What I'm reading: An Invitation to Sin, by Jo Beverley, Sally Mackenzie, Vanessa Kelly & Katilin O'Riley; Island Nights, by P.J. Mellor
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Today it's another recap of an Emerald City Writers Conference workshop, this one given by Bernadette Pajer. She called her approach "Trigger Writing" and she made some interesting points, giving another way to look at the "show don't tell" rule.
Pajer defined a trigger as a carefully crafted description, rich in innuendo or emotional responses. She said the beauty of triggers is that they engage readers by allowing them to be an active participant in the story.
When you use triggers, you're using implications and connotations rather than denotations, or strict definitions of the words. You're trusting that the reader will have the same associations with the word that you're trying to get across in your prose.
For example, if you put a Dumpster in a scene, odds are your readers are going to see and smell the scene, even if you don't go into details about what it actually looks like or smells like.
