d

Many editing programs will identify cliches - let them do some of the work for you. At least, when you leave a cliche behind, wounded but not dead, it will be deliberately.

Hi Alicia! I trip on cliches all the time and need to rewrite them. Often, I don't notice I've used them until the offense is brought to my attention.

Starting with cliche and playing from there is an interesting method!

I wasn't sure if this particular sense would be blog-worthy. I'm glad that it's working out.
Thanks for your input!

For sighted readers and writers, visual is the strongest sense - it has to be. We take in the world, analyze, make decisions about millions of things daily, quickly.

'Perfume' married it to the sense of smell brilliantly (almost TOO brilliantly - some of those descriptions!). But the medieval world it emphasized with odor was also incredibly visual - and the author called up those visuals we all have but with a new twist. He didn't just skip vision.

I almost gave you the ending of the WIP's last finished scene - because there are four different vision tokens in the two paragraphs, starting with "He read her eyes," something we do all the time because looking directly at someone's face is a prime way humans learn what's going on (including deception).

Now the challenge is to make the writing of these something new and not cliched. I often start with whatever cliche my mind throws into the arena - and tweak from there.

Hi Eldred! I think weaving sensory information into our works using the characters' interactions with the environment is a real challenge but we'll worth the effort.

I look forward to what you invent next, or what the characters insist upon. They can be bullheaded.

I'm happy that you've found the post helpful!

Editing seems never ending, doesn't it?

Cheers!

Hi Miffie! I like to be "grounded" in a scene to get a good sense of where I'm at and what's going on. Books are frequently my means of mental escape and I like to know where I'm vacationing.☺️

I wonder how many novels start with a visual? Time to hit the books!

Thanks for giving me something to ponder.

Hi Kris! I see your point. Sometimes sensory information feels much like a character to me too.

I probably use sight more than any other sense in my writing. Maybe even too much. It's a big part of how I let the characters build the scene through movement through and interaction with the environment, rather than having the narrator describe it, even if the narrator is first person.