Writers talk a lot about viewpoint characters. The story is told from her viewpoint. Or his viewpoint. Or both their viewpoints.
Sometimes we become so focused on maintaining a strict viewpoint, we forget that narrative is about relationships.
Relationships. Interactions. Exchanges. Collisions. Between people. And between a person and her world.
When you write your next scene imagine an energy field or aura surrounding each of your characters. As you write, put your attention in the space where these energy fields collide.
Now imagine an energy field (or a thousand different fields) coming from the physical world–the birds singing outside the window, the jet leaving its contrail 30,000 feet above the birds, the hush of the wind, the blurred motion of the mouse scurrying along the seam of the wall, the solidity of the walls themselves, the primary colors and hard angles of the post-modern chairs, the dusty warmth of sunlight, the smell of browning butter in a saute pan, the scratch of fabric on skin–you get the idea.
What is the impact of this energy on your characters? Let it show on the page.
The aim of this exercise is to open your writing and your story to the world, to dynamic sensory detail and sensory experience, to characters alive inside their bodies, and those same characters interacting and isolating, communicating and miss-communicating, loving and battling and inhabiting a shared sensual world.
