Visceral Writing + Nostalgia = Effective Writing Every Time

Pow! Right in the kisser! 

A knife in the gut! 

Intestines spilling out of an open wound! 

Bloody bullet holes!

Those are the kinds of things that often come to mind when we think or talk about visceral writing. Gross stuff. Stuff that is painful to feel. Feelings that make a reader feel bad. 

We like to think, I believe, that visceral writing is a perfect tool for crime fiction and horror stories, but maybe not so much for regular fiction that doesn't include fistfights, stab wounds, gunshots, or the rambling undead. But is that really true?

According to Vocabulary.com:

"When something's visceral, you feel it in your guts. A visceral feeling is intuitive — there might not be a rational explanation, but you feel that you know what's best, like your visceral reaction against egg salad." Visceral comes from the word viscera, or the gut, the organs. Visceral writing is that which produces a sensation physically in a reader's body, not just in a reader's mind.

But let's be honest. Are bad feelings the only kinds of feelings we experience in our gut, in our body, in our viscera? Not for me. And I certainly hope not for you either. What a horrible way to live. 

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
(Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do)

Remember the hysterical closing scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian? Who my age doesn't? Brian hasn't had the kind of life he expected and as he is being crucified, he and the others hanging there in the hot sun still find a way to look on the positive side of their situation. 

We can do the same even though we write viscerally. We can use the same tools, flex those same muscles to create gut feelings and physical sensations that stir up good feelings and not feelings of nausea or unease.

Don't believe me? 

Try these on for size. Picture these things, but not with your eyes. 

• Grandma's fried chicken sizzling in an iron skillet and how that made you salivate, almost tasting it through your nose
• The kitten-fur softness of the flannel blanket you had as a kid and carried around so much that mom and dad had to wash it every few days
• Not only the sweet taste but the crystalline texture of the rock candy you could trace with your tongue that you only bought once a year on the way to your usual family vacation spot

Can you see them? Good, but not good enough. Can you hear them? Can you feel them? Can you taste them? Can you smell them? Now here's the real kicker... can you experience them?

Let's look at each example and see what senses they activate. 

Grandma's fried chicken sizzling in an iron skillet and how that made you salivate, almost tasting it through your nose

Sight? Sure. Sound? Yep, nothing like the sizzling of anything being fried. The more grease the better. Feel? Yep. I remember getting too close and the leaping pings of grease finding the sensitive skin on my arm. Smell? Oh yeah, and if your Grandma was like mine, her special seasoning belonged only to her brain and the smell of the chicken cooking was different from any of your friends' families cooking fried chicken. Taste? Not the chicken. Not yet, but the taste of Crisco in the air, the thick greasy flavor that said "There's no way I can hold on until dinner." (Writing this is making me hungry.)

That's visceral right there. And there's not a zombie, a serial killer, or a crime scene anywhere in view. 

Moving on...

The kitten-fur softness of the flannel blanket you had as a kid and carried around so much that mom and dad had to wash it every few days

Sight? Again, sure, but that's the easy one, the low-hanging fruit. Sound? Not as much, but I can hear the blanket sliding on the linoleum floor or the hallway. Feel? This one is all about the feels. The gentle, soft way that blanket felt wrapped on my bare shoulders, even as a teenager. The warmth I felt quickly simply by virtue of being covered thanks to the way it trapped heat. Taste? Of course. (Like you never stuck your blanket in your mouth. Don't lie to me.) Smell? It ended up smelling like my skin where I held it, like whatever had been spilled in the floor where I dragged it, and like whatever Mom was cooking that lingered in the air. That's why it had to be washed so much. 

Next.

Not only the sweet taste but the crystalline texture of the rock candy you could trace with your tongue that you only bought once a year on the way to your usual family vacation spot

If you missed this special treat on the trips to the beach each Summer with your family, then you really missed out. There were dozens of hole-in-the-wall stores along the roads where you could get not only rock candy, but pecan brittle, divinity, pecan logs, invisble ink activity books, and plastic alligators to play with in the car. 

But enough about my childhood. We're supposed to be talking about visceral, senses-led writing. 

So... 

Sight? Yep. Red, green, blue, white, pink. Sharp and shiny. Hear? That crunch that sounds like not just the candy is breaking but your teeth also. Taste? Pure sugar, baby. Smell? It invades my sinuses with every bite. And the big one -- feel? If you can't feel the sharp points that you traced with your tongue, exploring each crevice and plain and peak before chomping down on a bite, then you're not trying hard enough. 

Have we unlearned all that we once thought about visceral writing yet? Have we tossed out the idea that it's only good for dangerous, violent, abhorrent feelings in our gut? Have we begun to see that the same tool we can use to destroy a reader's pscyhe (in the best way possible) can also be used to take them on a trip to good feelings and happy memories too? 

Wait?! Memories? What do they have to do with all this?

I'm glad you asked. 

Yesterday Once More
(Shooby doo, lang, lang)

Nostalgia. 

Merriam-Webster defines it as a noun, a feeling of longing, a "wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." Simply put, nostalgia is memory, albeit a positive one we enjoy reliving. But at its heart, memory is what makes all visceral writing work.

Yes, even the negative usages. 

Why does that crude, iron-blood drawing on the crime scene floor turn our stomachs? Because we've smelled it before, tasted it in the air even if it was only from an injury on the ball field or falling out of a tree or getting smacked in the face by a careless sibling in a hurry. Why does that steel bar crashing into our main character's stomach hurt us too when we feel the bruises start to form with words alone? Because most of us have either felt it or watched someone else feel it and the words trigger the "ouchness" of the memory. 

Let's just call that the "bad nostalgia," the feeling of "wanting to avoid some past and completely recoverable condition."

Just like our "bad nostalgia," our classic nostalgia, or wistful yearning works together with our sensory details when we tell stories to create the ultimate form of positive visceral writing. When we reinforce our readers' nostalgia with the right details that trigger sights, sounds, smells, touch feelings, and tastes they long to experience again, we can shortcut (in effect) the rational brain and go straight for the memory centers that make them feel and experience our stories. 

It's kind of like learning sight words in school. When you recognize a word immediately, you don't have to use any brain power to apply to spelling, meaning, or context. It just is. 

In the same way, the right details partner with nostalgia. The right smell, taste, or feel word can skip the rational brain and find immediate comfort in a sensory memory that makes it identify with the scene being described. 

Now, this doesn't always have to be used in a straightforward way. Sometimes the best writers will use positive sensory details to create conflict in the gut of a reader. Let's say, for example, that the smell of the pie cooking reminds our spy of home, but she's not supposed to let anything distract her from her mission. And in spite of the pain in her ribs from the beating she took before convincing the bad guys she was on their side, the scent of the pie relaxes her. The entire experience is supposed to be something negative she won't mind putting behind her, but that damn pie and it's nostalgia gut feeling is getting in the way. Let the reader feel the emotional, gut conflict right along with the character. 

When you reinforce physical sensations with emotional sensations, that's always effective wordsmithing. And, after all, isn't that the goal?