Over the music pumping into my ear pods, I hear his muffled words. "You have that look, Beth."
Somewhat irritated, I am jerked back into an unwelcomed reality. "Huh?"
He looks at the glowing light of my laptop. "Oh, writing?"
Avoiding slipping any snarky responses, I want to be back in the scene… so, I merely nod.
"Must be intense," he states with a smile before leaving.
He has no idea.
Intensity...
It is an accurate description of where I go when writing some scenes. More than a feeling, it is a place.
Closing my eyes, I return to it - somewhere in Europe, the 1940s. The swells of the music flooding my ears trap me there, in the farmhouse, at dusk. Him, sweat drenched and unsteadily aiming a gun...and her, in the corner, bluish black marks emerging on her left cheekbone, stifling sobs. It is more than seeing and hearing, it's the touch - the texture of the dirty wood floor she sits on...the cold metal he holds too tightly in his hand. It's smell - a mixture of burning meat and wild orchids that drifts in the open door. And I am there, the invisible observer, watching it all unfold, my fingers documenting the drama on the unseen letters of my keyboard.
I am emotionally and physically entangled in another century and location, captured, in a captivity of my own choosing. True, it is intense, but I don't want to leave that room until they both do...and I wont.
Penning a scene, whether intense as the one above or benign as two little girls giggling with their cookies, requires the writer to be there. We are the CSI of the book - having to observe and record everything we see, smell, hear, feel…every minute detail that we may or may not use in the final product. Close your eyes and be there - look around, take a deep breath, listen…and write it all down. How else are we to bring a reader there to truly experience what we are trying to portray?
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