Your brain on books

I still love that old commercial against using drugs – “This is you brain” [shows a picture of a whole egg]; “This is your brain on drugs” [shows a picture of an egg frying]. It’s been parodied so many times, but the most basic concept of the ad holds—when we do things, like take drugs, or in this case, read—our brain changes.

There have been a number of studies to show this (the most recent one was reported here in January) so we know it’s true. When we read, our brains actually experience what is happening in the book. If we read about someone running for their life, our neurons truly fire as if we were running for our lives. If we read about someone relaxing in a bubbling hot tub, the scent of roses wafting up from the water, candle light flickering in the darkness all round us—well, can’t you just imagine it? Can’t you just smell it? The scent of roses, tinged ever so slightly with the chlorine of the water. The bubbles gently tickling your skin as you lay there surrounded by warmth and flickering candle light. Ahhh…

Sorry.

But as you were reading about what I’d really like to be doing right now rather than sitting in my barely tolerably warm office, my fingers a little stiff with cold, trying to tap out this blog post, neurons were firing in your brain. Your smell sensors were lighting up giving you that scent. You kinetic sense was working away feeling those tickling bubbles, no matter where you are or what you’re doing right now.

By reading, you can actually experience the words on a page in your mind!

I think that’s pretty incredible.

But more than that, it puts a huge burden on us writers. We’ve got to create that picture, incite those sensations, bring forth those smells, that heat (or cold), make our ears ring with sounds that only exist in our words on the pages of the stories we write.

So here is my argument (one that I’m sure I’ve made before, but it’s important enough to make again… and again). You’ve got to bring all of a reader’s senses into play when they are reading your work. You’ve got to describe where your characters are not just by telling us what it looks like, but by what it sounds like and smells like. Granted, for historical authors, we may not want to get too historically accurate in those smells (I talk about that in a guest blog which will be posted in March — keep an eye out for it), but still, you need to tap into those sensations. You need to get those neurons firing within the brain of your reader.

Now, I am the worst—and I really mean The Worst—offender when it comes to not writing descriptions. And I’m not talking not writing five-senses, I mean ANY descriptions. My first draft reads almost like a movie script. It’s all dialogue. There’s some internal thoughts and emotions going on, but mainly, it’s people talking. They could be in a black box for all my reader knows.

Yeah, I might mention that they’re standing in a living room. But do I describe that room? No, I do not. Do I say that there are the smells of roasting chicken wafting over from the kitchen down the hall? Nope. Do I mention the chill in the air leaking in through the double glazed windows which the hero just paid a hell of a lot of money to have put in to keep out that chill? Nope. Do I mention the sounds of children playing next door. The intermittent thunk of a soccer ball getting kicked and subsequent shouts as kids as either a goal was scored or just missed? Not a word.

That’s what my second draft is for. It is what I go back and put in after I’ve gotten down the basic plot.

In my first draft it’s all dialogue. I worry about plot. There’s some action (especially for action-heavy scenes). There’s some internal thought because I do want to get across what my characters are feeling as they’re speaking that dialogue and hearing what the other characters have to say. I worry about character development and how my characters grow and change. But I’m just awful when it comes to writing description. So I’ll go back and put it in later.

This is what I’m working on right now with the third book of my Children of Avalon series. I’ve written all but that very last scene and I’m about 10,000 words short. No, I don’t think I’m going to be able to add that many words with my descriptions, but I’ll get close by beefing up the five senses, descriptions and making sure my heroine is as spunky as she needs to be. I’ll make my exciting scenes more exciting, my romantic scenes more romantic and up the angst all around. In other words, heighten all the emotion, because that’s vitally important too.

Yes, the book is written, but it’s not nearly close to being done.