cockroach and confined to his room, tries to keep himself amused by climbing “crisscross” over the walls and hanging suspended from the ceiling:
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“…it was much better than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly; and in the almost blissful absorption induced by this suspension it could happen to his own surprise that he let go and fell plump on the floor.”
[translated by Willa & Edwin Muir]
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image credit: web find, attribution unknown |
Kafka is so precise about what the experience of living in a cockroach's body is like that he's even able to tell us it’s easier for a cockroach to breathe when it’s upside down. Implicit in this uncanny imagining is the idea that a cockroach’s center of gravity is completely different than a human being’s. Our vertically oriented, head-heavy bodies make it uncomfortable to hang upside down for any length of time, but gravity would tug at the flat, lozenge-like shape of a beetle's body far more evenly. And this evenness, Kafka suggests, would provide a wonderful sense of lightness. As for word choice, when Gregor drops from the ceiling, he falls “plump on the floor.” It’s this unexpected word “plump” that makes the whole scene spring to life. You can almost hear the delicate plop sound. Finally, look at how much Kafka packs into these forty-six words. Long-winded
precision can be exhausting, but precision with velocity—like this—is nearly always exhilarating.
Writing Prompt:
Study an animal, a tree, a plant, or an insect. As you watch this living being, consider its experience as a body in the world. Don't worry about how you'll describe what you're seeing, simply pour yourself into the act of observing. Later, write about the experience. As you work, keep precision, word choice, and speed in mind. Notice how the relationship between these three things is symbiotic: the more precise you are about finding just the right way to describe something, the more likely an unexpected word or two will come to mind; and the more perfectly your words fit what you're describing, the briefer your description can be. Most effective imagery is a matter of suggestion: one or two convincing details, and the reader's mind will fill in the rest. If you can't seem to generate especially apt, evocative words on your own, get out the thesaurus—but don’t go overboard. Kafka uses only that one contextually unexpected word “plump,” yet it’s enough. It's just right.
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Kim Adrian
kimadrian.com
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