How to Pack for a Writers’ Retreat

Ruth E. Walker

Every time we organize a Writescape retreat, we email participants a “Useful Information & What to Pack” list. It’s full of practical advice. We remind them to bring comfortable clothes and outdoor wear for spring or fall. After all, Ontario weather can be as unpredictable as a newly discovered character for your novel. We suggest that they can bring munchies and comfort foods but our all-inclusive retreats have breakfast, lunch and dinner

We provide maps and directions to the resort. And we remind writers to pack anything they need for writing. Most importantly, we suggest they remember to bring their work in progress or ideas they want to develop. But if they forget those, Writescape retreats offer creativity sessions and other inspiration opportunities. We even have a companion workbook and an on-site inspiration station for those 3:00 a.m. inspiration needs.

Gwynn, and I sometimes joke that anyone coming on a Writescape retreat just needs a change of underwear, their toothbrush and jammies.

But there are some other, more subtle things that don’t fit into a suitcase but that a writer should remember to bring on retreat. And these important items are needed no matter where you are heading:

An Open Mind

I’m not talking about how you see the world, your politics or your ethics. I’m talking about some internal housekeeping — opening your mind to possibilities. It’s a form of mindfulness. It’s you, paying attention to what your muse is suggesting. You, being open to the five senses — taste, touch, sight, smell, sound. You, bringing those senses into your writing. When your writing includes a range of sensory elements, your readers’ memories are tickled. And that results in writing with physical and emotional resonance.

A Plan

Having a plan may sound contradictory to what I just said about mindfulness but the two are companions on any successful retreat. Gwynn reminds us in every opening session to be S.M.A.R.T. in our retreat objectives: set plans for the weekend that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and that can be Timed. In short, if you don’t have a plan, how will you know what you have managed to accomplish?

Coming on retreat to “write something beautiful” is not as powerful as coming on retreat to “finish three vital scenes for the climax.” By the same token, planning to “write a complete novel” is not realistic unless you are on a 30-day NaNoWriMo retreat. Be reasonable. There’s nothing unrealistic about a plan that includes “relaxing with a daily lakeside walk and writing in my pajamas for two hours every day.”

Permission

Giving yourself permission — permission to experiment and explore, even permission to fail — offers you a delicious freedom from your inner critic. Most of us struggle with that quiet voice whispering in the background, telling us we’re not real writers. At one of our retreats, a participant told me she didn’t think she really was a writer, that her work “wasn’t good enough.”

We talked about what makes “a writer” and how we all are on a continuous journey with the writing process. When she finally was able to read her work in one of the sharing opportunities, she was thrilled by the response. She got past her inner critic, gave herself permission to risk sharing her words and discovered validation when other writers responded to her work. And she’s grown so much since as a writer, seeing her work published in anthologies, winning writing contests and submitting her novel manuscript to agents and publishers. And all that happened because she gave herself “permission” at her first writing retreat.

This Friday, a group of writers will be heading to Elmhirst’s Resort on Rice Lake. They will bring casual clothes, walking shoes, bathing suits for the indoor pool, and rain gear, just in case. They will also bring their works in progress or ideas folder, laptops or notebooks, and their pens or pencils. They will have packed a writer’s suitcase full of optimism, plans, outlines, rough drafts, objectives, hopes and dreams for their retreat.

And Gwynn and I will do everything we can to help them achieve their plans and their dreams. Because, after all, that is exactly what they will expect of us.

Let’s Get Practical:

Packing your suitcase can be a real challenge, especially when you want to lug along your laptop and flash drives and chargers cords. Rolling clothes instead of folding can get you more space. But what about keeping it all organized and quick to pack and unpack?

Here are “13 packing hacks” from MarieClaire. You’ll gain some space for those extras and keep your clothes neat and tidy.

Do you have any packing tips?

What a Touching Story

Ruth E. Walker

I imagine you’ve heard this kind of phrase more than once:

I’m touched by your generosity.

I swear he’s been touched by an angel.

I can’t wait to get my hands on that ring.

As soon as this bloody plane touches down, I’m out of here.

And so on. It is interesting that the sense of “touch” should be used in such emotionally charged moments. I believe it speaks to the power this sense has to connect our hearts and minds.

In any kind of writing, the power that all five senses can bring to your material is enormous. In previous posts, we’ve written about smell, taste, hearing and sight. Then just to keep you thinking, we followed each post on the sense with a companion post focusing on poetry using that sense.

