Monday Motivation: Write Scenes With Your Senses

[Writers Digest]

In this issue, learn how (and why) to write scenes with your senses; plus, much more.

In this issue, learn how (and why) to write scenes with your senses; plus, a writing prompt, a new interview, writing responsibly about children, and more!  Writer's Digest Online | Writer's Digest Shop | Online Education Write Scenes With Your Senses When a memory suddenly pops into our head it is often just a fragment: a smile, a gentle touch, the tone of a voice. What anchors those fragments and transforms them into a scene that lives on the page is the body. Our senses are the portal. Writing through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch grounds a scene in the moment and makes it come alive. Sensory details allow the reader to know not just what happened, but to experience it with their own body. It is said that specificity is the soul of narrative. (How to Add Value With a Prologue.) We all have had the experience of hearing a song from our teen years and having flashes of memory from our high school dance from decades before. Suddenly we see the disco ball shooting shards of light across our friends faces, we smell the perfume or cologne of our dance partner, we feel our feet shuffle on the floor to the rhythm of the music, we taste the flavor of our favorite gum. Read more... MORE MOTIVATION Writing Responsibly About Your Child My memoir-in-progress, Hypervigilant: A Memoir of Uncertainty, Intuition, and Hope, is about my transformation from living on constant high alert to trusting my ability to navigate uncertainty, finding beauty and agency in the process. The catalyst: My daughter’s life-threatening illness, cystic fibrosis. Read more... Alissa Lee: I Love a Twisty Plot "The process of getting a book out into the world can sometimes feel like an interminable climb, so when you find yourself losing faith, remember that so many gains can be made by just showing up. Revising that problematic chapter one more time, sending out the next batch of query letters, or turning up at your local bookstore to support a fellow writer—all of it counts. If we just keep showing up for ourselves and for others, good things will follow." Read more... Navigating Co-Authoring and Writing Alone Co-writing . . . wait! Danger ahead. What if you lose your voice? What if you destroy your brand? Will the collaboration take over until you’re drowning in a morass with no way out? Will it ruin what you spent years building? (The Balance Between Romance and Romantic Suspense.) Not if you go into it with your eyes open. Read more... Celebrating the Whimsical & Weird From the time we’re children, the whimsical and weird draws us in and makes us imagine worlds beyond our own, creatures that exist only in our imaginations, and endless possibilities. In this issue, we celebrate whimsical and weird writing by exploring fantasy writing, magic, talking animals, monsters, unusual writing formats, and much more.   Click here to learn more >> 2025 November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge: day 10 For Day 10 of the 2025 November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge, write an advice poem. The advice could be given to you, or it could be advice that you often dispense. Read more... From Your Writer's Digest Editor: Robert Lee Brewer Robert Lee Brewer is a senior editor for Writer’s Digest and former editor of the Writer's Market book series. He is also the author of Smash Poetry Journal and Solving the World's Problems. He spent part of the weekend reading graphic novels with his daughter. Active Interest Media 2143 Grand Ave Des Moines, IA 50312 USA View online You received this email because you are subscribed to newsletters from Writer's Digest Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive.