#192 — DEAD OR ALIVE | WRITING TIPS

How To Capture Those Special Moments In Your Writing

Sharing special moments helps your reader to connect to your story

Many moments fill a human life and those are the moments we want to capture in our stories. Those special moments have a positive influence on our writing, even when we write about negative things.

Writing about moments grabbed from life makes our writing more authentic.

There are ways to remember those special moments; ways to imprint them in your mind, and to later capture them in your writing.

Five senses to remember moments

The five senses are: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching.

Using these five senses is how you imprint your surroundings in your mind. When you are in that special moment, and you want to remember all about it, ask yourself:

* What do I see? * What do I hear? * What do I taste? * What do I smell? * What/How do I feel?

These questions and their answers are the basis for capturing a moment in your writing. If you can, make some notes with your answers to those five questions. Just a few words will make it easier for you to capture the moment in your writing.

Close your eyes and breathe

The secret to experiencing a magic moment is to breathe. Stop concentrating on every smell and every sound and just breathe the moment.

Close your eyes and breathe.

Each breath of air will heighten your senses and give you a better feeling of the surroundings you want to recreate in your writing.

The best places to write about are those where you have really been, where you have breathed and experienced your surroundings.

Wherever you are, never forget to close your eyes and breathe!

Experience.

Feel.

This will help your writing!

See the details

After breathing, open your eyes and study everything around you.

Notice the paper coasters under one leg of a table on a terrace. Observe the woman sitting alone, apart from everyone else, hiding her face behind an enormous hat and sunglasses. See the server with the sad eyes, smiling and chatting to the customers as if they have no care in the world.

See every little detail!

Those details are important, but when you write, be careful which details you use. The ones you use should help to give a better image of the world or character you are creating in your writing. They have to help your reader to recreate that world in their minds, to feel the environment you are creating.

Remove confusing details. Save them for another story, where they fit better. The details you use must strengthen your story, not weaken it.

Create your moments

You’ve used your senses, you’ve breathed the moment and you’ve seen the details.

Next up is creating your moment in writing.

You can create moments that bring the reader some rest and calm, or you can create moments that lead to the first intense contact between your main characters.

Create a setting for your readers, where you show them the world in your story, make them feel the emotions between your characters.

You build a scene, starting from zero and slowly picking up speed to lead to the crescendo. You can also choose to pick up speed, slow down again and then quickening the pace once more.

Aim every word you use at leading your reader to the climax of your story, and a satisfying ending.

Sounds, smells and feelings mean nothing if you don’t capture them in such a way that they engage your reader.

What is your message?

A moment is only part of a bigger story, part of the message you want to convey to your reader.

Maybe you’re telling the reader about driving into work and seeing the city from the bridge every morning. Or you write about walking the dog and hearing something in the woods. No matter what you are writing about, each moment you describe should hint at the bigger story.

There should be some coherency between the moments you share. Don’t include any details in your story which doesn’t support the bigger message.

Capturing a moment successfully is essential to connect your reader to your story. Your reader must feel something when he reads your moments; your hints. The moments you share — the details — must support the message you want to convey to your reader. It must give them something recognizable, something to hold on to. It must make them want to read on to learn the full story.

Now get writing and capture those moments!

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