05 Premium: Identify Your Learning Style to Edit Your Writing More Effectively

What is your learning style? (5 senses)

Identify Your Learning Style to Edit Your Writing More Effectively

The episode explains how understanding your learning style—how you take in information through sensory channels—can improve your writing and editing.

Drawing on NLP (neurolinguistic programming), it highlights three primary modes (auditory, visual, kinesthetic) and notes two additional senses (gustatory/taste and olfactory/smell) that may be emphasized more in other cultures, such as in France.

Examples: Beth’s husband, Ezra, edits by reading aloud because he is strongly auditory, while she needs to visualize scenes and feel actions emotionally and physically.

Writers are encouraged to notice which senses they rely on most when rereading, what signals when something is right or wrong in a manuscript, and how spatial awareness can combine visual and kinesthetic strengths.

This awareness becomes an assessment tool and can help strengthen weaker sensory dimensions in fiction.

00:00 Learning Style Overview 

00:36 Senses Shape Writing 

01:27 NLP Sensory Channels 

02:14 Auditory Visual Kinesthetic Examples 

03:18 Find Your Primary Style 

04:46 Different Writer Wiring 

05:20 Spatial Awareness And Maps 

05:39 Editing With Sensory Checks 

06:11 Wrap Up And Next Steps

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

In today's episode we are gonna talk about what is your learning style, how you like to take in information, and the purpose of this is basically to assess what are your preferences, and this will help you with your editing choices and also help you see strengths and weaknesses, but it's not in a bad way. This is really about how you take in your environment and it's gonna affect the way you have already written your first draft, and it's gonna affect your choices when you edit. So here's what I'm talking about. We all walk around the world with our senses. We use our senses to notice the world, to process the world and make sense of the world. The five senses. Yes. I'm talking about hearing, which is auditory seeing, which is our visual field feeling, which is kinesthetic, or it's a combination of the above. We're all taking in the world through what we hear, what we see, and what we feel in some combination, and sometimes either just one of those or some combination of them. And by feeling, I'm encompassing our physicality, the way our physical body is receiving the feelings. And in English, we use the word feeling to mean both body feelings and emotions. And I'm really talking about, both of them. So it was all together. So in my NLP training, neurolinguistic programming, we talk about these three primary channels for how people take in their environment. Now, there's two more that aren't as common in North America, but are common in other parts of the world, and that is gustatory, which is taste, and olfactory, which is smell. So for example, I lived in France. We lived in France, and the French will talk about how something tastes. Oh, that tasted great. Whereas we might say in America that sounded good or that that felt good, but the French will use the sensory details of, of smell, and taste much more strongly. Now let's break this down. What might this look like for you? Now, my co-teacher in this class, my husband Ezra, he reads his stories aloud because for him reading is super auditory. So if dialogue doesn't sound right or anything doesn't sound right, he knows how to fix it. So when he hears either dialogue or narrative, it allows him to make choices and fix that. Super auditory. I am very visual. I need to be able to read the scene. So when I reread my work, if I can't see what's going on. I know something is missing, so I not only need to see the words on the page to edit my work well, I also need to visualize the scene. I'm also very kinesthetic, so I need to feel the action if I can't feel it either emotionally or via the body sensations or both, that I know there's something missing in this moment. So we're all combining our auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, and then also sometimes. Olfactory and gustatory. So smell and taste. We're combining all of these all the time, but maybe not all at once. So when you're reading your book, notice what are you paying attention to the most? Are you paying attention to the visual? Are you paying attention to the auditory? Are you paying attention to the feeling? A combination of these? So notice what is your strength here and notice what really helps you-- What makes you aware that something isn't right? And what makes you aware that something is right in your manuscript when you're rereading your work and when you're editing your work? So a combination of the above-- an example of that is when I read the very beginning of my book, I'm immediately checking for, how does it sound? Can I see what's happening and can I feel it? And I do the same when I edit other people's work. If I'm not immediately drawn in, and this is specific to the opening of a book, but it's the same for every scene, then I am always thinking about, can I see it? Can I hear it? And can I feel it? So notice what is your primary learning style when you read your book. I've had writers who will say their first auditory, then kinesthetic, and then a visual is a distant third. That's so interesting. I've had lots of writers say their visual first, then kinesthetic, then auditory. And a lot of writers I've worked with, they're like, oh, I need to have all of it happening. some writers are like, oh, I'm super auditory. I hear my characters' voices. I need to hear them very powerfully. and then I need to see everything. And then third is kinesthetic. that's very interesting. We're not all wired the same way. and that's totally fine. Some people are hyper visual. They need to be able to see everything first, and then after that they might tune into sound or the feeling sense, but not, right away. and some people are incredibly kinesthetic. They need to actually rewrite the sentence and do something hands on before they can figure it out. So notice if in the real world you need to do something before you can understand it. That's very kinesthetic. So that would be your learning style. I want to just say something about spatial awareness. That's a very visual and kinesthetic skill. So if you like making maps for your story world so you can understand where everything is, it's in relationship to your character walking around in that world. So I would say that's visual and kinesthetic. Now, how can this help you as a writer? This is gonna help you in the editing process. It's two-layered. You can pay attention to when things aren't working and notice what sensory input are you getting that on? I often get it in the body. I have a kinesthetic feeling when things aren't working. When I'm reviewing my work, and I notice something is not right, then I also ask myself, can I see what's going on in the scene? Can I hear what's going on in the scene? Can I feel what's going on in the scene? And I use that as an assessment tool. Alright, so that's today on what is your learning style? Is it auditory or visual or kinesthetic or gustatory, which is taste or olfactory, which is smell? Or combination? And what is your strongest sense? And what is maybe the, the least the sense that you use the least? It's good to know that because it could be something that you can strengthen and even put into your fiction. All right. That's it for this week. Write long and prosper.