There is a light breeze coming from the east, the sun is beginning to set as people run around the jet black and bright white stripped track; but me, I’m in the middle of all the commotion holding a twelve foot, red and yellow, fiberglass pole and instead of my track being black, it is a dual, eroded looking red; I like to think of it more as my own personal runway. I stand fifty-three feet away from a metal box and a huge forest green foam pit; my heart is pounding so extremely hard and fast that I can hear it in my ears but feel it in my stomach; just before I feel like i am about to throw up I hear my coach yell “Go!” and without even hesitating, I take a giant step with my right foot then another giant step with my left. I get faster and faster as I sprint down the runway. As I get closer to the metal box I lower the pole and once it hits the back of the box, I jump off of my left foot and go flying through the air. I can feel the pole bend and instantly I’m flinging my feet, along with the rest of my body, up ten feet into the air. I get to the peak of my jump and it’s almost as if time stops and I can see everything and everyone. All of the spectators look like ants roaming around. And now, as I make it over the crossbar, I’m falling on my back and I can see the now orange, purple, blue and pink sky. As I hit the foam pit the feeling of relief comes over me and I lay there for just a few more seconds taking in the moment.
I feel that I have best mastered the technique of sensory detail. The paragraph that I have provided above shows a lot of this technique in a very good way. The purpose of sensory detail is to make the reader/audience feel like they are there with the writer or that they are experiencing it themselves. To do this you must use a great amount of very specific details. I have done so in this paragraph by saying “There is a light breeze coming from the east, the sun is beginning to set as people run around the jet black and bright white stripped track” when I could have just said “I’m at a track meet and it’s a very lovely evening” but that would not give the reader an actual sense of what I am really feeling and seeing. By describing the track and the runway it lets the audience see where I really am. Also this sentence shows the audience what I am doing and helps them picture it in their mind: “I take a giant step with my right foot then another giant step with my left. I get faster and faster as I sprint down the runway. As I get closer to the metal box I lower the pole and once it hits the back of the box, I jump off of my left foot and go flying through the air” and by saying that “my heart is pounding so extremely hard and fast that I can hear it in my ears but feel it in my stomach” lets the reader know just how nervous I am.
I feel that emma mastered the technique of sensory detail. She uses vivid imagery so that i feel like im there while shes doing it. I can close my eyes and picture what she was saying. She said, "I can feel the pole bend and instantly I’m flinging my feet, along with the rest of my body, up ten feet into the air." This is way more descriptive then just saying, "I fling ten feet into the air." If she wrote her piece that way then I wouldn't have been able to close my eyes and picture what she was doing.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the amount of sensory details you put into your piece, and also the way you used elongated sentences which I felt kept the writer in that moment for as long as possible. You really mastered the ability to show not tell and I was really taken to that place and felt as though I was living that experience. By opening your piece describing the atmosphere of that day and your surroundings was really helpful and let me imagine that scene. The way you structured your sentences also let me stay in that place and live out that moment, which I really enjoyed. Your ability to use sensory detail is really outstanding and inspires me to try and use it in one of my pieces as well.
ReplyDeleteI was extremely intrigued by your blog because of how detailed every thought was. Even when I think to myself, "how many more descriptive words can she put in this?” you instantly surprised me with more vivid and brilliant words. I immediately put myself into your position and I could see everything that you said. Your use of detail to describe every move you made really opened up my imagination. I believe that you chose to organize it this way because you wanted to give your audience the opportunity to feel exactly what you were feeling. I think you achieved this, and used a lot of effort to do so. I do not think that you left anything out in your blog, although you did convince me to use more sensory detail in my writing to make my readers feel as though they are there experiencing it with me.
ReplyDeleteYour blog was filled with countless amount of imagery. Not only that but when you described the events and scene around you, you did so coherently. In doing so, you really mastered the aspect of showing and not telling which is very important when it comes to sensory detail. The colors that you used to describe the sky was a very smart technique to draw the reader to the events surrounding the scene. Instead of stating “I could see the sun setting as I flew over the bar”, you described the colors very descriptively adding literary merit. Your rationale was informative as well and explained your writing effectively.
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