Use the Sense of Sight in Your Writing

What big eyes you have! All the better to see!

In the past several weeks, I've featured individual sensory details that help bring our writing to life. The final one today is the sense of sight. As stated before, adding sensory details brings your writing to life, it allows the reader to be part of the scene. He/she can relate to all those senses.

I think that using sight in your writing can be a bit confusing. You don't want to say I see a  building ahead. It's not necessary to use the verb forms--see, saw, have seen--at all. To use sight, you'll need to add colors, shapes, appearances, and sizes. You can use adjectives like tiny, hazy, shadowy, drab, murky, huge and more. The minute the reader processes those words, an image comes to mind. 

Look at that sentence above again. I see a building ahead. Pretty generic sentence, isn't it? You could make it more interesting and relatable by changing it to something like this:  The huge building ahead is dazzling as the sun directs its rays toward it. Your mind sees a much better picture than in the first sentence where all you are told is that there's a building ahead. In the second sentence, you see the size and also the way the building shines from the sun's rays. 

How about this sentence? Mary walked to the shoreline. We know Mary is at the beach and that she has walked to the edge of the water. We can help the reader see her better if we say something like this: Mary bent over and picked up a smooth rock, then continued to the shoreline swinging the shoes she held in her left hand. Here, you have a much better picture, don't you?

When you have written a first draft and are ready to edit, look for places where you can add sensory details. Consider using all five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) to bring your writing to life, to aid your reader in getting the full picture.  

I ran across an excellent article about using all five senses. It would be worth your time to read it. I thought it interesting that motion can be considered in this group, as well. 

NOTE:  If you enjoy a post at this blog, please consider sharing it with other writers. Since Facebook still will not allow me to post a link to my blog, I have fewer places to be able to share. Someone reported my blog as being abusive. Why is the big mystery, but an even greater one is why Facebook will not listen to my pleas to allow me to use my blog link? I can do anything else on Facebook except that. Some of my posts have been under review for more than 3 months now which tells me they are being ignored. Needless to say, it's been a frustrating situation.