Today, we bring it all home with a focus on the sense of touch and ways in which it can power up the emotions in your writing and immerse your reader in the story.

A trio of touches

We touch through our skin. As our bodies are 99.9% wrapped in the stuff, this massive organ is constantly sending messages to our brains. Once there, our brains choose what signals to notice and what signals to put aside.

There are three types of touches.

A light touch, also known as a “protective touch” includes tickling. A light touch engages our brain immediately so, if an insect starts crawling along your arm, your body responds right away. Depending on your history with bugs, you might swat or brush away the insect immediately or, if you’re less bug-averse, take a closer look to decide if it’s a threat or benign.
A fine touch, also known as a “discriminative touch” is responsible to give your brain specific information about what is touching your body. So, the fine touch alerts the brain that the insect left a slimy trail on your arm as your fingers touch the yucky stuff. Ewww. Get. Slime. Off.
Touch pressure and deep touch pressure is the last of the trio. Shoes that are too tight or that dear old auntie who gives everyone a hug are examples of touch pressure. Covered with a soft feather duvet or a double-layer woolen blanket, it’s your touch pressure sense that tells your brain how heavy each one is. If you’ve ever caught your fingers in a car door, you’ll know what deep touch pressure is like.

Be aware of the degree of touch in your writing. I’ll have more to say on that in a moment.

Touch in writing

It’s easy to use ordinary actions. He touched her face. She picked up the stone. They hugged each other. But it’s useful to consider the variety of ways in which humans give and receive a touch and apply those to your writing.

Touch is more than hands. All of our body is touching something all the time. Even naked, our skin is touching the air.

Do your characters touch only with their hands?
If the hands are the logical body part to use, can you get more specific? Fingertips, nails, palm, heel, knuckles – all can be used to “feel” something/someone
What degree of touching? He felt for a pulse versus he pressed two fingertips against her cold neck, seeking a pulse.
What other body parts can you use for touch? Our bodies bump into things all the time and we don’t notice – are there places where a hip brushing against a doorway or when a thorn lodging inside a thigh could give a bit more of setting for your reader? Lean back in your chair and what parts of you are connecting with it? Now write a paragraph or two with one of your characters sitting in a chair, describing the physical connection with that chair.

Go beyond the physical

And touch is not simply physically connecting with something. There are degrees of types of touch that relate to more than the object itself. Touch as an action either being delivered or received is affected by a person’s emotional state and by their own history (stove=hot!) and sensory input levels. Someone with acute sensitivity to physical touch will back away from a hug or even a handshake. And that same person may avoid wools, corduroy or nylon materials. A person with low levels of sensitivity may not notice the texture of rough wool and, in extreme cases, not have any sensory input for types of pain.

With the emotional in mind, remember that the act of touch includes many qualities, and as infants, we learned about our world through the senses. Touch taught us so much through physical explorations. If you want to bring your reader deep into the story, you’ll be wise to keep those qualities in mind:

Texture – every physical thing has an exterior that has a texture. Sharp, smooth, ridged, pocked, spongy, liquid, etc.
Size – from tiny seeds to cardboard boxes to solid walls, touch informs us of size
Shape – similar to texture and size, our 3D world holds all of geometry. Round, flat, oval, rectangular, bulgy, pyramidic, etc.
Temperature – cool to the touch, barely warm, flaming hot, ice cold. Our skin is our constant thermometer
Pressure – a squeeze of an arm or a chokehold on our throat, we feel the touch and can decide if it’s good or bad
Vibration – Place a hand on the washing machine in the spin cycle and the movement and noise reaches us but it’s our skin that is the “first responder” to that vibration
Pain – So many kinds of pain that come from our skin being touched by something or someone and yet, so many kinds of pain that can be relieved with a soothing or loving touch

This is just an overview of this last of the five senses. When you finish your first draft, remember to give at least one edit pass that focuses on your use of the senses. If they’re missing or just given a superficial treatment, then you are probably missing the opportunity to immerse your reader in the physical and emotional heart of your story.

Tasting Poetry

Gwynn Scheltema

Taste is an involving sense, an immediate sense, a memory triggering sense, and because it revolves around something we all do—eat—we can use it in our writing to connect viscerally with the reader.

