Does your prose suffer from overly mechanical writing? Your story gets there, but the scenery is somewhat bland? Or maybe even though you’ve pulled out all the stops, using every technique you know of to employ deep point of view, you still want to add a bit of umph to your writing with sensory detail and emotion? Perhaps your fiction is immersive enough, but you feel you could delve just a little deeper. Here are a few ideas to help sharpen your skills by using the holiday season as a time of observation, research, and inspiration for your writing.
Human Behavior
The best writers are careful observers of human behavior and make use of their knowledge in both fiction and nonfiction writing. During the holidays, we can’t help but notice exaggerated and intense human behavior, whether in line at the store, in a coffee shop, at church, or at home. Even the casual observer is sure to encounter some interactions during the holiday season that may not be seen at other times of the year, both the positive and the not-so-positive.
We mingle with people who we don’t normally interact with every day. Perhaps these are people we don’t know well, such people as at work parties, school events, or community happenings. This can also apply to people we share a history with, relatives and family friends.
In the young adult arena, change happens fast. What is true of the attitudes, thoughts, and needs of young adults today may be different that it was in the past. Take the opportunity to reexamine any preconceived ideas you may have and use the knowledge gleaned to apply to your teen characters, while at the same time noting the unchanging elements all young people have faced.
The holiday season is different from the regular day-to-day. People are stressed, thrown into unusual circumstances, and as a result, display the complicated human nature in all its glory. Stress brings out all sorts of emotion and behaviors, including in ourselves. It can bring out the best—and worst—in us.
Chronicling the actions around us and our own internal reactions and thoughts can be useful. (Just don’t write down anything you wouldn’t want people to read!)
Unique Settings
If you have trouble describing settings or integrating sensory detail into your work, the holidays are the perfect time to take special note of surroundings. Over the next two months, novel sights and sounds will be plentiful. Music, food, beautiful decorations, all of these things are a treat for the senses. It’s a perfect time to catalog what you are experiencing as you taste your pumpkin pie, experience the texture, temperature, and scent. And a perfect time to think about memories or feelings that bubble to the surface, which leads me to another component of evocative writing, emotions.
Intense Emotions
If you’re brave enough to peel back some layers during the holiday season, you might find a world of emotional experiences to draw on. I feel like I can’t make it through the holiday season without diving headfirst into a sensory and emotional smorgasbord. I’d be hard-pressed to make it through any holiday season without tears of happiness, gratefulness, and grief. Sometimes all three simultaneously.
Pay attention to the things that put a tear in your eye. Sit in the moment for a little while. Ignore the busyness and listen to what your heart is telling you.
Nostalgia and Connectivity
Every year I bring out the nativity set my grandmother made for me. Then I tell my children about my grandmother. My youngest daughter never got to meet her because she had already passed away before my daughter was born. Yet I tell her the story every year. This is a perfect example of how we often mine our own experiences, capture the feeling and emotion, and pass the story on. The family stories we tell foster connection, as do the memories we keep.
The holidays naturally lend themselves to digging into our own emotions and tender feelings (fond or not) toward the past. Writers can use personal or collective stories as a springboard to do a similar thing with the stories they write, getting in touch with emotion on a deep level. There’s a reason Christmas stories and movies strive to create a nostalgic mood. It helps connect the audience to the story. For writers of young adult novels, reconnecting to the experiences and feelings of our younger selves can help us write authentic characters in our fiction.
Immerse yourself in a highly emotional, sensory environment, observe others reactions and your own, and take notes. Allow yourself to be inspired. Just make sure that you are also living in the moment and treasure all you are blessed with. Remember, the best material for writing—and for a life well-lived—is to live in the moment fully.
Donna Jo Stone is an award-winning multi-genre author. She writes contemporary young adult, historical fiction, and southern fiction. Many of her novels are about tough issues, but she always ends her stories on a note of hope. Finding the faith to carry on through hard battles in a common theme in Donna Jo’s books.
Donna Jo’s Christian Southern Coming of Age, When the Wildflowers Bloom Again, releases November 15th.
Babies are a gift from God, a truth fourteen-year-old Marigold (Mary) Parker knows full well, but the one she carries is the result of assault by her cousin. This secret can destroy her family, and Mary isn’t sure how much of the truth to reveal—or what to do about the baby.
For the latest news on upcoming releases, including her contemporary young adult novel, Promise Me Tomorrow, scheduled for release in 2025, sign up for Donna Jo’s newsletter at donnajostone.com.
Donna Jo’s Christian Southern Coming of Age, When the Wildflowers Bloom Again, releases November 15th.
Babies are a gift from God, a truth fourteen-year-old Marigold (Mary) Parker knows full well, but the one she carries is the result of assault by her cousin. This secret can destroy her family, and Mary isn’t sure how much of the truth to reveal—or what to do about the baby.
For the latest news on upcoming releases, including her contemporary young adult novel, Promise Me Tomorrow, scheduled for release in 2025, sign up for Donna Jo’s newsletter at donnajostone.com.
