Anchoring A Passage Using Telling Details
Helping the reader form a mental picture of your writing is easily accomplished with anchoring. By that, we mean linking every scene or idea with an image they can create in their minds.
In fiction writing, this is accomplished by setting a proper backdrop to your scenes. Offer up descriptions of people and places that stimulate the senses, helping the action feel more real, pulling you in deeper into the story.
With nonfiction work, where discussion is focused on ideas rather than events, anchoring images can also be used. Instead of elucidating scenes, however, you do it through a clever use of descriptive language elements.
Figurative language, such as metaphors and similes, are often the best recourse. Comparing the difficulty of solving a math problem to the challenge of untying the world’s tightest knot, for instance, gives the reader a clear image with which to anchor the concept. It stops being the description of a stultifying problem; instead, it becomes an impossibly tight knot that needs serious focus and plenty of hard work to unwind.
Describing the individuals involved and telling their stories is also a good way of involving imagery into nonfiction. People just relate well to people – especially if they have compelling stories.
As with all types of writing work, imagery won’t work well without clear and correct language to express it. And for that, a good grammar software should handily do the trick.