I went to my first My Book Therapy (MBT) retreat in 2009 – the first-ever Storycrafters Retreat. I’m four years further along the writing road, on deadline for my fourth novel, and I often review things I learned back then. One of my favorite MBT techniques is FOCUS, an acronym that helps you craft vivid scene descriptions.

FOCUS stands for:

First Impressions

Observations

Close Up

Simile (or Metaphor)

1.     First Impressions:

Give the reader an overview of the setting – What does the POV character see in a big picture kind of way?

2.     Observations:

Utilize the 5 senses and be intentional and specific:

Smell:

• How does an odor or aroma make you feel? Nauseated? Homesick? Does it make your stomach roil?
• Compare a smell to another smell.
• Mix smells: Maybe a man works with horses or with cars. Maybe a woman is a florist or a mom or an athlete. In A November Bride, my upcoming novella with Harper Collins, my heroine is a personal chef, so I accentuate kitchen aromas.
• Confine the smell to a place or time: 4^th of July or summer camp or the scent of a pine tree on Christmas Eve
• Familiarize yourself with scent words: musty, sweaty, pungent, acrid

Taste:

• Use taste in conjunction with smell: smelling smoke and tasting it at the same time
• Say what the taste is: bitter, salty
• Tell the affect: Her uncle’s egg nog went down like cold slime.
• Attach a memory to the taste: Grandma’s coconut cake

Touch:

Touch slows the scene down and allows us to feel something, recognize it, and give an emotional component to it. Examples: the texture of a favorite coat or your hero’s beard (Does the heroine like it or not?)

Sounds:

• State the sound directly: The whistle blew. The bell chimed.
• Give the sound a strong verb and interesting modifier: “Her words, rough as sandpaper, scraped at the wound Stephen still didn’t know how to live with.”  ( From Somebody Like You)

3.     Close Up:

Zoom in on some details in the room or area that really stand out. In Somebody Like You, I zero in on what’s on my heroine’s TV. She plays John Wayne movies nonstop as a way to fill the silence since her husband died.

4.     Simile or Metaphor

Simile – comparison (as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox)

Metaphor – applying a term or phrase to something else (a mighty fortress is our God)

In Somebody Like You, my heroine discovers after her husband dies that he has an identical twin brother. She resists his initial attempts to connect with her.

Haley didn’t crack a smile. Didn’t even blink. “Why are you here? Now?”

He risked taking a step forward, only to have Haley step back behind the muted blue door and start to close it. “Wait. Please. Hear me out.” They stared at one another, as if through shadowed glass. (simile) Now that he had her attention, how could he explain twelve years of silence?

TWO THINGS TO REMEMBER:

• In a scene, everything you FOCUS on is from the eyes of the Point of View (POV) character.
• You can utilize FOCUS in a static way—where the POV character stands still and sees the details—or you can move the POV character through the scene and have them experience and respond to the Storyworld through the action in the scene.