5 Ways to Create Visceral Images in Writing

Visceral: dealing with crude or elemental emotions
- Merriam-Webster

They say a picture is worth a thousand words – and while we probably don’t need that many words, us writers can use some number of words to create our own pictures (and feelings) out of nothing, which is even better. You don't want just any picture though; you want a picture that is visceral and gripping and to create a gritty, beautiful, and emotional image, you've got to give those gritty, beautiful, and emotional details that will paint that picture you want.

These are my 5 favorite ways to create visceral images in writing.

1. Use the five senses

Most writing classes and writing advice will tell you to incorporate sensory details. This is how you “show”. This is how you paint a picture with words. This is how you put a reader in the scene, so they’re right alongside the characters.
 
The five senses: Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
 
You don’t let the reader figure these things out on their own, but you guide them. By incorporating these specific details, you paint the exact picture you want the reader to look at.
 
“He let me in the threads of yesterdays.”
I used such a small detail like threads to incorporate the element of touch. Also, think about how different this picture looks compared to something like: He told me his memories. What makes the line above more visceral?
 
“You’ve never used your teeth to drink the juice of berries.”
I can imagine what it looks like for someone to try and bite down on a berry with their teeth, then swallow the juice, but also imagine the taste of the ripe berries' juice here.
 
Part of this comes down to word choice. Pick one or a few words to focus on that strongly connect(s) to one, or more than one, of the five senses. Your readers don't know anything about the scene except what you show them. They don't know which details are significant or emotional, but by picking senses (or an object that appeals to the senses) to describe in depth, you make sure they do.
 
(Writing poetry will help you practice this, as you'll in some of my examples below see below. You’re focused on way less lines, and really hitting each of those lines home.)

2. Use the natural world

The natural world can be beautiful and dark and complex and so many things that can complicate and heighten an image you're creating. While I don't claim to be an accomplished poet (I mostly write and publish fiction), sometimes I write poems. I’m going to share three poems I’ve written because in each of them I incorporate elements of the natural world, and you can see why I did that and how those details create more visceral images. In the first, I reference honey, harvest, and sunshine to work as symbols. In the second, I use twilight, cliff, and night to offer create a strong setting for what is otherwise a piece that doesn’t have a setting (all of these poems are focused on emotions). In the third, I’m talking about lilacs and rocky hills.

Most of the poems I write are based on an experience or emotion and they try to recreate that emotion as opposed to tell a story. By using the natural world, I can still create a sense of place, and draw on the five senses (scent, taste, sight, touch, smell). Without saying “this smells like X, or this taste like X,” I still offer those sensory details by just referencing things in nature that inherently smell or taste like those things.

My body is honey syrup
spread thin
on minutes to make them sweet
in a time when everything
tastes synthetic.

If you can pull me from the
honeycomb
I will be the harvest, and
a flavor left
stuck to your fingers.

You’ll
want more.

You can drizzle me
warm and smooth
and I’ll melt,
making things taste  
like the low-hanging afterglow
of a stretched out
strand of sunshine,

and
I will not spoil
against your skin.

Where we grip each other’s skin
and unzip our self-control,
you’ll find me bare
and dizzy, hanging from
the edge of life,
highlighted by
the twilight of your words and
shadowed by
the cliff I’m holding
on to.

I’ll take all of dawn
to claw my way back to the
surface where I will lie
face down,
my lips against the gravel,
breathing wild
back into your roots:
a garden of sonder spreading its
way to the surface.

Pull down
the night, like
eyelids,
over the sunset,
and unzip me all over again
before the next
day.

my words will bloom like lilacs
on rocky hills,
wild,
not usually invasive,
and sweet. they’ll flower
first, before the others.
The others will blush,

but mine will flush,
flush the land in a bruise.
colored and tender but
soft.
sensitive.
perennial.  

Like I mentioned above, referencing nature sometimes does double duty. It may create a sense of place, and it definitely incorporates sensory details. Not only do these details strengthen the picture I'm trying to create, but these images work to create that crude emotional response in readers.

3. Color
(describing colors, sure, but I’m also talking about using grapheme-color synesthesia to write texts). This one probably doesn't apply to most people, but it's definitely in the top 5 for me.
 
Yes, using colors and telling readers what something looks like is great – it’s sight, one of the five senses, but when I talk about creating visceral images with colors in writing, I mean something a little different. I’m talking about a form of synesthesia.
 
Synesthesia is when someone experiences one of their senses through another (like tasting color or seeing sounds). I have grapheme-color synesthesia. This is when someone associates a color with a symbol such as letters and/or numbers. For example, the letter e is a dark, navy blue for me. The number one is a very pale yellow, close to white. The name Justin is a blue. I don’t know why these things are what they are, they just are (and the colors associated may be different for different people).
 
I’ve noticed that my synesthesia affects the things I read and write. I find that I especially love books or stories or poems that use words with strong colors, and when all of the words in the piece tend to lean toward a cohesive color scheme (like the story tends to use words with colors that create a black, red, and silver color scheme or a variety of navies and purples). This probably isn’t anything the writer’s thinking about when they do it, and even if they were thinking about it, they probably weren’t writing words that fit the same colors I see, BUT when it works for me, it really works for me.
 
