Using Specific-Nouns Creates a Clearer Image in Your Reader’s Mind
and that makes your prose more immersive
Have you observed what happens in your mind when you read a noun?Whenever I read words like car, bus, road, box, etc, they create an image in my mind.
However, if the noun is vague, it creates a vague image (which sometimes my imagination fills up with an image from my past experiences), while if the noun is specific, it creates a clear image in my mind.
Clear images make the reading experience more immersive and engaging. They also demand less cognitive processing, leaving the reader’s mind free to process what the prose wants to convey.
Let’s do a small exercise in meta-reading and get a direct experience of how we process nouns.
The following four lines describe a vehicle in the order of vague to clear.
Read them and observe the images they create in your mind.
She sped from Brussels to Ghent in her vehicle.
When I read this line, I see a woman driving fast. It’s the image of a woman driving a large 60s gas-guzzler, on a US highway, from a Hollywood movie I saw a few months back.
I haven’t seen the highway from Brussels to Ghent in real-life, so my brain…
