THE SCREAM OF CRIMSON

Happy Thursday! I hope you enjoy this post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 4: The Nose and Mouth and Hand and Ear of the Beholder (Part 2)

Touch is an intimate sense. A well-written description using touch can bundle the reader in a quilt or slap him across the face. As in all descriptions, name the object accurately and then the action.

Touch is the sense I use least, unless you want to include visceral responses like a lump in the throat. This is a good reminder.

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Sound also requires exact wording. Racket is better than noise. Onomatopoeia can be effective. Words that sound like what they represent (crunch, rustle) can help the reader imagine the sound.

Metaphor can also help the reader.

Metaphor is good to use when the reader may not be familiar with the sound.

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In describing the senses, you can also employ synesthesia. You can use smell to describe a color or color to describe a sound. “It tastes like a mouthful of bees.”

I’m reminded of “color organs” that were once popular. The color on the display changed with the music.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don’t notice much because they’re so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window. They’re a light golden color and so long I don’t see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.

Why are long, beautiful lashes wasted on the guys?

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Downstairs, the living room has been cleared and lit for the photo shoot. Effie’s having a fine time ordering everybody around, keeping us all on schedule. It’s probably a good thing, because there are six gowns and each one requires its own headpiece, shoes, jewelry, hair, makeup, setting, and lighting. Creamy lace and pink roses and ringlets. Ivory satin and gold tattoos and greenery. A sheath of diamonds and jeweled veil and moonlight. Heavy white silk and sleeves that fall from my wrist to the floor, and pearls. The moment one shot has been approved, we move right into preparing for the next. I feel like dough, being kneaded and reshaped again and again.

I would never make it in the fashion world, although I dumped the “frumpy Frances” look years ago.