#somatic extraction

I. Systemized Worldbuilding Or, “Engineering the Matrix”

Worlds are built like operating systems, not playgrounds. For an Affective Writer, worldbuilding often happens through vibes, aesthetics, emotional tone, and imaginative play. The world is a flexible playground designed to facilitate immediate comfort. For a Resonant Writer, worlds are built like core operating systems. Our worlds are not “invented” so much as they are rigorously engineered from a single point outward, through internal consistency, biological logic, and unrelenting chains of cause and effect. These worlds emerge from a deep translation of:

Somatic logic

Internal architectures

Trauma patterns

Sensory memory

Biomechanical plausibility

Environmental constraints

Its system’s architecture is mapped directly from real-world observation. We’re not so much escaping reality, though it may certainly be part of it. We are taking our internal reality, decoding its structural laws, and adapting them to the fictional subject matter at hand. We are translating.

II. Biomechanical Realism

Bodies that behave like bodies, not marionettes of narrative. In Resonant prose, characters are never pulled along by the strings of a convenient plot or feeling we want to experience. We write directly from somatic memory, and our characters’ bodies possess that material reality.

The Somatic Rules on the Page: Characters have weight, inertia, and sensory load. They experience real-time autonomic responses, trauma reflexes, and proprioceptive feedback. Because we experience it for them as we write and put it on the page.

I do not possess the ability to use the whimsical “don’t think about it” logic. I genuinely envy writers who do. I cannot simply write: “He ran.” Instead, the system automatically documents: the physical shifts of weight, the torque of the hips, the specific breathing pattern, the sensory overload, and the kinesthetic feedback of the ground beneath their feet. It’s not a stylistic gimmick or choice, but an inevitability. When you write directly from the body, the body shows up on the page.

III. Somatic Prose

Prose that originates in sensations, not imagination. Somatic prose originates in raw physiological sensation, even when those sensations are prompted by the imagination. It is sensory-forward, interoceptive, and deeply embodied. It tracks respiration, muscle pressure, temperature, olfactory data, and autonomic shifts. This approach creates prose that feels exceptionally dense, granular, and atmospheric. It isn’t about describing what a character sees from a birds-eye view; it’s documenting what their body experiences from the inside out. Standard Prose: “He felt incredibly sad and defeated.” Somatic Prose: “The sudden hollowing of the chest and collapse of his diaphragm hit first, his vision blurring at the edges, before feeling the slight, cold slide into a dissociative state where he watched himself from across the street.”

This isn’t “purple prose,” but an unvarnished transcription of human physiology under stress.

IV. Objective Narrative Distance

The craft technique that keeps us from drowning in our own bodies. Resonant Writers’ routine defaults to close-third, objective-third, or multi-third perspectives with “somatic bleed.” This is a deliberately highly necessary regulation strategy. Why? Because first- and second-person are too close. These narratives collapse the distance between the writer’s body, the character’s body, and the internal part being expressed. This can quickly become...

too raw

overwhelming

too direct

unfiltered

Third-person gives enough distance to regulate, observe, translate, and process without taking us offline. I can still embody and feel what my characters experience: emotions, biofeedback, sensory details. But I’m not writing from a place of ownership. In clinical frameworks like IFS and TIST, blending occurs when a protective or traumatized Part takes full control of the conscious Self, hijacking your thoughts, emotions, and real-world actions. Writing a narrative in the first or second person collapses the necessary safety distance between the author’s real nervous system and the character’s wounds (or, in the case of anchors, whatever they contain for the author). This can quickly become too raw, unfiltered, and unwittingly dangerous. The Third Person Shield: Third-person pronouns provide the cognitive distance required to observe, translate, and process intense somatic material without triggering a real-world system freeze or emotional hijack. I can embody and feel what my characters experience, but I am writing from a place of stewardship, not ownership. Third-person lets me feel the character without becoming the character.

Objective distance, then, is not a stylistic preference, but a regulation strategy. It lets us write without being consumed.

V. “Writing Without My Skin On”

The experience of somatic proximity at its most intense.

When a Resonant Writer drops completely into somatic immersion, it feels, quite literally, like writing without your skin. It is the experience of writing from the inside of a body outward. You are writing from the exact location of the wound rather than circling safely around it. There is zero buffer between raw physiological sensation and the written language. This state feels incredibly raw, exposed, and deeply alive. However, it can only execute when the internal system is regulated. When the environment is safe, the relational field is stable, and the Anchor Character is safely online, the somatic channel can open wide. This deep somatic proximity is the primary engine of Resonant power. But it is also the highest vulnerability, and the ultimate source of our shutdowns. It has a deep cost, and it is the reason we burn out.

VI. The Takeaway