Senses – The Hospital, Part 2

Last week I talked about using a visit to the hospital to explore setting, and I thought I would expand on that a little more this week, by focussing on senses.

I have already been reminded that setting is sensory, but what exactly that looks like depends on the scene and the story.  If your character has some sort of disability or hyperability this will also affect your approach.

Here are just a few examples from the hospital to help get you thinking for your own scenes:

Sight: lighting, colours, machinery, beds, bandages, drugs, people in uniforms, curtains, long corridors, seats with plastic covers

Sound: beeping of machines, pumping up of blood pressure monitors, tinny sound of music from other people’s earphones, buzzing of voices, echoing footsteps, scraping of chair legs, sirens

Smell: antiseptic, flowers, antibacterial gel, tea, plastic, floor polish

Feel: Overheated, heavy cotton curtains, slippery bed bars, hard mattresses, thick cardboard trays, tight bandages, the pulling of stitches

Taste: Dry, chemicals, stewed tea, sugary fruit sweets, gravy

Obviously all of these would be open to change depending on why your scene is at the hospital but it’s a place to start thinking about your scene in different ways.

I am going to call it quits there, as it’s about 2 minutes to midnight again, but I hope you find it useful.

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

 

 

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October project post 10 – Not much output…

First, I have to say that as I’m not the fittest person you could meet, my charity workout was extremely tiring.  I was pleased I got all the way through it but it was a little terrifying to know that, as a result of taking part, I was invited to a boot camp…

That may be one step too far for me!

So instead of heading home to write, I headed home to eat bad food and fall asleep – writing-wise, my output has been very low.

However, I have done some research for The Story of One and have a new and exciting idea to somehow weld in, based on some of the historical realities of the period.  If I do decide to go this route it will change the story as it’s already written, so what I think I might do is keep going and then when I go through it at the revisions stage make a choice: as I was writing with no plan and no research, the historical accuracy is a bit (read: terribly) ropey in some places anyway!

I also took impressions away from today’s exertions that I’d like to use some more.  There was a great atmosphere, and it was a lot of fun, and I can imagine it would make a good scene in a more light-hearted story.  So I am making a note of the things that would show the atmosphere to a reader – like 100 people singing off-key to ‘Moves like Jagger’, or dodging the uncoordinated so as to avoid injury!

I have a list of future story outlines – write them down or forget them! – and there’s one I think this scene would suit.  So there you go: charity funds, a scene for a book, and some historical fact-finding.  Not a bad day, really!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

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