It’s Literary Device Week!

I know it sounds boring, but I’m terrifically excited about this one. A literary device is the accelerator pedal of your car. Without it, you won’t get very far, but if you put foot, you can race all the way to Nando’s before you die of hunger. Literary devices give your work power. They add nuance and depth to any writing genre. You’ll recognise a few of them because we’ve covered them before: Rhyme, metre, metaphors, assonance… The more devices you know, the more layers you’ll build into your work.

This week we’re going to cover six literary devices. There will be exercises for all six. While I usually ask you to choose the exercises that interest you most, I’m going to suggest you cover all of this week’s exercises, even if it takes you a year to achieve it.

Today we’ll start with a familiar one: Imagery. Put simply, imagery refers to the smells, tastes, and sounds of a scene. There are seven kinds of imagery:

Visual: What you see.
Auditory: What you hear.
Olfactory: What you smell
Tactile: What you feel.
Gustatory: What you taste
Kinesthetic: How it moves.
Organic: How it affects the body.

John Steinbeck started most of his novels with a page or more of imagery. He built his world in every sense so that his readers knew exactly what his story’s environment looked and sounded like. Call it foreplay if you like. He made sure you were immersed in his setting before he launched his story. This is an excerpt from the first chapter of East of Eden:

THE SALINAS VALLEY is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east.

Go somewhere you love or somewhere you don’t usually go where you can sit quietly and really pay attention to all your senses: Sight, smell, taste, touch, sounds. Write about that place, or one small part of that place, with all five senses in mind.

I’m going to label all the kinds of imagery in the comments for those who want to gain a deeper understanding.

You can only write great imagery if you’re completely immersed in the environment. You must know your scene well enough to awaken your readers’ senses. Today, I’m asking you to go to a new or favourite place and sit quietly. Pay attention to the senses it evokes. Notice things you’ve never thought to put into words and write the imagery of that environment.

I want you to focus on imagery alone, so please write one to three paragraphs in prose. Your work should not include a storyline.