RWT: Full Immersion: How to Make your Writing Space Match your Story!

The Random Writing Tip for today is all about little changes you can make to your writing space to help you feel immersed in your story. This might all sound like a lot of extra work, but trust me, if you do it right it can make a BIG difference. I use this technique a lot (not all the time though, like I said, it takes work) and it really helps with writer's block. I've heard of other people doing this a little bit with music, but why stop at just music!

So you guys have probably read/heard about people listening to music that fits with their character to help get into that character's brain while putting them on the page. Personally, I've never been able to do that because once you put words in a song it distracts me and can no longer serve as just background noise since some part of my brain is always trying to follow along with the words. That's why when I decided to try this musical immersion thing, I went with songs that were strictly piano, or violin, or whatever I was in the mood for when I sat down to get some serious writing done. It worked pretty well, but I still felt like it wasn't enough to just have background noise. I wanted what I was hearing to fit better with what I was writing. That's when I had the idea to unplug my headphones and fill my room with the sounds my characters would have been hearing in the book. 

I was trying to write a scene where my three main characters were huddled under a log, seeking shelter from a rainstorm. So I literally just Googled rain in the forest and got a couple hundred tracks to choose from. The really great part was I could be as specific as I wanted. I could get rain with thunder, or wind, or animal sounds in the background. A lot of the tracks were really long too. They would go on for a couple of hours, so I didn't have to worry about constantly replaying them every three minutes. 

I started using this technique all the time and loved how it made me feel like I was standing right next to my characters, no matter where they were. As I continued to use it, I started to get more and more specific with the things I would search for, and have yet to be disappointed. I've Googled and written to things like... 

- sounds of a fancy party 

- sounds of a busy restaurant

- night sounds on a sidewalk in Paris

(Yeah I know, that last one was really specific but still, somebody somewhere literally made a recording of Parisian nighttime sidewalk traffic and put it on Youtube)

Well by this point I was getting pretty spoiled, and started to wonder if I could do anything else to put myself in the story. The trick is to go after as many senses as you can. And you can go as far with this as you want. Do anything and everything to your writing space to make it fit the scene you're working on that day. 

Are your characters somewhere cold? Crank up the AC or turn on a fan until you have just as many goosebumps as they do. Are they outside? Then go outside (duh) or maybe sit as close to an open window as you can. Are they somewhere dark? Turn off all the lights! Or are they in a creepy room lit only by candles? LIGHT SOME CANDLES.

In case you were wondering, you can even do this with smell! I got a diffuser this past Christmas and for you barbarians who don't know what a diffuser is (I didn't know either until I got one), it's basically a machine you fill with water and a few drops of essential oils, and then it fills your room with delicious smells of your choice. Not only do the smells all (supposedly) possess their own helpful properties like clearing your head, sharpening your focus, or making you sleepy, they can also help set the scene in your writing space. For example, if your characters are in the woods (sorry for using this example so much, my characters are always in the woods) you can pick something earthy so your nose will trick your writer's brain into thinking you're in the woods too. 

If you really want to go crazy (and I've yet to actually do this but it just occurred to me) you can try this technique with taste. Especially if you're having a hard time with specific details, like how your character should describe the taste of an orange. GO EAT AN ORANGE. 

I'll confess I don't typically go that far with my immersion techniques. I usually just stick to background noise, diffusing my essential oils, and occasionally opening a window nearby for some fresh air if my characters are outside. But that's the great thing about this immersion stuff, you can put as much effort into it as you want. If you're trying to write an epic fight scene and all you need to do is play Kung Fu Fighting by Cee Lo Green and Jack Black, then go for it! But if you're having a serious case of writer's block and don't mind making the extra effort to get yourself in the story, just try to match as many of your senses to what your characters are experiencing as you possibly can with the space and resources you have. 

Has anyone else tried anything like this? Does it work or is it just a crazy waste of time? Let me know what you guys think in the comments!