“The writing processes an innate truth that goes beyond any attempt to analyze, summarize, or commentate. Simply it is living the story.” Juliet Marillier addresses authenticity when discussing two stories that focus on the natural world, The Shepherd’s Life and Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field. These works follow the daily lives of the farmers, show weather, and seasons, and interactions with animals and insects. She uses these as examples of how nature and “our own place in nature…shapes us into the individuals that we are.” She uses this to explain that as authors, we are to use the same five senses that we use every day to experience to world to create an immersive world in our stories. [1]

When describing our fictional worlds, it’s easy to mention the sky, the grass, and the sun. Sometimes, we’ll even throw in a rainy day. This gives readers background, but it doesn’t draw them into the story and its world.

The sky was gray, and the air smelled of the sea. This feels descriptive enough to ground your reader in the season or setting but only addresses two senses.

The icy wind whipped her ponytail about her head like a tetherball as she ran into the storm. The sun played hide and seek, popping out behind clouds that raced across the sky. Her nose tingled from the salt and the stink coming of the mounds of kelp lying about the beach. Wet, sticky sand clung to her shoes with each step.

This paragraph offers a richer sensory experience, engaging at least three senses. And in a larger sense, we also have the characterization of nature. We don’t know why our character is running into a storm on the beach, but the imagery portrays nature as an antagonistic force to our character.  (This can be useful for setting tone and introducing internal conflict).

Perhaps she is a surfer or a lighthouse keeper. Fill in the blanks with your imagination. What is her role in a nature? What is nature’s role in her character arc? How does the setting show us her internal conflict?  

[1] Author in Progress Therese Walsh, Editor. 2016