[[Notes]] - Topics: [[Communication]], [[Resonance]] - People: [[Nola Hopkinson]] - Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSoRzTtwgP4 --- ## Summary - [[Engage readers to experience stories both viscerally and conceptually]]. - [[Shatter the barriers between mechanical reading and vividly meaningful understanding]]. - Encourage the reader to meet you half-way in the **imaginative play** of **creating a dynamic world of the senses**. - [[Give your readers a reason to care]]. - [[Powerful storytelling is the irresistible invitation to indulge in the experiences of another]]. - [[Be strategic with detail. Enough to engage and not distract or overwhelm.]] ## Notes - We read fiction to think, to feel, and to forget. To immerse ourselves in someone else's world as a way to vacation from our own - if only for a little while. - "[[The point of fiction is to cast a spell. A momentary illusion that you are living in the world of the story.]]" - "[[Fiction engages the senses]]. Helps us create vivid mental simulacra of the experiences the characters are having." - [[Powerful storytelling is the irresistible invitation to indulge in the experiences of another]]. - (Written text). "If you describe the story in mater of fact **non-tactile language**, your reader may not get much beyond interpreting the squiggles". - [[Give your readers a reason to care]]. - [[Give your readers a reason to engage with your ideas rather than to interpret words on a page]]. - A ready may know what the character feels like, but they won't feel what the character really feels. - [[Shatter the barriers between mechanical reading and vividly meaningful understanding]]. - "[[Fiction plays with our senses]]. It also plays with our abilities to abstract and make complex associations." - "The world was **ghost-quiet**, except for the **crack** of sails and the **burbling** of water against null". - Tobias S. Buckell, Hurricane Fever. - The author doesn't use the word "sound". Instead, the words he chose were designed to **invoke a particularly quality of sound**. - "Ghost-quiet" -> Implied vs. overt comparison through metaphor. - [[Engage readers to experience stories both viscerally and conceptually]]. - Encourage the reader to meet you half-way in the **imaginative play** of **creating a dynamic world of the senses**. - [[Be strategic with detail. Enough to engage and not distract or overwhelm.]] - [[Let your readers reach the conclusion]]. To cultivate their own interpretation through carefully crafted and subtle guidance. ## Original ![[How to write descriptively-1.jpg]] ![[How to write descriptively-2.jpg]]