DevicesFoundational
Imagery
Language that recruits the senses to construct experience.
Principle
A reader who cannot see, hear, or feel the scene cannot enter it.
Takeaways
- Specific images outperform abstract ones.
- All five senses are available — most prose uses two.
- Image without weight is decoration; image with weight is access.
Overview
Imagery is the use of sensory language — visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and kinaesthetic — to render experience. The reader builds the world from what the prose makes them perceive.
Examples
- The kettle whistled through the wallpaper.
- Frost stitched the window from the inside.
- The bread tore with the sound of paper.