Everything Ruth talked about in last week’s post about taste applies to poetry as much as it does to fiction, so in this post, I’m going to share with you how some poets have used food and meals and the rituals around food to draw the reader into their poems.

Trigger emotions

We all have tastes we like and those we don’t: comfort tastes, bad tastes, tastes that make us fearful, tastes that remind us of childhood. Each of these has emotions attached: joy, fear, disgust, nostalgia, longing… The simple detail of food can concentrate the emotion in a poem.

In these two examples, notice the difference in emotions. “Edible Child” is full of love and gentleness; The excerpt from “Feast Days” is lonely and sad. Both draw on our knowledge of the foods mentioned and the state of that food. In the first poem, the tastes are good and sweet and fresh, like the child. In the second, the food is rotting and unappetizing.

EDIBLE CHILD
by Elisabeth Rowe

Sleeping child
I bend to breathe your
melon-scented infant skin,
I taste the soft bloom
on your plum-skin arms,
tickle my nose on the hairs
of your gooseberry legs,
nibble your fillet toes.
Edible child
once upon a time
I heard my mother’s hunger:
I love you so much
I could eat you all up.

Excerpt from FEAST DAYS
by Annie Dillard

The apples in the cellar
are black, and dying inside their skins.
They pray all night in their bins,
but nobody listens;
they will be neither food nor trees.

Outside the norm

General opinion is often a fickle thing. People who don’t follow the norms tend to be noticed, sometimes mistrusted, or pitied or disliked: eating meat raw, dumpster diving or dumping a full plate of food. Images of baking apple pie or cooking Sunday roast point to family and security and love—unless you create a tension by turning that expectation on its head.

Excerpt from CHRISTMAS EVE: MY MOTHER DRESSING
By Toi Derricotte

Sitting on the stool at the mirror,
she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her;
as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was
weighted and bound in its mask.

Excerpt from RETROSPECT IN THE KITCHEN
By Maxine Kumin

After the funeral I pick
forty pounds of plums from your tree…
…stand at midnight…
putting some raveled things
unsaid between us into the boiling pot
of cloves, cinnamon, sugar:
Loves’s royal colour
The burst purple fruit bob up.

The sensory and the sensual

Ah yes! The senses and sex, an inevitable pairing. The hot and the cold.

HONEY
By Gwynn Scheltema

I want to dip you in honey
all stem and skin and juice
dripping
I want to press your flesh to my lips
feel you break in my mouth
like sun through rain

THIS IS JUST TO SAY
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Identity

Excerpt from I’M MEXICAN
By J Arceo

I’m Mexican.
No, I’m not spicy. Or feisty. Or exotic.
I’m just not bland.
Because my culture is too rich.
Because my hips give in to the beats of a drum.
And my tongue rolls with passion.
Because I come from vibrant colours
And full skirts.
And intricate patterns in my gene pool…
…Because I come from women with rifles and food that
excites you. And the very hands that harvest the land,
hold the very hearts that harvested me.

Meals

Excerpt from EATING TOGETHER
By Li-Young Lee

In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago.

MUTTON
By Jonathan Swift

Gently stir and blow the fire,
Lay the mutton down to roast,
Dress it quickly, I desire,
In the dripping put a toast,
That I hunger may remove —
Mutton is the meat I love.
On the dresser see it lie;
Oh, the charming white and red;
Finer meat ne’er met the eye,
On the sweetest grass it fed:
Let the jack go swiftly round,
Let me have it nice and brown’d.
On the table spread the cloth,
Let the knives be sharp and clean,
Pickles get and salad both,
Let them each be fresh and green.
With small beer, good ale and wine,
Oh ye gods! how I shall dine.

Last Word

And to end, here is a fun poem calling you to action:

HOW TO EAT A POEM
by Eve Merriam

Don’t be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

10 Senses Writers Should Know

In our regular Wednesday Top Drawer blogs, we been exploring the five senses which are so helpful when a writer wants to immerse readers in their stories. Sound, taste, touch, smell and sight are all basic tools in any storyteller’s toolkit.

In today’s 10 on the 10th, we’re offering up a few of the other senses that exist for human beings and which will be just as useful in your toolkit as you write and edit your work.

1. Original Five This is our go-to when working with writers in editing and workshops. It’s vital that all writers are conscious of the value of the senses in stirring connections for readers. The constant in writing is sight – it’s obvious because how else can you get readers to “see” what’s happening. But if you want your readers to feel character emotions, to recognize mood and tone, and to immerse themselves in the story instead of hovering above, successful writers use the other four basic senses.

