Welcome to My Worlds: A Bipolar Christian Tells All

By Laurie Alice Eakes 

The sense of touch is one of the richest layers you can add to a story to enhance the reader experience of being there with the characters, of being the characters. One can use the sense of touch, of feeling the world around one, to indicate mood, attraction, even fear. It’s an excellent way to show rather than tell. 

The heat of the sun felt like a physical weight bearing down upon him. 

In fourteen words, this line conveys the sensation of temperature. We know the weather and possibly the climate, at least that it’s someplace or time of year with a hot sun. Even more, the reaction to that sensation of heat translates into mood. This guy is unhappy. He’s oppressed by the sun’s warmth, whereas someone else could be invigorated or relaxed by it. 

He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, leaving her mouth tingling with anticipation. 

Does this lady like this gentleman? Does she want another touch, perhaps a kiss? The line certainly tells us so. That brush of the thumb could have left a reaction of revulsion. She might have jerked away, scrubbed her lips in response. The word ‘brush’ conveys gentleness. He cares about her enough to want to be gentle, to hint at further contact. Yet, despite portraying attraction, the scene maintains purity of contact. 

His hard fingers clamped across her mouth with enough pressure to cut off her breath. 

In contrast, this guy’s fingers are hard, not gentle, clamping, not brushing. We have pressure blocking breathing. Lots of sensation here. We begin to feel the panic of not being able to breathe, fear of suffocation. Knowing nothing else, these few words of touch indicate this is not a nice man, and, for the moment, the woman is helpless. 

Also in touch, we fix the reader in the time and place. A character feeling the texture of rough wool against her skin shows the reader a far different image than a character enjoying the light smoothness of silk. 

A character running barefoot across a lawn is going to feel cool grass or rough stubble, or the rocks protruding from the ground, etc. A doorhandle is usually metal and perhaps slippery beneath a sweating palm, as a character is about to open the door and make an important speech, or walk out of a house for the last time. 

With judicious sprinkling, touch is a layer that enriches your writing, conveying mood, and drawing the reader deeper into your story.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 16:30 and is filed under Laurie Eakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.