Imagery

There are so many different things that take a story from being just words to something that catches people's hearts and minds. Every aspect of the story is important to making up the whole...the speaker, the setting, the characters, but to me the most striking part of any literary work is the imagery, whether visual or auditory. To me, that's what makes the words come alive, paints the images in your head. It's what makes you feel a breeze on your face, or the fear of the character. Imagery let's you hear voices, and smell fire, and everything else that's a part of the individual story. Like in the poem "Birches" by Frost, the line about the sun's warmth making the branches shed their crystal shells...you can read that one single line and see a tree heavy with ice, and picture the thin light of morning soaking into them and sending ice to the ground below. Without that type of imagery, that particular choice of words, it's just a poem about trees in winter, not something that comes to life for the reader as each line unfolds. Don't get me wrong, everything about a story or poem has to be well-written for it to touch people, but without strong imagery...well, it's just words, plain and simple. Just a story. Just a thought. Imagery is what makes it real.