Is it just me or does every writer thinks in terms of writing? Yesterday my husband and I went to a house warming party for a friend of ours who lost his home to fire back in February. Walking into the new house, you could the echos of emptiness. The house had no soul, no pictures on the walls, no dust bunnies under the bed. It was just a bland, unlived-in house, not yet a home. Rather like a blank screen waiting for the words of a new story.
But stories themselves can be bland like the house. The house smelled new, you could catch a faint wisp of paint, the scent of new curtains and furniture, but there was no smell of life in the house. You know, the scent of the guy's aftershave or a woman's perfume, the smell of chicken frying in the kitchen, or a whiff of air freshener, everyday smells that linger in the plasterboard walls of a house.
Our stories need to be filled with scents and sounds, descriptions of people, how they look and act. We need to let our readers run their fingers over the coarse fabric of the couch or the stranger's five o'clock shadow. They need to hear the crackle of wood burning in the fireplace or the blast of a shotgun filling the night air, silencing the crickets. If we use all the senses, the readers will be able to step into the story with our characters because it will be familiar, rather like a lived-in house.
No matter your genre, you have to build a story home that readers will enjoy visiting. Whether your story is as familiar as an old pair of sneakers or as strange as elves living in a mushroom house, be sure to throw out the welcome mat. Make it feel lived-in.
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