How can we help readers ‘see’ our stories?

(Updated February 19 with link for Houston Writers Guild short story contest)

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Anybody else still in a quandary about the show vs. tell issue of story writing? Right, me too. So, when I received an email from fellow writer Leah Hinton about a way of catching readers’ attention, I asked to reproduce it for this blog. Leah modestly gives another friend credit for this discovery but – I’ll let her tell it in her own words.

She writes: I was recently talking with my friend Thomas who teaches advanced placement psychology at a local Dallas-Fort Worth area high school. He does a neat experiment with the student. Each is given a sheet of paper with one of two sets of instructions (although all students believe they have the same instructions).

Image by Pexels for Pixabay

Half are told to “listen to each sentence spoken aloud. On a scale of one to five, with one being hardest and five being easiest, how easy is each sentence to say?”

The other half are told to “listen to each sentence spoken aloud. On a scale of one to five, how easy is it to visualize (italics mine) what is happening in each sentence?”

Students may mark the scale provided on their sheets of paper for each sentence but that is the only note they may make during the exercise.

The sentences are then read aloud. They include sentences such as:

·       The silent soldier sat stoically smoking a cigarette.

·       The mischievous miscreant pounded the pavement of Paris.

·       The devious daughter delighted in dangling dinner in front of the dog.

The list is about 20 sentences long. Each is spoken clearly, quickly, and never repeated. Each contains alliteration (same letter sound at the beginning of words adjacent of closely connected) and is heavy on adjectives (descriptive words).

Once the students have marked their scores, the teacher divides them – half on one side of the room who were instructed to listen for ease of speaking, the other half for those instructed to listen for ease of visualization. The students still do not know that each half had different instructions. Then the teacher asks:

·       “Who pounded the pavement of Paris?”

·       “Who smoked the cigarette?”

·       “Who dangled dinner in front of the dog?”

The groups of students raise their hands to answer, and the first with a correct answer scores a point for their side.

Every year Thomas has taught AP psychology and this class, the side of the room that visualizes the statements (as opposed to judging the difficult of saying the sentences) has scored more points. The side that visualizes can usually recall and get correct 80-90 percent of the follow-up questions after hearing the sentence only once, when said quickly and clearly.

The side of the room judging the difficulty in saying the sentences usually has very little recall of the actual sentence content.

I thought, Leah continues, this was a really cool experiment and it got me thinking. Do we write in such a way that compels our readers to visualize our story? For some readers, this is their natural way of processing a story. For others though, they need a little extra to deeply become immersed in the story. Are we providing an avenue for all readers, regardless of processing style to take in our work? This isn’t solely a concern for fiction writers. Visualization makes ideas and concepts “stick” so foundationally, it could be effective in nonfiction as well.

So, how do we do this? Two ways to make our writing more visual are by establishing images and concrete details.

Think about this. (I’d say close your eyes but then you wouldn’t be able to read any further!):

A man walks into a bar. He sits. He orders a drink from a server.

There’s very little detail. (Now you probably understand the point of Thomas’s use of alliteration and adjectives!) Without little to go on, each of us has probably pictured a different bar. A club, a pub, the bar from the TV show Cheers, or a neighborhood sports bar with a television on every square inch of wall space.

Even the man will have been different for each reader. Some will have pictured an older gentleman, some a young businessman. Some might have pictured a dock worker or a late night stop for a first responder after a hard shift.

Where does the man sit? In a booth, at the bar, on a wooden chair with a spindle back?

Is this a martini, shaken not stirred, kind of man? Or does he want a club soda or a beer or a bourbon served neat or an unsweetened iced tea or a tall glass of water?

Without images and concrete details, the reader can’t know what the author intended.

I challenge you to dig up an older piece of work, maybe something you weren’t pleased with, and consider adding establishing images and concrete details of the character, time, and setting to enhance your readers’ visualization process. But this isn’t 18^th-century Britain, so don’t worry, you won’t need to spend three pages describing wallpaper.

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Leah Hinton is a well-published author of short stories, poetry and plays. She also teaches writing for students ages 10 and older, with adult and teen mentoring programs. Contact her through her site .

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Hey, it’s me again! Now that we’ve had fun with that visualization exercise, how about trying it further, with a few more of the story contests from my inbox?

Now – April 1: the Houston Writers Guild is accepting submissions for its “Women’s Voices” contest. Stories can be either fiction or narrative nonfiction, written from a female or female-identifying point of view and be a source of inspiration and empowerment for women. All authors, regardless of gender, are welcome. Fee: $25 for members, $85 for nonmembers. Cash prizes for top three entries and all receive feedback from contest judges. See the site for details.

Now – April 30: Granbury Writers’ Bloc’s quarterly contest for 1,500-word stories. Fee: $20. Cash prizes for top three stories and every entry gets feedback from professional writers and editors. Fee: $20 first entry, $15 each subsequent entry in same quarter. Repeats July 31, October 31, and January 31.

Now – April 30: The Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Manuscript Contest. Winners receive complimentary registration to the WLT’s 2021 Agents & Editors Conference September 17-19. Contestants need not have a completed manuscript or be Texas residents. Fee: $55 for WLT members, $65 for nonmembers, both with written critiques. For those who prefer not to receive critiques the cost is $25 for members, $35 for nonmembers. See the site for details.

Now – June 15: Best First Sentence Contest from Thrillerfest. Contestants must be registered for Virtual ThrillerFest XVI or be ITW members. See the site for examples of winning sentences.