Imagery examples: How to draw people into your story [List]

Imagery has a huge effect on your audience. In this article you will find a list of examples of imagery, so that you can come up with them yourself afterwards. This is an important building block of your stories, metaphors,  poems, but it also comes in handy in other applications. 

Examples of imagery

• A rich bouquet of sounds …
• The grains of sand tickled the soles of my foot …
• A clear blue river, like blue silk under the sky …
• The whispering rain in the reeds …
• The wind frolics with the sea …
• The scent of luscious flowers pierced his nose …
• The flowers waved at him … as if greeting him …
• He shot off like a bolt of lightning
• The alarm bells when we decided to leave
• She was drowning in emotions.
• A burning patch of snow (paradoxically!)
• He started the return journey with lead in his shoes …
• The leaves of the trees sway back and forth …
• And opened his heart …
• His face bloomed …
• He caught a glimpse of his mother …
• The sun seemed to have turned all its heat on me … Like a big eye, with all its attention on me …
• Summer is calling … He beckons through the window.
• A blanket of snow covered the entire street.
• The daffodils danced in the wind.
• The sailboat danced on the waves, like a lover dancing with you with the Waltz.
• Where the North Sea kissed the Scheveningen coast …
• He rushed towards me like an angry bull.
• The sun, high in the sky, stared at me fiercely …
• My pores opened, dripping like a wet towel.
• A breeze of wind came by, and I wanted to embrace it, before it left you again, like a lover …
• Clear, sparkling, shiny, cold, fresh water …
• The silence was shattered by her scream.
• He could never escape the iron grip of desire …
• She gave me hope … Like a lighthouse in a stormy sea in the night.
• Her blue eyes were as bright as the sun, blue as the sky and soft as silk.

Tip 1 for imagery: the word ‘as’ and ‘like’

Use the word ‘as’, ‘like’ and ‘as if’, and the imagery will come to you naturally. “And the cool air slipped through my fingers again … Like a lover leaving you…”.

Tip 2 for imagery: use the imagery as the subject in the sentence

So avoid the words: ‘I saw the Jasmine tree, I felt the water on my arm, I heard the refreshing water …’ Instead use: ‘Clear sounds of refreshing water cooled my arms as the Jasmine air filled my nostrils. ‘

Tip 3 for imagery: involve all five senses

As you can see in the examples at the top of this article, it is quite easy to involve all the senses in your story.

Tip 4 for imagery: describe something completely different from what you seem to describe

Thanks to imagery, you can make it seem like you are describing something completely different from what you are actually describing. This way you can provide a nice surprise to your audience at the end of your description.

Do you also want to experience the effect of imagery in conversations?

Imagery is excellent for stories, metaphors and other areas. If you want to be able to achieve the same effect in a normal conversation, you can use a subtler form of imagery: predicates. Therefore also read the article with a list of predicates.  Finally, it is good to know that both predicates and imagery play a major role during an NLP Training.

Imagery is cool, but there is a language model that really does magic

Imagery is already very interesting. For those who find it interesting how you can influence with language, there is a very interesting model. We are of course talking about the milton model.  Read all about it in the accompanying article, including examples.