Writing 202: Writing Human Senses
Greetings and salivating! Yes, this time I mean it! Because today's blog post is all about senses in writing! Like Pavlov’s dogs! Except that was about conditioning, but they got conditioned thanks to senses! They are the way that animals perceive the world and can get information from it, but… I suck at this, so I’ll let someone else do it, namely LADY VERBOSA! (Anne Winchell! And Vivian out!)
Why are Senses Important in Writing?
(Anne:) Eek! So loud! Trust Vivian to blast my hearing, and you know what, I’m salivating for some reason… Was that a bell just now? I’m sure it was my imagination. But Vivian’s ridiculous yelling brings up an important part of writing: the senses!
Imagine a story without any sensory details. Can you? Probably not, because we absorb everything through at least one sense. In most stories, we have visual input through what everything looks like, no matter how bare bones, auditory input through dialogue at the least, and touch or feeling through body reactions. Those aren’t the only senses, though! Good, compelling writing will also bring in scents and tastes to expand the reader’s immersion into the story.
That immersion is key in using sensory inputs to expand your story. For information on how the senses function, Vivian wrote a detailed post on Alien Biology and Senses, which I highly recommend as I won’t go into the biological mechanisms here. But while there are some ways of using the senses that are very basic (and essential), there are also fun ways to use the senses beyond what you would generally do. There are senses beyond the five that humans have! In addition, Vivian and I are going to do an entire post about alien and fantasy senses that will build on everything here. First, though, we need to figure out the human senses, since even in aliens, they’ll be the base in writing as they’re how the reader interprets the world.
Creating Scenes
Everything about writing involves the senses, because that’s how we get our ideas across to other people. So when you’re creating scenes, you need to figure out which senses to use and how to use them to best convey what you want your audience to experience. Now, there are things you want to get across that aren’t sensory, such as emotions, and getting more abstract, we want readers to absorb the structure and the themes and other intangibles. Those are just as important as the senses, but we convey them through senses.
If you’ve read the post on Conveying Without Saying, then you know that you want to express emotions through physical cues that we absorb through the senses as opposed to stating the emotion outright. Yes, the sentence “he was angry” avoids all sensory input, but it’s not great writing for the most part. It can work, but only in limited circumstances. So to create your scenes, you need your senses.
Setting the Stage
(Vivian: Scene 1, take 5, ACTION! 🎬)
And with that, we’re off! Let’s look at the two most important aspects of the scene: setting and character. Setting is the location in which your scene takes place, and you want to use all of your senses to establish it. Character is everything about your character, from their physical appearance to the way their voice sounds. If you’re in a distant point of view (check out my post on Point of View for tips), those are the only senses the narrator has access to. But if you’re in a close point of view, you also want to include how things feel to your character, their scent and how things smell, and their taste and how things taste. Without a clear description of the setting and character, you’ll have a fairly flat story. Now, it’s possible to have a distant point of view without a character, but there will always be setting, even if the setting is blank and empty. The lack of something is still something.
As usual, the audience plays a huge role. What does your audience expect in terms of detail? You need to know your audience to cater your writing to some extent, though you’re welcome to toss that consideration out the window if you like! As I go through each sense, I’ll give some best practices for illustrating the setting and character, so hold your horses and wait a bit before you start writing!
Concrete, Specific Words
The level of detail you go into varies with your purpose, but in general, you want concrete, specific words. Concrete words are in contrast to abstract ones, and words are either one or the other (though sometimes it depends on context, but in a single context, they’re one or the other). Concrete words have a physical referent, or they refer to something physical in the world. This obviously includes nouns and adjectives, but also includes verbs and adverbs. Walking is a physical thing in the world that corresponds to sight if you’re watching it or feeling if you’re the one doing it. Abstract words or terms have no physical referent, and as a result are less defined, like freedom, religion, marriage, or sexism. Consider success. Should you say “I want success,” or would it work better to say “I want a gold rolex on my wrist and a Mercedes in my driveway”? Depends on the character and the situation, but in general, concrete words are the way to go so your reader knows exactly what you mean. Success means something different to every person, but a Mercedes clearly shows who your character is and how they define success.
On the other hand, specific words are in contrast to general words, and it’s a spectrum. This is where context really matters. Is it enough to say “He sat in the chair” or should you say “he achingly lowered himself into the old, worn, leather recliner with the cigarette burn in the left arm from his abusive grandfather”? If it’s unimportant to the plot, character, or world, go with a more general term so you don’t drag down your reader. If it’s important, get more specific. Obviously the two examples I gave are at opposite extremes (though you can get more extreme), so you might be in the middle. More specific descriptions get people interested and engaged and signal that it’s important. More general gives people a quick view so they understand what’s what while signaling that it won’t be important.
Take note: if it’s important to the story, spend a little extra time on it and make sure to be concrete and specific.
