Storytelling: Pulling Out the Visual

Last week we discussed the difference between telling a story and storytelling. How storytelling is about feeling something and making sure your visuals pop out at your reader. This week, we will discuss how to do that.

Most things you read, you’ll find you have images in your head and that is good writing when you are able to do that, but when you can also feel those images in your head, that is storytelling. In the days before TV, people relied solely on their imagination while listening to stories on the radio. Before picture books, children had to rely on their imagination when a story was read to them. 

So, how do you make visual pop? By taking out the ‘fluff’ in your story.  The following is the opening of my new novel.

Darkness loomed over the London skies. Thunder rolled. Lightning crackled. Rain seeped through her black veil mixing with her tears.  She said goodbye to her husband of four years. 

I took out the ‘fluff’. There are no “ands”, “ifs” or “buts”. There are no connecting sentences although there could be. I wanted each sentence to be its own. I want my readers to first visualize dark skies, then hearing the storm before realizing they are in a cemetery. 

Of course, my novel is a story, so all my sentences will not be like this, but you get the idea.

Ask yourself, what do you want to convey? What emotion do you want your readers to feel?  What do you want them to visualize? Say you are writing a memoir about your time in the Army over in Afghanistan and you saw combat. There was one night that you thought you were going to die and it terrified you. You want to convey that terror to your readers, you will need to write short descriptive sentences about what YOU saw that night without using “I” until you absolutely have to. Something like:

Night fell. The sky lit up with a red-gold that was blinding. The boom was deafening. Too close. Too close. Debris scattered everywhere. Bloody comrade lay motionless twenty feet away.

Use as many descriptions of that night as you can. It will grab your reader's attention and if you wrote it well enough, their emotions. Your goal in storytelling is for your reader to have felt something when they are done reading.

Next week: Writing Emotions

Until next time...