But read on to discover nine other senses the complex human body has to contend with.

2. Proprioception. This is one sense you don’t really think about. Let’s test it: Go ahead. Close your eyes. Now touch your nose.

Your body uses three main things that help it with proprioception – skin, muscles and joints. These tell us where our body parts are in relation to the rest of us. With your eyes closed, you can find your nose with your finger, scratch an itch on your big toe, or clap your hands together because proprioception tells you where your arms, legs and head are positioned.

But what if you have a character whose proprioception is not working well? Bruises, bumps, trips and falls would be far more common.

3. Nociception: Ouch! This sense lets you know when you are in pain. That sensory system carries three main receptors: the skin, bones and joints, and your organs. When we feel pain, we recognize it. The greater the pain, the more it takes up our attention. But when it’s over, the intensity of it leaves us, fades and in some cases, is completely forgotten.

When you’re writing a scene that involves great pain, you have to recall moments in your life when you experienced it. Remember how your body felt – a cut on the skin is different from a twist of an ankle, smack against the skull from a baseball, or spasm in the gut from food poisoning.

4. Time: Oh my – have we been gone that long?Connected to our brain functions, time is being debated by science over whether this is a sense at all. They do agree, however, that our ability to sense time is stronger in younger people. But overall, science recognizes that humans are surprisingly accurate with measuring time. Our brains process time through the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia found deep in the brain.

So imagine what might happen to a world that has a shift in time, a shutdown of existence for a few seconds and then, back online. How would that mess with our sense of time? What would our world look like now?

5. Thermoception (external): Time to turn on the furnace, dear. This sense is our body’s ability to notice external temperatures.

6. Thermoception (internal): Can you take my temp because I feel like I’m burning up? This sense is our body’s ability to notice our body’s temperature.

Numbers 5 and 6 have the same name but they are two distinct senses. Our bodies have two separate hot & cold receptors, but we also have is a different type of thermoceptor in our brains to detect temperature. These thermoceptors in the brain are used for monitoring internal body temperature.

So what happens if one thermoceptor (say, the external) goes wonky. The body would feel internal heat but external heat would not exist? Wow. Talk about conflict in your writing.

7. Equilibrioception:Whoa! Where is up and where is down? Anyone who’s ever had vertigo, will know immediately how this unbalanced moment feels. The sense that let’s you keep your balance also is the sense that recognizes when things speed up and change direction. Astronauts in gravity-free space notice this sense the hard way when they return to Earth and, suddenly, gravity is back with a bang.

Buried inside your inner ears, this sensory system is the vestibular labyrinthine system. When you lose your balance, this system is where the search for balance is taking place. So without this system, a body cannot sense what is up and what is down. Besides the nausea, people with vertigo often shift into fear – the unknown takes over and distress sets in. Fortunately, for most, it’s a temporary condition. But when it’s not…

8. Magnetoreception Haven’t you always wondered how birds know to fly north in the spring and vice versa in the fall? Besides the fact that the temperature is changing, they know their direction from their ability to detect Earth’s magnetic field. It sets them off in the right direction each time.

We are not like birds, so we don’t have much in the way of magnetoreception. But it is there – experiments show we’re not entirely without a sense of north and south. There’s a theory that ferric iron deposits in our noses (our noses? really?) may be part of our sense of the magnetic field. It might be worthwhile to research magnetic implants. Some people implant magnets in their fingertips to gain sensory perception of magnetic fields. Now, THAT’S an interesting character, don’t you think?

9. Synesthesia:This sensory phenomenon is experienced by about 3% of the population, and most often people who experience it are born with it or develop it in early childhood. Synesthetes have a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one sense also stimulates another at the same time. I see numbers and words in colour; my granddaughter asked me to “turn down the music” on a painting I was doing.

Could a character who hears voices be a synesthete and not suffering from delusions as others think he is? Perhaps for the child who refuses to eat, it’s not disobedience, but the fact that this plate of food tastes “pointy” and hurts.

10. Extrasensory perception (aka – ESP or sixth sense):From mixed up senses in synesthesia to senses beyond the physical, ESP is sensing through the mind. Scientifically we don’t know much about the how and why of this sense, (yet) but many of us have experienced it or known someone who has.

