Create Visceral Images: a Worksheet

In my recent blog post, 5 Ways to Create Visceral Images in Writing, I talk about the five things I use or describe when trying to evoke strong, emotional images. As a teacher though, I think about how it's easy to say, "Using fruit and describing the fruit creates visceral imagery" but then sill have readers thinking, uhh... I also imagine the many ways people can even describe fruit and have it still be boring. 

In my first blog about this, I go over some examples in my own writing on how I employ the strategies I talk about. In this post though I'm going to give a few more examples from books written by other people, and then offer you a free worksheet that will help you practice using this type of language in steps so you can produce a visceral image on your own at the end.

Examples

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• "Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world" (1).
  

Here, McCarthy focuses on landscape and colors to describe the setting. I absolutely love the use of glaucoma because not only is this an unusual word to use here (which grabs readers' attention), but it really does a great job of of poignantly describing exactly what this world is looking like with no guesses.

The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

• "The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles" (255).
  

In this quote, McCarthy uses such strong verbs like sawed, paled, an deepened. Again, this scene focuses on describing the natural world. By focusing on the nouns (flames, embers, and ground) and what they are doing by using these strong verbs, it's easy to picture what's happening here.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

• "She might be hurrying across a field, running practically, to get to the pump quickly and rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard" (12).
  

I love that Morrison says, "Rinse the chamomile sap from her legs." In this quote, she utilizes both the natural world and the body, and words like rinse, sap, and legs really paint the setting and texture. To top it off, we've got "skin buckled like a washboard" and ahh! What a fantastic image. Again, the verbs and the simile! Utilizing language that is surprising (but still makes sense as a comparison) is a great way to create visceral images.

• "But to be looked at in turn was beyond appetite; it was breaking through her own skin to a place where hunger hadn't been discovered"  (138).
  

This quote focuses on the body - appetite, breaking through skin, hunger. Imagine what being looked at feels like here. This description is so palpable and interesting. It does so much more than just saying, "But to be looked at was needed." Right? Using the language of the body really amplifies the scene and the craving for human connection.

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

• "Torri thinks Tiffany is coming and grinds her own cunt harder onto Tiffany's mouth, smothering her screams, but when I look up at Torri, blood covering my face, meat and pubic hair hanging from my mouth, blood pumping from Tiffany's torn cunt onto the comforter, I can feel her sudden rush of horror" (303).
  

Throughout the book American Psycho, many horrific murders are described, which provides many opportunities for visceral language, especially about the body. In a scene that is both sexual and violent, Ellis uses the destroying of the body to develop his character and themes. The way he describes the body's destruction is also very visceral. As I talked about in previous blog posts, destroying the body is especially transgressive, and now I'm showing you how it's also visceral! This image of a human's meat in someone's mouth is so animalistic that it immediately creates discomfort.

The Worksheet

So how do you write your own visceral language? Language that provides your readers with the exact scene you want? Language that evokes emotion? Language that stands out as breathtaking?

This worksheet quickly reviews the five techniques I use when writing visceral scenes, and then offers scaffolded steps that will help you write your own visceral scene. First you'll brainstorm helpful words to use, then work on writing short scenes.

Download the worksheet below!

If you're interested in sharing anything you wrote, post it in the comments below.

Works Cited

Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. United States, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010.
McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. United States, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road: Pulitzer Prize Winner. Ireland, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Spain, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006.