How do you make a story look real?

"How do you make things look real?" When a writer is asked this question, it is actually a compliment to him.

If someone further says to him, "I seem to be there, I can hear, smell, and feel these places, as if I had walked into the pages of a novel," then what he gives to the reader is truly extraordinary.

When I was asked the same question, my answer was: "With the help of the five senses." Some authors are unaware that the reader's five senses should be used to capture a sense of reality.

It is common to use the reader's visual senses, but how many times do you use the reader's senses of smell, hearing (except in conversation), touch, or taste?

I started writing in 1976 and still have five words on the wall of my office: see, hear, feel, taste, smell.

Whenever I write, I refer to this table and consciously write something with a smell. In fact, some disgusting things have miraculous effects when it comes to creating realism.

Think of the smell of rotten fruit when a person opens the refrigerator; the putrid fat when a person peels a bear skin;

When a woman refuels a fuel tank at an unserved gas station, her hands smell of gasoline.

It's not enough to mention taste at the beginning of the story, you have to refer to that table repeatedly when narrating the plot.

Let's imagine a man and a woman arguing about something, and the man rushes from the door to the kitchen and yells at the woman:

"I can't stand your mother living with us anymore, and the old lady has to move out before I come back, or I'll leave the house!"

In setting up this scene, I can ask the woman to bake pumpkin pie (which tastes sweet and warm, and makes people think back to the happy times of Thanksgiving),

But if you add the smell of pickled spices and vinegar, the scene is allegorical. I'll ask the reader at some point to imagine the smell:

"I solemnly warn you, Laura, that there is her without me, that there is no me without her!" He said, it was as sour as the smell in the kitchen.

Don't forget that during the argument, Laura also put kimchi in the jar. When she's making a loud noise, she may burn her hand and then put her hand in cold water to rinse.

Of course, she may also be pouring salt water into the kimchi, sprinkling it on the ground, and then wiping it clean. She also dried her hands on the apron made of shirky cotton.

She could wipe the sweat from her forehead (hot, itchy), and she could scream and wave the spoon (hard, wooden handle) in her hand and throw it at the man. These all enhance the visual effect.

When the quarrel becomes more intense, what sounds may be heard? Did a dog sneak in and drink water from a tin pie plate?

Is there a moving car making a clicking sound on the road? Could it be the sound of children playing in the yard next door?

When the water on the stove boils, is it clanging?

How hot is the water? Did you tell the reader about the temperature? Does the heroine of the novel put a cup of iced tea or iced coffee next to the pickle can?

The quarrel ends with a man rushing out, but the problem is not resolved, at this time, does the heroine pick up the cup, drink iced coffee, find the coffee bitter, and then make a grimace?

As you can see, it is possible to evoke five sensations at the same time in a plot similar to the one mentioned above, but in order to be able to do this, the plot must be carefully arranged.

Most of the plots can't use all five senses (especially the taste is the most difficult to write into), but you can easily evoke the reader's four senses, and in most plots, you can evoke at least three of the reader's feelings.

When you're skeptical about the veracity of the novel's dialogue, read your dialogue aloud, pretend you're an actor, and say your lines in the kind of tone you need on a movie screen and on stage.

If it sounds blunt and unnatural, it needs to be modified. Don't forget that the ideas that people express in language are always unworked, so make the words spoken by the characters shorter.

People in life always ask questions one by one, and the characters in your novels should do the same, especially when they want to get to know each other.

People often sigh, laugh, scratch their heads, puff up their cheeks, and look at their nails in conversation, and you have to let the characters in the novel have these movements.

And get people to continue their conversation while they're doing work. Use closing words to create imagery. Consider the following two examples:

"You never liked my mom!" Laura shouted. She "banged" and put the kettle down.

"You never liked my mom!" Laura threw down the kettle.

The second sentence adds tension, allowing the storyline to move forward faster, subtracting redundant words and implying rather than telling the reader that Laura is yelling.

This is the best moment of the principles I have mentioned, and it is through these principles that I measure all my work.

Tense moments use fewer and more precise words. I learned this from my English teacher.

When I wrote my second book, there were several plots that I could not write about, but I could not find the reason, so I gave the manuscript to the teacher and asked her to criticize and suggest.

When she told me the rule, I applied it to my novels, and as a result, everything became self-explanatory.

When the plot is tense, it is necessary to use short and concise sentences, use short words in sentences, use fewer closing words, and write suddenly. When you do that, tension can arise.

In contrast, in a more dull plot, where silence and tranquility are shrouded everywhere, longer sentences, longer words, longer paragraphs, and more closing remarks are used.

Doing so will naturally ease tensions. When you conceive a novel, you have to establish a realistic attitude.

Only by observing and thinking can you accurately paint a scene and make the characters credible. They carry out their daily work with an innate sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.

Well, as I said earlier, taste is the hardest thing to write into a novel, but four out of five isn't bad either.

Apply these five senses, using sentence structure to create an atmosphere of either slowness or tension so that the reader of the novel you write can't be left behind because they are so real and believable.