I also find that when I write, and a piece isn’t working for me, it’s probably because the colors are too loose. I need to tighten up words so they create a stronger color scheme.
 
So this number is a very personal way that I create visceral images in my writing, because it doesn’t apply to most people (unless you also have this). (Side note, I love when musical artists have synesthesia because it’s great to see it in their writing. I also have chromesthesia, which is associating colors with sounds – I use these forms of synesthesia to make really great mix CDs that I’ll eventually write about on this blog).
 
Anyway, here's another poem (because it’s easy to focus on a small, complete text)

Worship these wounds at the altar,
smeared,
tender and sore,
and once the sacrifice-
a blood war that
washes me in
memories that bring me back
to a time when I should have said
yes instead of
taking the long way home-
is over,
we will host a blood drive
to share the wealth.
And as everyone leaves,
admiring their new robes
made of crimson,
Your Majesty will grin at his
sophisticated sense of fashion.
 

Many of the words in here are dark colors for me (which align with the subject matter). Worship, wounds, tender, sore, sacrifice, blood, war, memories, everyone, majesty, and sophisticated are reds, blacks, or blues that are nearly black. Words like alter, back, and admiring are lighter – yellows or browns, but paired with the majority reds and blacks it almost creates a small highlight on the colors.
 
Additionally, my short story “If the Rainbow Exploded” published on PANK leans into grapheme-color synesthesia.
 
This probably sounds wild, BUT I swear it’s a thing, and it’s an element of how I, personally, find writing that feels concise. It’s also probably why I frequently use fragments in my stories because extra, small words (like prepositions and things) add in a whole bunch of extra random colors that don’t work so well.

4. Fruit

Fruit, I’ve found, is a beautiful (and easy) way to pull in the five senses, and it also just makes writing sensual. This can lean into sexuality, or not, but I find that it definitely creates visceral images, regardless of the route you’re taking it in.
 
The poem below uses a clementine to really draw out touch, scent, and sight and provides so many beautiful images. Fruits are great symbols, and here, I’m talking about the way that fruit flies are attracted to the fruit, and this image is a metaphor for the dirty nature of having to remove the things we don’t want. Over and over again.
 
Anyway, I absolutely love cheating with the use of fruit, because it can incorporate many senses, can act as a strong symbol or metaphor, and can paint a beautiful, poignant picture for a reader.

A sweet clementine
feels tough to the
soft fingers
that strip it,
but it’s an easy peeler,
yawning open as the finger
pulls apart the skin,
ready to climb inside,
where it’s saccharine,
smooth and glossy, and
oils scented like fresh
suck the palm.

Eggs are laid
on the surface,
feeding on fermentation
and swallowing the juice.
They pull out suffering from the
vulnerability.
Hundreds of
swarthy fruit flies
swarm and infest.

Cut out the damaged flesh now.

This is the cycle of
life.

5. The body

Referencing number two, number four, and the poem above:
the body is another way to bring in the natural world, create strong images, and incorporate the senses (think of the colors, textures, and shapes of different body parts. Think of how many emotional experiences we associate with things like eyes, lips, ears, and hands). The body is also so personal. In "Bodies and Permissions: Breaking Rules & Conduct" and "How to Destroy the Body", I talk about all the ways the body can be used and broken to elicit strong feelings (and create social commentary). Consider which body part(s) you want to describe, and which details will help convey the mood you want (the thesaurus can be great!)
 
Even in the poem above, I reference fingers and talk about stripping, and climbing.
 
It’s again an easy way to do double duty and include multiple senses at once.
 
In my short story "Fat Girls" published on Hobart, I use the female body, messages American culture sends about the female body, and the insecurities this causes to write a story. I try to use the way bodies are seen and represented to create memorable imagery that helps convey the story’s themes. It's not a pretty story, but I don’t claim to write pretty stories.
 
The body does give writers many avenues though to paint a strong, meaningful, and visceral picture. Images that use the body well can create substantially thought-provoking content that invites readers to explore its impact (and your theme(s)).

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If there’s anything you should take away from this: be specific.
Each number on this list requires you to be very specific in your word choices and images:
What part of nature, what type of fruit, what body part?
What is the texture or shape of the collar bone you described? Does describing the collarbone show how poor the person is because they can't afford to eat, or that this person is sick, or has an eating disorder?
How does the fruit feel? What does it taste like? Is it pulpy? Do the seeds press hard into someone's fingers?
What is the texture of the wildflower? Where is it growing? Why is that significant?
What is in your character's garage? Is it an old Santa Claus figuring? Does he have a busted nose? How can you describe that?

Once you pick those out your specific words and images, get even more specific in the way you describe their taste, sent, and feel. Do they sound like anything? What do they look like? Make sure the words you use paint this picture (and if you’re so inclined, paint literal colors too for your grapheme-color folk).

These are the strategies I use when creating imagery in my writing.

What ways do you develop the imagery in your writing?