The Big Three
As I mentioned earlier, the three main senses we get in writing are sight, audition, and touch. Yeah, I know audition is a weird word. I didn’t want to use it, but Vivian insisted it was the correct word (I confirmed; it is). So we’ll roll with it: audition is auditory inputs. These are the primary ways humans interpret the world, and they come out the strongest in writing. So let’s deal with them first.
Sight
(Vivian:) Wouldn’t it be highly convenient to be able to sense something at far distances without having to accidentally expose yourself? That is sight: a passive form of distance that allows you to remain hidden… if you try. It is really useful and has evolved many times independently!
(Anne:) Humans really like sight, as you can see! It’s so practical! (Vivian: It is also a key feature in being a primate: visual orientation). And that’s probably why it’s the core sense used in writing. Almost everything in a scene can be seen in some way. We can go from very basic, straightforward, and barebones description to detailed, elaborate, and lengthy descriptions. Both have their place depending on the situation and the author’s style.
Best Practices
When describing visual scenes, there are all sorts of things to pay attention to since this is the primary way most people convey a story. In terms of setting, simply naming what the location is without further description counts as a type of vision because the only way you would know the location without specifying another sense is through vision. If you were using sight, you might say, “He entered the kitchen where cookies were baking.” Because sight is the default, this can be read as a visual description. Compare this to, “The sweet scent emanating from the toasty oven drew him into the kitchen.” That focuses on scent and feeling to convey where the character is. Basically, unless you say otherwise, people will assume it’s based on sight.
Vision is a key sense where being concrete is important, and it can be extremely revealing of your point of view character or narrator. What are they choosing to focus on? What do they describe in detail, and what is left vague? If it's the character, it reveals their priorities and, most importantly, what is usual and unremarkable versus what is different or significant and worthy of more detail.
Damages
Now, when you think of damaged vision, you might go straight to blindness, but all of the senses are a spectrum, including vision. At the far end is indeed blindness. If you have a blind character, you first have to choose if that extends to the narrator. Usually, it doesn’t unless it’s first person narration. Except in those cases, you can write like normal and just make sure not to attribute anything vision-related to your character. The closer you are, the more sparse you want your descriptions to be. And once the narrator themselves becomes blind, you’ll want to move to other strategies, namely using the other senses to explore and narrate the world.
Moving on the spectrum from full blindness to full sight, there are plenty of opportunities for stops along the way. Does your character have poor eyesight? How poor? Does their world have glasses? Contacts? Lasik? And if they do have these things, does it address all types of vision difficulties? Some diseases cause vision problems, and some are caused by aging, and even in our modern world, we don’t have solutions to everything. There’s of course a stop at what is known as having 20/20 vision, or the level of vision that most people have (or at least that’s what people are “supposed” to have; it seems like everyone I know wears glasses or contacts!). 20/20 vision refers to the distance at which you can see things. Basically, you can see things clearly at 20 feet. Do people on the metric system use a different term? I’ll let Vivian answer that. (Vivian: Iunno) Thanks 🙄 I looked it up and it’s 6/6 in the metric system. I swear, Vivian knows nothing about zhir home!
Moving beyond 20/20 vision, you can get people who can see crisp and clear beyond what most people can! I had lasik and gained sharper vision than most people have. I had 20/10 vision, which means that I could see as clearly at 20 feet as most people see at 10 feet, so much better than most!
You want to have an idea of how clearly your character can see to figure out things like when they’ll squint to see things, and of course if the character needs accommodations like glasses, the availability, type, and quality will change a lot depending on your world. It’s a great and underutilized part of worldbuilding and storytelling. Want to add some conflict and drama? Have a character unable to see something clearly that they need to be able to see in order to succeed. (Vivian: MY GLASSES! MY GLASSES! I CANNOT SEE WITHOUT MY GLASSES!) Oh no, now I might start to cry… Anyway, clarity only makes up one aspect.
(Vivian: Some other visual issues are, but not all: various color blindnesses that make color vision more difficult which ranges from total color blindness to partial, light intensity sensitivity variation, ADDITIONAL colors in vision, variations in sensitivity to wavelengths of light that are unusual.)
(Anne:) Whoa, what are you doing, Vivian? You’re getting way ahead of me! Those are great things to mention, and I was just getting to them! You can see a variety of ways that vision can work that either diminish or enhance vision. Clarity tends to be the most obvious, but what if a character can’t distinguish between colors in a situation where that’s vital? For some people who are red-green colorblind, they can’t distinguish between stop and go lights at intersections and just memorize the positions (source: colorblind family member). If your character travels to a place with a different arrangement, they might be in a lot of trouble. All sorts of potential with these alternate issues!
Audition
(Vivian:) When things move in a medium, it causes disturbances in it. Wouldn’t it be very handy to be able to pick up on that? That is where hearing, or audition, started, then picked up additional jobs along the way.
