You’ve spent hours on your writing project. Spellcheck hasn’t underlined any errors, and you’ve said what you set out to say. Before your teacher even looks at it s/he says to rewrite. What? Why did you put all that time in you wonder? But hear me out. Your teacher has a point. First drafts are rarely ready for prime time. Revising involves more than punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors. You also want to look at sensory details, sentence flow and variability. Sensory Detail You may think you’ve already included all the necessary sensory details. My rule of thumb is to incorporate at least three senses in every scene. In our…
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Sensory Detail in Revision
You’ve spent hours on your paper. You’ve checked spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You rearranged sentences to maximize readability and harness sentence flow. The next item on your list is to insert sensory detail to liven up your text. Wordscape The five senses are: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Landscape painters capture the colors, textures, and essence of a particular place. Gourmands combine color, texture, taste, and smell into a fine dining experience. In the same way, great writers use all five senses to create a wordscape. Okay, I just made that word up. My point is, in order to put your reader in the character’s shoes you must use…
