Sensory Language, Imagery, and Style (Blogger 8)

Every story has its own unmistakable personality--one that you respond to positively or negatively. The elements that make up a story's personality are sensory language, imagery, and style.

Imagery and Sensory Language: Words That Create Pictures
Writers use sensory language to create pictures in the reader's mind. Imagery is that language. An image is a word or phrase written so precisely that the reader can taste it or see it or smell it or feel it or hear it. Writers want readers to say, "Ooh! I can just see that!"

Writers use sensory language to describe things that we've experienced or imagined. Sensory language and imagery are all part of a writer's style. The words the writer uses shows how he sees and interprets his won world. Imagery can fill us with joy or sadness. Imagery can move us to weep or smile or laugh out loud.

Read the following excerpt from The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin:

Constantly and futilely, the earth's atmosphere seeks to achieve equilibrium. Weather is the turbulent means to this perfect, hopeless end. Contrasting temperatures try to balance out to one uniform temperature, pressure differences strive for resolution, winds blow in a vain attempt to finally calm down global tensions. All of this is enormously complicated by the ceaseless rotation of the planet. Weather is the steam the atmosphere lets off as it heaves itself again and again into a more comfortable position. Weather keeps happening because the equilibrium of the atmosphere keeps getting messed up.

Here is another beautiful example from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle: 

They were standing in a sunlit field, and the air about them was moving with the delicious fragrance that comes only on the rarest of spring days when sun's touch is gentle...

Read this example of sensory language from My Life in Dog Years by Gary Paulsen

...I worked in construction, mostly hitting my fingers with a hammer and making serious attempts at cutting something off my body with power saws while I tried to build houses... 

Read the excerpt from The All-American Slurp by Lensey Namioka. Try to picture the scene in your head.

The first time our family was invited out to dinner in America, we disgraced ourselves while eating celery. We had emigrated to this country from China, and during our early days here we had a hard time with American table manners.

In China we never ate celery raw, or any other kind of vegetable raw. We always had to disinfect the vegetables in boiling water first. When we were presented with our first relish tray, the raw celery caught us unprepared.

We had been invited to dinner by our neighbors, the Gleasons. After arriving at the house, we shook hands with our hosts and packed ourselves into a sofa. As our family of four sat stiffly in a row, my younger brother and I stole glances at parents for a clue as to what to do next.

Mrs. Gleason offered the relish tray to mother. The tray looked pretty, with its tiny red radishes, curly sticks of carrots, and long, slender stalks of pale green celery. "Do try some of the celery, Mrs. Lin," she said. "It's from a local farmer, and it's sweet."

Mother picked up one of the green stalks, and Father followed suit. Then I picked up a stalk, and my brother did too. So there we sat, each with a stalk of celery in our right hand.

Can you see this image in your mind? Whay are these images memorable and what do they communicate to the reader?

Note-Taking:
What is imagery?
What is sensory language?

Writing Workshop:
Create and write a passage of your own that uses sensory language to create imagery. This needs to be just a snippet of a scene--like a moment caught in a photograph. Perhaps your first plunge into the swimming pool on a hot summer day, or your first taste of hot pizza, or your first sip of hot cocoa on a snow day. Be creative.