It occurs often enough that we have many names for it: intuition, telepathy, psychometry, insight, clairvoyance, visions. That sense of retrocognition – knowing what went before, we often call déjà vu; precognition – knowing what is about to happen can be experienced in something as simple as knowing who is calling when the phone rings.

Literature is alive with this sense, from people who see and interact with ghosts to prophets or wise sages declaring destinies. But you can include it in small ways too, the chill some-one feels when a particular character approaches, or the dog who growls at a new visitor.

Scent to Engage

Ruth E. Walker

The other day, I was in the spare room, organizing some bedding when I brushed up against the jewellery armoire that belonged to my mother-in-law. It’s a treasure trove of costume jewellery – some high-end, some vintage and some just-fun pieces. Since her death in 2005, we’ve been slowly working through a lot of her belongings. Some were easy to move along. Some, like this cherry wood oversized chest still has a hold on me.

As I brushed past it, the front door popped open. Immediately, I was swept into a maelstrom of memories. It wasn’t the jangle of chains and beads that hung on the inside of the door. Nor was it the turquoises and greens and brilliant blues of those assorted beads. None of that.

It was the smell, the scent of her favourite perfume still clinging like flowering vines to each and every piece in there. After more than 15 years, I could hear her voice, her laugh, the whoosh of breath as she would collapse into a chair. It reminded me of the incredible of power that the senses, and in particular, the sense of smell, has for us human beings.

A writer’s power tool

Anyone who has taken a Writescape workshop, attended a Writescape retreat or received a substantive Writescape edit will have heard or seen how we emphasize the five senses in all forms of writing. We call it a power tool in all writers’ kits of technique and craft. Beyond sight – writers need to engage readers’ senses: taste, touch, sound…and the most powerful one? Yeah. You know it, don’t you. Smell.

Smell is the most evocative sense for triggering memories and connections. I suspect it has something to do with our hardwiring from when we first stepped down from the trees and stood upright in the savannah, raising our nostrils to the air, seeking food and water, avoiding things that smell “off” and staying alert for the whiff of sabre-toothed tigers, cave bears, and massive, roaming bison.

It smells like science

Scientific research affirms that our sense of smell is different from the rest of the senses. All the others – taste, touch, sound and sight – they get processed in the brain through our thalamus – the info relay station. In turn, the thalamus sends those sensations to the hippocampus (our memory manager) and the amygdala (our emotion processor.) But smell, it’s a bit of snob. It bypasses that trusty old thalamus and takes a direct path to the olfactory bulb which, in turn, has its own direct link to the hippocampus and amygdala.

Did you know that human beings have at least 1,000 different types of smell receptors but only four types of light sensors for sight and about four types of receptors for touch?

(Thanks discovery.com for helping me make sense of the human brain.)

Apply often

So that, dear writers, is why this sense is supercharged and ready to ignite your stories. If you want to read more about how the olfactory bulb stores our long-term memories that influence our behaviours, the above-noted link to discovery.com will take you there. On the other hand, if you want a complete tour of the olfactory system, Wikipedia offers a dump truck load of scientific illustrations, terms and definitions.

Applying any sense in your writing works best when it:

Is in the logical place (but sometimes the illogical place works best)
Fits with your character (or maybe surprises your character)
Fits with your setting (whoa! Where did that stink in my flower shop come from?)
Fits with your story (a bakery should always smell like…rotting meat?)

The writer has several choices when incorporating a physical sense into a scene. As noted in the above “absolutes”, turning things around can be an effective tool for raising intensity in a scene.

Subvert the normal world

For example, your calm, cool and buttoned-down accountant might surround herself with comfort scents – a faint whiff of sandalwood in her study, an understated sniff of cedar in her walk-in closet, the dry musk of leatherbound account ledgers on her desk.

How can you shake up the predictable safety of her world?

What if she finds a street person perched on her desk, a decidedly unwashed individual with a preference for beans and cheap beer? Upside down goes her ordered world – and not just because of the surprise of the desk squatter, but the lovely scents you’ve surrounded her with up to this point fade from this nasal onslaught.

How can adding the street person to the story be logical? What if the accountant unknowingly holds the key to how the intruder lost everything: his job, reputation, wife and kids, home. Falsely accused and convicted, he’s finally out of prison. Our squatter is determined to restore his original life. The “stink” he brings into the room is a metaphor for all the terrible things that still cling to him.