(Anne:) Hearing, like vision, is one you’re going to get a lot in stories. However, while vision is sort of the default, you’ll need to specify if something is heard. You’ll do this in the description and narrative and also in the dialogue, for example a character’s voice in terms of word choice (since words have their own sounds and flow certain ways), ability to speak (things like a stutter or accent are auditory), and of course looking at how it impacts setting and character. All of this sets up your scene and builds tension.
Best Practices
In terms of setting, you should aim to have sounds to bring it to life. If you’re by a creek, is it babbling or roaring? Is there wind whispering or whistling? Speaking of whistling, maybe there’s a cave or an opening where the wind whistles through. You’ll also get into action. Do rocks rumble down the hill as someone approaches, or are there soft footfalls? Can you hear heavy breathing when you’re still even though there’s no one in the room with you? All of this sets the scene, or even predicts the entrance of a character…
In terms of your characters, it’s important to develop their voice in writing, as I talk about in my post on dialogue, but you also want to develop their physical voice as well as the way that they’re talking. I have a couple of characters who I’ve identified as a tenor and another who has a high-pitched voice. You don’t have to be quite so specific if you don’t want to, but you generally want to indicate things like pitch, volume, and speed throughout. The dialogue tags and action beats you use in your dialogue are vital in setting the auditory perceptions. Are they speaking in low, dulcet tones or a shrill voice? Are they talking quietly or yelling? Is their voice raspy or smarmy and smooth? All of these things develop the character and the scene. You want to have essentially a set of voice types that each character has so that you’re consistent with their spoken voice, but keep in mind that unusual circumstances call for unusual verbs and adverbs, so there will be exceptions. But with each character, have a standard and work with that.
Damages
Just like losing vision is the most obvious damage that can happen to vision, losing hearing is, obviously, a big deal. This is also a spectrum where characters can be varying levels of being hard of hearing. This can impact the story in huge ways. They may miss a sound that turns out to be extremely important. At the extreme end of the spectrum, significant or absolute deafness, you’ll want to watch your language throughout. Depending on the point of view and how close your narrator is, you might want to eliminate sound as a cue and focus on the other senses. If someone is speaking rapidly, your character will no longer hear this, but they might tell the character is speaking that way through physical cues that are given visually, such as frantic hand motions or just quick-moving lips. Hearing can be a fascinating one, and even characters with good hearing might miss cues.
(Vivian:) There are certain hearing disorders that cause increased and decreased sensitivity to certain frequencies. There is a known cause of a woman that was “deaf” to men because she could no longer hear low frequencies, but women she could hear.
(Anne:) That was such a fascinating case, and she wasn’t alone! In addition to hearing or not hearing various frequencies, which can be fun (can you imagine a book where a character just can’t hear men or women, but can hear the other?), there are other strategies you can use to block hearing in some way. Using some sounds to drown out other sounds is another good strategy. If you’re next to a helicopter, you might not fully hear all of the words a person is saying. That can be used to someone’s advantage or disadvantage, depending.
Of course, you can also have characters hear things that aren’t there. This can be over alertness that causes them to anticipate and therefore “hear” sounds, or it can be hallucinations of a sort. I know that sometimes I’ll hear something, but it’s nothing… or is it? Who knows? We also misinterpret sounds all the time. In a horror story, you can do a lot with this.
Touch
(Vivian:) You know, it would be really bad if you were too hot, too cold, moved in ways that damaged you more, scraped against sharp stuff, or had heavy things crush you. So fortunately we evolved touch to not do these stupid things!
(Anne:) Life without being able to feel would be extremely challenging, as you’ll see below when I talk about damaged senses. We use our sense of touch all the time, and that applies to writing as well. Characters touch things, feel things in all sorts of ways that they interact with the world. As Vivian mentioned, it’s a great sense for avoiding stupid things, but you know characters! Always getting into trouble and doing exactly the stupid things that we really should know to avoid (the authors are obviously blameless in this, it’s purely those gosh darn characters!).
Best Practices
When figuring out your setting, it helps to have physical touch involved in some way. Now, sometimes a character is looking into the distance, or studying something without touching it. There are still ways to evoke touch. Maybe the wind could rustle their cloak and hair (and maybe it’s whistling!). Maybe a chill runs down their spine as they spot an orc and imagine what will happen if they’re caught. Imagined touch is still touch, after all. If your character is viscerally imagining an orc impaling them, that still uses touch in your story. So find ways to incorporate it even if your character isn’t directly touching things, and if they are, really focus on those concrete, specific words. Concrete is vital here! You can only use concrete! By definition, you can’t feel or touch an abstract term! Now, you can feel your heart swell (concrete) with pride (abstract), and pairing concrete and abstract works really well, but you can’t consider any abstract term to be using the sense of touch. Does that mean you can’t use abstract terms? Of course not. It’s just not this sense.
