Most of us find it hard sometimes to believe that the specifics of what we see, taste, touch, smell and hear relate our inner perceptions and feelings (or those of our characters) without explanation. We may be writing with specifics and then, without realizing it, begin to explain and annotate, argue and attempt to persuade with cerebral words, the ones we dropped into our school papers so teachers would think us scholarly.

Following are exercises to help you strengthen your trust in what you focus on in a scene for transmitting your sensibilities to your readers.

Washington State poet Katharine Whitcomb shares this exercise, conceived during a return trip to France:

Today during our hike to Cubservies, I thought it would be fun to stop and write a short impression here in this place, having these experiences.

When I was in France last fall I wrote a series of what I called “French sentences,” which were merely a riff on Allen Ginsberg’s American sentences–a seventeen syllable sentence with the qualities of a haiku. I was writing about what it felt like to be in this part of France.

But this time around seventeen syllables felt way too short—and I set the parameters at 17 words, still with a concentration toward the qualities of haiku.

 Here’s the one from yesterday:

L’eglise Saint-Sernin

We find the chapel after hiking steep miles,
old stories pieced into walls, layer upon rocky layer.

In Ron Carlson Writes a Story, the novelist and short fiction writer talks about how he looks into his writing to be sure the images are doing the work and the writer is not overriding that work with summarizing phrases:

Outer story, the physical world, is also its own effect, its own reaction, its own comment. Outer story shows us things, and as the outer story grows and gathers, we can begin to see the constellations of our meanings. There is no need to comment on each facet of a scene. The sunset went from yellow to purple in a moment, and Jonathan took a step back, stunned. (Cut stunned.) The sunset went from yellow to purple in a moment, and I thought it was fabulous. (You know what to cut.) I’ve heard people talk about this by quoting Sergeant Friday:  “Just the facts, ma’am.” This is apt, but there’s more for the writer: this frees us from having to interpret. Our mission is to write the physical scene as closely as we can, knowing that our intentions lie just beyond our knowing. Write, don’t think.

For practice with this, Ron Carlson suggests writing a 400-word scene in which one person washes a car. You have to, he says, stay with the physical action and things in the scene, and must not relate any of the characters’ thoughts:

The character should emerge through the constellation of her/his actions–his/her code. You will feel the pull of history/exposition: how/when those bugs got on the windshield; the empty beer cans in the backseat, the rip in the upholstery, the origin of the three gold coins, the rusty knife, etc.

The point of the exercise is to “learn just how much a writer can leave out and how powerful what you include actually is.”

In writing memoir, letting images do the talking is just as important.  You must recreate how you experienced the places, people and situations of your life experiences through the senses. Where you were and what was happening to you originally came in through your ears, nose, tongue, skin, and eyes. That is what the reader needs, too, to experience your world and draw the conclusions you did. An exercise I give myself is to look into my drafts for sentences where I’ve summarized. Then I write more to see what happens if I open the sentences up to the senses.

Instead of saying, “I was always stiff at Grandmother Sarah’s house,” I would work to provide sense information from the outer world:

I always sat in the red overstuffed mohair sofa, my feet never reaching the floor, my attention on the white lace of my fancy Sunday anklets above the patent leather of my Mary Janes. The pudgy fingers of my left hand crumpled and uncrumpled the lace that covered the sofa arm I sat up against. I always noticed the dirt under my fingernails, black as my shoes, against the white of Grandmother’s lace.

The tasks, exercises and writing games we provide for ourselves help us learn to rely on the outer world for the images a situation provides, rather than relying on thoughts and summaries. Sure, those will come into our writing, at times, but using them sparingly, as Ron Carlson says, makes them all the more powerful. Remember a place where you were extremely uncomfortable. Take the time to write a paragraph naming what came in through your senses in that place. When you read what you wrote, you should feel that discomfort rising up from the specifics you’ve included.

Write other scenes with action in them to try out this idea of leaving out thoughts and relying on the inventory of movement and objects. At first, choose something every day rather than extremely adventurous. After the washing the car scene, try a waiting scene–lots happens in a waiting room if you take the time to notice.  Even an “empty” waiting room has inventory. Lots happens in a parked car where someone waits for a child or partner or boss if you take the time to notice and zero in. There is probably a whole story to be told from a street corner while waiting for the light to change. After you write a waiting scene by relying in particulars and not allowing thoughts, write a scene about a person doing pretty much what you might be doing right now:

Caroline stopped typing for a moment and pulled the plate with her sandwich closer to her. She didn’t turn to see which papers swooshed from the desk to the floor. She kept reading what was on her screen about adverse effects of blood pressure medication, over-prescribed according to the website’s author, as if the problem were caused by some sort of drug deficiency. Caroline’s tuna on rye tasted so much better when she absorbed the idea that unless she ate loads of processed foods and put additional salt on that food, the intake of salt wasn’t a likely culprit. Now she looked down and to her right. The life insurance forms she’d filled out were face down. Did she really care that the companies offering deals wouldn’t accept this thinking?

Okay, I ended on a thought. It is hard to keep them all out, but make them wait as long as you can. Now write some more. What might come next in this scene? Or, what scene from something in your life might you write with attention to relying on images alone–or at least alone for as long as you can carry it out?