Sometimes it only takes a couple of precise words to tap into the reader’s senses. Imagery doesn’t always require complicated descriptions. If every night is the deepest, blackest night the narrator has ever seen if every mango is the most succulent they’ve ever eaten if every wind is the iciest they’ve ever felt, then your reader might get fed up with the drama of it all if everything is special, then nothing is special. However, too much imagery can lessen the effectiveness of your writing. It also creates the feeling of weariness (which is another appeal to tactile imagery if you imagine the weight of your eyelids). That might be a little dramatic, but amplification is all about drama. Or, using amplification, you can tell them the road before you stretched through space and time, jutting into a seemingly endless succession of nights and days that blurred together and deposited you collapsed on your doorstep. For example, you can tell your reader that you had a long drive home. Amplification is a literary device that exaggerates or emphasizes a certain point. Poignant and direct verbs will bring your reader along for the ride.Īnother way to create imagery is through amplification.

For example, using “shimmering” or “blinding” instead of “bright,” or “piercing” instead of “loud.” There is also a lot of potential for imagery in verbs since those are the words that move your narrative forward. One way to do this is through evocative adjectives. Writers use imagery to generate a physical or emotional response in the reader. a harsher California, haunted by the Mohave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the Eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves.”Ī passage with less imagery might depict the winds as being “hot and dry,” but Didion’s rich description goes farther, creating for the reader a feeling of roughness (appealing to touch) in the winds. Take the following passage from a 1966 article by Joan Didion titled “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.” In this passage, Didion uses imagery to talk about the region’s wind: Language can elicit a psychological or intellectual reaction in a reader, and imagery is just one more tool a writer has to connect with their audience through sensation and emotion. Imagery enhances writing by creating a physical response in the reader through sensory details. This combination of comprehensive coverage of the senses with reviews from both theoretical and applied perspectives not only complements the growing multisensory literature but also responds to recent calls for translational research in the multisensory field.Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly What is imagery? Part II reviews the application of mental imagery research in a range of settings including individual differences, skilled performance such as sports and surgical training, psychopathology and therapy, through to stroke rehabilitation. Part I of this book provides overviews of unisensory imagery in each sensory modality, including motor imagery, together with discussions of multisensory and cross-modal interactions, synesthesia, imagery in the blind and following brain damage, and methodological considerations. With the emergence of a well-established multisensory research community, however, it is time to look at mental imagery in a wider sensory context.

Is a pear sweeter than a peach? Which of Mona Lisa’s hands is crossed over the other? What would the Moonlight Sonata sound like played by a brass band? Although these are questions that appeal to mental imagery in a variety of sensory modalities, mental imagery research has been dominated by visual imagery.

Novels with auditory imagery