Empower your writing by dumping 'feel'

There are certain words in the English language that allow writers to be lazy and end up as traps for some of us. One of my biggest offenders seems to be the word 'felt.' It's a tricky word in that it seems like it's a show type of word when you think of the sentence "Anna felt the heat of the fire." And it is better than "The fire was hot." But there is an even better way to write this.


If you say "Anna felt the heat of the fire." we get the image, but it feels removed. Felt seems to serve as a filter that bars us from the character and ironically (Yes, I think this is actually an appropriate use of the word irony), does not allow us to get a good grasp of what the character actually felt. The main reason for this is that it put's Anna as the subject of the sentence even though she does not really do anything aside from passively observe. Plus, by removing that word, it forces you as a writers to become more creative in your descriptions, and that's a mega win.


So going back to our example sentence, I removed 'felt' and had to figure out what the fire was actually doing. So since we'll say the character is standing, the heat is going to originate from the ground (assuming this is not some massive conflagration) and heats up her lower back first, making its way to her upper back. So the feeling is moving upwards, and motion is a good thing because it's active.


The next question is what do I do with the motion? I suppose I could go and use the typical phrase 'ran' as in "The heat of the fire ran up Anna's back" That's good because now instead of Anna being the subject, 'The heat of the fire' is, and it is actively doing something instead of our passive Anna.


Still, I feel (pun intended) there has to be a better word than 'ran.' Since I want to keep this simple, I'm just going to throw a yummier verb in there instead of going all metaphors and such and say "The heat of the fire crept up Anna's back." Not perfect, but for this little blog post, I think you get the idea.


So for a recap:


"The fire was hot." = Bad.
"Anna felt the heat of the fire." = Meh at best.
"The heat of the fire ran up Anna's back." = Alright.
"The heat of the fire crept up Anna's back." = Good.

"The waves of heat radiating from the fire ducked under Anna's shirt and slowly crept up her back like a pack of ninjas closing in on their target." = Well I just went and ran with this...not perfect but you get the point.


'Felt sentences' may be better than 'was' sentences, but come on, you can do better.




Please let me know if you have any better suggestions for the sentence...and can you beat my super awesome ninjas metaphor???

Sensory Images and what NOT to do

When you start out writing, many people will tell you to make sure you put in lots of sensory details, as they liven up your writing. And yes, that is true. If you can smell, feel, taste, hear, and see the story, it will be a lot more vivid than if you are just looking at it like a movie.


But the trap I've seen a lot of writers (myself included) fall into is they end up using the character as a sensory vessel. Now while this would be technically correct to write:


Zachary saw the blooming flowers and bent down, smelling their sweet fragrance.


It comes across as weak. Zachary is technically the subject of this sentence. He dominates. And unless the act of Zachary bending over to smell the flower is very significant, we don't care about it. What you would want to do is, instead, just go out and tell us about the blooming flowers and what they smell like. The reader doesn't need the main character to be a sensory vessel. Here is a quick revision:


The blooming flowers released their sweet fragrance into the meadow.


There were two things I did there. First, I was able to add the little detail about the meadow (in 2 less words mind you) Second, I made the flowers the subject of the sentence. Now we as a reader are focused on the flowers and the image is a lot more powerful.


But you have to be careful when you do this with any POV that isn't 3rd person omniscient (and I don't recommend you use that) because while readers don't want to see Zachary bend down and smell the flowers, the character has to be smelling the flowers. If he is trapped in a glass box where the smell can not enter, then the sentence I wrote would technically have a POV problem. Instead you could do this though:


The blooming flowers swayed in the meadow, and Zachary could only imagine their sweet fragrance wafting through the air.


Granted there are quite a few more words in this, but come on, my MC is locked in a glass box.


This POV problem though also goes for the other senses including sight. If you character can't see it, you can't describe it. But you don't need to (or should) explicitly tell us what your character sees. Again, some examples:


Zachary turned around and saw the bear chasing him.


Zachary turned around. The bear was chasing him. 


It's subtle, but in an industry as competitive as creative writing, every little trick you have to make your writing just a bit more powerful goes a long way.


For you: Have you noticed this in your own writing? Do you have any tricks for showing sensory detail without explicitly having the character experience it?