Will she wash them away?

Apply with subtlety

On the other hand, when you want to be subtle with an emotional scene, tug at heartstrings or allude to themes in your story, you can use smell to underscore the moment. It’s easy to use the overpowering odour of flowers to evoke the floral perfumes so prevalent at funerals. But can we be more understated?

For example, a scene about dying could include something that doesn’t smell but hints at it. A painting of lilies or of mixed blooms. Silk or plastic flowers. A carpet with a chrysanthemum motif. A scented candle still wrapped in plastic. A bottle of hand sanitizer, so antiseptic…so embalming fluid-like.

Or a wooden jewellery armoire, tucked in the corner of your spare room.

Over to you. What are the scents that send your memories and emotions on a trip far away and long ago? Share them in the comments. Meanwhile, happy and slightly scented writing to you all.

It was a dark and stormy night

Gwynn Scheltema

Famously, “It was a dark and stormy night” is one of the worst ways to start a scene. Many writers take that to mean that you should never start with the weather, or indeed setting or description in any form. I disagree. I write from setting all the time.

A powerful workhorse

Setting can:

anchor the story in time, both historical time and time of day
define geographic place – in general (urban/rural) or specific (a particular building or room)
set mood or atmosphere
employ seasonal symbolism (spring = rebirth, new things; winter = aging, death, etc.)
give a clue to character by what the character notices and reacts to in the surroundings.
use all five senses and more (colour, quality of light; temperature; texture) to create verisimilitude and increase reader engagement.
affect pacing: visceral senses of smell and touch increase tension; word choice for a description guides emotion (pierces vs chirps)

Walk with me

Come on. Bring along a notebook. We are going to allow setting to guide the start of a scene.

First anchor the main characters in place and time with an image. Present at least one reader question.

I turn back down the dirt track once the school bus has passed, jiggling its crumpled group of toque-topped children. It’s a long ride for young Jimmy—more than an hour before the bus spills him into the school yard at Campbellford Elementary. But he’s a country kid. Used to rising before dawn.

Now a wide angle visual shot that also sets the mood of the narrator. Use sentence structure that supports that mood.

The eastern sky struggles to draw back the fog blanket that hovers above the tree line, as reluctant as I am to face the day.

A shot of colour without mentioning the colour. Something that re-enforces the mood.

The last of the autumn leaves nip at my ankles.

Introduce a different sense (sound) that develops character or moves the plot.

My cell pierces the quiet morning. It’s Conrad. Shit. I let it ring. Fourteen rings. He doesn’t give up easy.

Now a wide angle again, include another sense (touch/ texture) and continue to develop character or advance plot. Consider pacing here. Speed up or slow down with sentence structure and word choice.

The clapboard farmhouse crouches on the hill, as if ready to pounce. “Been in my family for six generations,” Tom always boasts. Like that scraggly-beard had any part in it. Bastard!

Step into a direct action that launches the story. Stay away from the sense of sight. Use a more visceral sense to lend weight to this moment (touch).

When I reach the porch, my lungs burn from running, my mouth so dry I can hardly form the words I croak into my phone, “Chrissy? It’s Annie. Please, I need you to pick Jimmy up from school today and keep him overnight. Something’s come up. I’ll call tomorrow to explain.”

Not a formula

That scene is not a formula, just a sample. It’s sinister, moody and hints at danger. But it could have just as easily been more upbeat:

First anchor the main characters in place and time with an image. Present at least one reader question.

I watch the school bus lumber down the dirt road, jiggling its crumpled group of kids and backpacks and baseball bats and water bottles. It’s a long ride for young Jimmy—more than an hour before the bus spills him into the school yard at Campbellford Elementary. But he’s cool. A country kid. Used to rising early.

Now a wide angle visual shot that also sets the mood of the narrator. Use sentence structure that supports that mood.

The sun is already high in the eastern sky, warm on my shoulders. Today will be a good day. I know it.

A shot of colour without mentioning the colour. Something that re-enforces the mood.

I scoop up a posy of feathery Queen Anne’s lace and field poppies from the roadside bank.

Introduce a different sense (sound) that develops character or moves the plot.

My cell chirps like a pocketed bird. It’s Conrad. He remembered. I take a deep breath and fumble to answer before he rings off.

Your turn

Go on. Your turn. Take setting on your writing journey today.