Any Advice for ASMR Writing? · 5:48am Sep 30th, 2015
If you didn't know, I have a passing interest in ASMR.
For those unaware, ASMR stands for "Autonomous Aensory Meridian Response". It's that sort of tingle you get in the back of your head triggered by certain things, usually in quiet situations. Could be sounds, whispering, lights, feelings, or something else. For me, I get it the most through certain scenes in stories. Scenes that I'll usually go back and read over and over for the tinglyness. I've actually attempted to put some ASMR into both chapters of Shylock with the in depth descriptions of the doctor check-ups.
Now that the sensation is becoming more mainstream, I'm curious if anyone can help me try to find a guide or something to stimulate it in writing form. Any advice would be helpful, and maybe share some of your own ASMR triggers if any.
one of my ASMR "triggers" as you put it, is when someone tries to psychologically examine my personality. I know that that's not going to help you with your stories but I've not done enough research into the subject.
The response is triggered by a very, very wide variety of things, so unfortunately you kinda have to tailor it to a certain subgroup. In my case I tend to just talk close to a microphone with a pop filter, which triggers the response most people get from both audio and 'proximity' response. You tend to need a certain timbre of voice to do that sometimes, and it only works on a minority.
In writing form I'm not sure. You would need to find someone who is normally known to have this effect happen to them and then work with them personally to experiment, more or less. Because the response requires pretty much an imaginary sensation to be conjured out of nowhere, that means (in my own opinion) that the key to it must be immersiveness in terms of sensory description. Avoiding anything in the writing that might distract and look for the best flow to the sentences.
Some people might respond to sensory things, some might respond (like Stardust) to situation description. Ask around with friends and readers and see if you can find what the majority is most likely to be affected by rather than any niches and work from there? I stick to ASMR recording; much easier as far as I'm concerned!
By ASMR, I think you mean an adrenaline spike which makes the hair on your body stand on end, and the tingly sensation down the spine. If it is strong enough, people say it travels through nearly the entire body, it is just most noticeable around the spine.
In my experience, that is going to be caused by 2 things.
1. A Classically conditioned stimulus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning) resulting in an adrenaline rush (without the heart becoming excited). This isn't useful unless the story is for a know person.
2. A extreme jump in engagement (in the form of terror, discovery, wonder, joy) which then triggers a flight or flight response which then in tern causes an adrenaline spike to surge throughout the body.
One thing I would challenge you to do is abstract the stimulus so that you can invoke the state at command. This can be done by connecting the stimulus and to a secondary stimulus. For example, when you read the part of the book where you feel tingly, do some physical gesture (squint eyes, cross fingers, and try and intensify the reading experience). After you have done this a few dozen times (over a week or two), you should be able to only think about reading the book and do those physical gestures.
On a side note do you plan to finish Room 213, I think I might want to read it, but am worried it won't ever get finished and there is nothing worse than a story which is left half read.
3670008
I do plan on finishing it. I have too much written already to just sweep it away.
It'll just have to wait until things calm down.