Introduction
Welcome to your third lesson. In our last session, we built a foundational vocabulary for creative writing by identifying the five types of sensory imagery: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. You practiced recognizing how authors use these to create immersive scenes.
Today, we will take a significant step from analyzing imagery to applying it. The objective is to use concrete sensory details to describe an abstract emotion. This is one of the most powerful techniques in writing. Instead of simply telling a reader "the character was lonely," you will learn to make the reader feel that loneliness through tangible experiences. This principle, often called "showing, not telling," is fundamental to crafting the kind of meaningful and philosophical work you're drawn to, as it bridges the gap between abstract ideas and lived, sensory reality.
The Core Principle: Showing, Not Telling
Writers often distinguish between "telling" and "showing."
- Telling is summarizing. It gives the reader information directly. "She was happy."
- Showing is dramatizing. It gives the reader evidence and allows them to deduce the emotion themselves. "A goofy grin spread across her face, and she jumped clean over the front gate."
The second approach is far more engaging. It invites the reader to participate in the story. To get a feel for this crucial concept, let's start with a video that breaks it down.
How to Show, Not Tell: The Complete Writing Guide
The video 'How to Show, Not Tell' by Diane Callahan offers an excellent explanation of this principle. We'll watch a few key segments that get to the heart of today's lesson.
Please watch the following parts: 00:00 - 03:53: Pay attention to the distinction 'Showing dramatizes. Telling summarizes.' and the Pixar writer's analogy of giving the audience 'two plus two' instead of 'four'. This idea of letting the reader solve a small puzzle is key. 05:32 - 05:57: This brief clip reinforces that moments involving emotions are prime candidates for 'showing'. 07:20 - 10:09: This section is crucial. It shows how to replace abstract feelings like 'happiness' with concrete actions and details. Notice the practical tip: ask yourself, 'Can a camera see it?' This helps ground your writing in the physical world.
As the video demonstrates, the goal is to translate an internal, abstract state (like fear, joy, or love) into external, concrete evidence. This evidence is almost always rooted in the five senses we discussed in our last lesson.
Grounding Emotions in the Senses
So, how do we find the right sensory details to convey a specific emotion? Often, the answer lies in memory, observation, and allowing an emotion to color our perception of the world.
A powerful way to practice this is by connecting an emotion to a specific memory. The following video guides you through this exact process, using the emotion of grief as an example.
Everything you need to write a poem (and how it can save a life) | Daniel Tysdal | TEDxUTSC
In this TEDx Talk, poet Daniel Tysdal walks through an exercise that perfectly illustrates our goal. He shows how to summon sensory details related to an abstract feeling of loss.
Watch from 05:58 to 09:06. As he prompts the audience to think about a lost loved one, notice how he asks for specific sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. He even points out how the absence of a sense—the 'silence of his phone'—can be a powerful image for pain.
This exercise reveals that our memories of people and experiences are not abstract; they are collections of sensory data. The smell of a particular coffee, the feel of a coat's fabric, the sound of a specific laugh—these concrete details are the emotion.
Another technique is to let an object "carry" the emotion for you. A writer can imbue a simple object with immense feeling through careful description.
MOVING FROM THE ABSTRACT TO THE CONCRETE
This brief guide from the Poetry School, 'MOVING FROM THE ABSTRACT TO THE CONCRETE,' provides a poetic perspective on our topic.
Please read the first page of this PDF. Focus on the idea that abstract nouns like 'loneliness' are 'slippery' and that we should let concrete nouns 'carry the emotion'. Pay close attention to the example from Billy Collins's poem 'On Turning Ten,' where the bicycle has 'all the dark blue speed drained out of it.' This is a masterful example of showing a feeling (the loss of childhood energy) through a concrete image.
Writing Exercise: Imbuing an Object with Emotion
Now it's your turn to put this into practice. Your interest in writers like Kafka is relevant here; he was a master at creating atmospheres of anxiety and alienation not by naming them, but by describing rooms, corridors, and physical transformations in a way that feels alienating.
This exercise is adapted from the Poetry School resource you just read.
Your Task:
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Choose one abstract emotion from the list below. Think about the kinds of psychological states that interest you.
- Loneliness
- Anxiety
- Joy
- Nostalgia
- Dread
- Comfort
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Choose a simple, concrete object. It could be anything in the room with you right now: a coffee mug, a houseplant, a pen, a window.
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Write a short paragraph (5-7 sentences) describing that object. Your description must be filtered through the lens of the emotion you chose. Use details that appeal to at least three of the five senses.
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The Rule: You are not allowed to name the emotion. Your goal is to make your reader feel it purely through your description of the object.
Example:
Let's say I choose the emotion Loneliness and the object a teacup.
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Telling: "The teacup on the table made him feel lonely."
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Showing: "The teacup sat in the middle of the vast oak table. A faint ring of moisture on the wood was already beginning to disappear. Its handle, cold and smooth, pointed toward an empty chair. A lipstick smudge, a pale pink ghost, clung to the rim, and the last dregs of tea at the bottom had the bitter smell of something left behind."
In this "showing" version, the details—the vast table (visual), the cold handle (tactile), the lipstick ghost (visual), the bitter smell (olfactory)—all work together to create a feeling of loneliness and absence without ever using the word.
Now, you try. Take about 15 minutes for this exercise.
Conclusion
In this lesson, you've learned to translate abstract feelings into concrete, sensory language—a skill that moves your writing from merely reporting on an experience to creating one for your reader.
Key Takeaways:
- The principle of "Show, Don't Tell" is about dramatizing emotion through action, dialogue, and sensory detail rather than summarizing it with abstract labels.
- Abstract emotions can be powerfully conveyed by grounding them in the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
- A concrete object can be made to "carry" an emotion through specific, carefully chosen descriptive details.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
You now have a solid foundation in using imagery to create sensation and emotion. In our next lesson, we'll sharpen these descriptive tools by exploring two specific forms of comparison: simile and metaphor. You will learn to distinguish between them and see how they can create surprising, insightful, and memorable images in your writing.