You may or may not have realized the extent of it, but your whole life you’ve been cataloging impressions, modes of speech, ideas, bits of information, and historical moments. You may not at this moment be able to recall all or even any of them. But when you sit down to write a scene or a poem, you call forth the way that woman in the grocery store spoke to her four-year-old whining for a chocolate bar, how the old man in the hallway of the nursing home looked at you when you went to visit your grandmother, the black velvet of an iridescent damselfly’s wings, what the wall looked like when you took the pictures down before painting, the way the leaves turn belly up and silvery just before a storm, the smell of melting snow… These details are what make writing come alive. When you want to let the reader know it’s raining, as Hemingway advised, you don’t simply say, “It was raining.” As you write, you close your eyes or let them stray into the unfocussed distance, where you summon how it feels to be caught in the rain. If in your scene you want to underscore the desperation a character feels or the liberation they’ve just experienced, that will influence how you describe the rain. For instance, if they’ve just lost their job or found their partner with another lover, the rain will be steely, hostile, needly, relentless. Their clothing will stick like plastic to their skin. Rain will mix with snot. If, on the other hand, they’ve just met “the one,” rain will be an elixir, feel silky, alive, like the inside of a mouth. Puddles may even form little hearts… you get the idea.
What I find intriguing about the writing process is how impressions surface and long-forgotten memories bubble up. If you close your eyes to conjure how the body responds in a particularly stressful situation, boom—there it is in all its somatic glory. In other words, we have everything we need to write compelling scenes. We’ve stored each detail, encounter, and response for a moment just like this—when a character realizes they’re lost in a forest or in a marketplace we know that feeling. We’ve logged our reactions.
Sometimes, it comes easily, effortlessly—we simply write it, while at other times, we need to sit back and put our bodies and minds into the scene to mine it for its gold. So, even if your scene is a dystopian nightmare or a romantic fantasy, you’ve got the goods to write that scene with authority. Because you know despair. You know longing. And you know how angry people, sad people, and outcasts feel inside. Whether you’ve been sheltered and relatively safe your whole life or been one to travel foreign lands, skydive, or take a dozen lovers, the emotions are universal—no matter how vast or minimal. You don’t have to scratch very hard to find the entire spectrum of the human (and dare I say animal/alien/robot?) experience. But you do need to be brave.
Putting it all together into a piece that grabs and holds is another story. But for now, take heart. You do have what it takes to write an engaging story that rings true. As always, show it in all its sensory detail. Bring the reader in close. Let them smell the sweat, taste the tears, hear the trembling. You may worry that you haven’t paid enough attention, but the truth is, every emotion and response you’ve experienced can be recalled and applied to a scene or a poem.
You have everything you need. Trust it.