This book is simply a beautiful read with its rich descriptive prose as it explores the sensory sensations we experience. I think it helps writers create better descriptions, and it may help readers appreciate the descriptions in a book.
Authors need to describe something so that readers can clearly picture whatever is placed in a scene from the weather, the setting, people, or things. If it's seen by the characters, it must be described so that the reader can see it too.
Description should paint a picture. It's not a gray winter sky—it's a sky the color of two-day old dirty snow. It's not yellow—it's canary or maybe it's chartreuse.
This book will help you with writing descriptions and give you a lovely mix of philosophy and physiology.
Writing and Vision
Many who know me know that I have vision problems. It's been an ongoing issue for a few years now. It's a concern because the sensory experience of vision is an intrinsic part of the human experience for us who have been blessed with the gift of sight. I say blessed because one does not know how precious it is until the threat of losing it hangs over one's head like an axe that might fall at any moment.
Facts About Eyes and Vision
(1) Our sense of sight is responsible for 90-95% of all of our sensory perception.
(2) Human eyes can perceive more than a million simultaneous visual impressions.
(3) Human eyes can discriminate among nearly 8 million gradations of color.(5) Human eyes take about an hour to completely adapt to seeing in the dark.
(6) When you see something pleasing, your pupil can dilate as much as 45%.
(7) Blue eyes are most sensitive to light with dark brown the least sensitive.
Takeaway Truth
Paint with ordinary words like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple and you end up with a rather plain picture. Instead, try painting with bold words like tomato, vermillion, pumpkin, terra cotta, chartreuse, olive, cerulean, azure, and orchid.
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