Authors, do you ever think about your body in conjunction with your writing, beyond acknowledging that Horror makes you feel fear, Suspense makes you feel tense, and Romance might make you feel all tingly? Do you let those feels stagnate in your body once you’ve gotten them happening by reading, or listening to a work of fiction, or do you then take what’s been created and move it through your body? Do you employ movement when writing to help create those and much more subtle and complex range of bodily reactions in your audience?
Here is an article I wrote briefly describing the &Now Festival of New Writing coming up end of March near LA, where I’ll be on a panel. The way of moving I suggest applies to Genre writers as much as to the wild multi-media experimental Literary type attending in person.
You know the persistent cultural image of the stereotypical author hunched over a laptop while others are out socializing, dancing, laughing together, having adventures, hiking, playing tennis, getting it on. Everything we experience comes through out bodies, of which our brains are a part, yes? Do you ever take time to notice how what you like to read makes your body feel, and where? Do you have to just label it with a word, but can you express it physically?
If you pay attention to how you feel what you read and hear, that can help you know the physical effect you want to create for your own readers. And if you match that state with your body as you’re in the process of making your narrative, if you act out how your work will accomplish that in your readers, you’ll have a stronger chance of doing so.
I use movement every time I’m ready to come up with the next big turn in my narratives, to gather up the big reveal to myself, from the standpoint of action, excitement, forward motion on the page. I gesture big, pace quickly, dance, leap, diagram in the air. I act out what the characters are feeling and doing, and what I want the readers to feel.
Feel free to look through my page in my Online Writing Academy site full of Somatics suggestions.
Tantra Bensko's Genre Fiction 