For character, you might want to establish some tics or habits. One of my characters rubs her hands on her thighs when nervous, another tugs at his sleeve when he’s talking to people who rank higher than him. These consistent patterns establish a character’s attitude, history, and personality. However, you also want to be sensitive to the scene. What would the character notice? If they’re sliding their hand along a locked chest, do they notice how smooth it is? Do they notice the engravings denting the surface? It can be fun to have two different characters touch the same thing and notice different aspects. As usual, if it’s something unusual or different, they’re more likely to notice it than if it’s standard or ordinary, so things that stand out should get more description. Touch is a great one, and you always want to pay attention to it.
Damages
(Vivian:) While it is highly unlikely someone like what I am about to say would survive to adulthood, it would be interesting if they did: someone who cannot feel pain!
(Anne:) Pain is such a huge element of touch, isn’t it? And yes, there are people who don’t feel it, but unfortunately, as Vivian indicated, they don’t last long. We need to feel pain in order to know what’s wrong so we can fix it. Pain is a great example of what happens when your sense of touch is “damaged,” so to speak; in other words, when your sense of touch works against you. Keep in mind, though, pain serves a purpose. If you have a tough, stoic character who doesn’t feel pain, you might want to alter that slightly to them not showing that they feel pain, because the inability to feel pain is quite specific, and you have to make sure to have other people looking out for them so that they don’t brush their teeth so hard that they begin to bleed and their teeth quickly fall out, or they don’t walk ten miles with a gash in their leg, and their only awareness is annoyance that they’re not moving as quickly.
Now, other things like temporary numbness or being in shock and not recognizing pain are also ways to incorporate this lack of pain if you do want to hurt your characters without them realizing it (you monster!). And of course we have a character feeling such intense pain that they grow numb or accustomed to it (although I will say as someone who has been in an extremely painful situation, after the shock wears off, you don’t get used to it for hours and hours and hours; finally they found something to numb my pain because morphine wasn’t doing anything). So keep in mind that characters have to be in chronic pain to start to adapt, and even then, it still hurts. It’s really unusual to just “get used to it.” You might get used to handling it, but the pain itself remains.
Speaking of too much pain, you can also be too sensitive to touch. Sometimes this can be a good thing, such as romances veering naughty that have characters just so sensitive to each other’s touch. Other times, it can be a bad thing, like if your character is ultra sensitive to magic and it zaps them or hurts them, but they have to use magic in order to succeed. This, by the way, is a great limitation on magic, something I talk about when discussing how to design magic systems. So I guess bad for your characters, great for you! Honestly, the sense of touch is where you can really show your mercenary side and delight in the pain and tribulations you inflict on your characters.
The Missing Two
Those three–vision, audition, and touch–make up the majority of descriptions in a book. But what if I told you that they weren’t the only senses? Yeah, I know, you’re aware. Do you fully incorporate the other two into your books, though? I have to consciously remind myself at times. Have you ever gotten feedback that you need more sensory details? Sometimes that means more descriptions with the first three, but usually it means you need to incorporate all of the senses. So let’s look at the missing senses that are vital to your story.
Scent
(Vivian:) Everything stinks! Well, mostly. It stinks to something! Wouldn’t it be really useful if you could tell the state of things, even if things are not visible or audible, from a distance? Scent does that quite well! Which is why dogs rely so heavily on it.
(Anne:) Humans, alas, can’t smell as well as dogs.
(Vivian:) Woof 🐕
(Anne:) Because we don’t rely on scent as much, we tend to forget it in our writing. I’m including myself in this, though I’ve gotten a lot better in first drafts and this is important in my revision process. My end result has scent; my first drafts are getting there. One scent I’ll always be sure to mention is the sugary, gooey scent of cinnamon rolls rising in the oven. If you’ve read my Imperial Saga, you’ll know that cinnamon rolls play an extremely minor but consistent note through all of the books. So let’s look at this forgotten sense and how best to use it.
Best Practices
First and foremost, scent is closely related to memory and emotion. It evokes other times we’ve smelled whatever it is. If it’s a positive scent, we’ll be in a better mood (or whatever emotion is associated with it). If it’s negative, we’ll be on guard. Some scents remind us of our past. There’s an extremely particular plastic smell that I call “pink plastic” that I associate with Barbie dolls and the like, and whenever I smell it, I think back to the happy times in my childhood. So when you’re using scent, think of when the character would have smelled it before and what will be associated with it. And if it’s a new scent being established, what emotions and memories are you linking to it in the future?
Scent doesn’t have to be described in great detail to get the point across, though you absolutely can. Sometimes just “a sour scent of spoiled milk” is enough: we can all already feel ourselves recoiling and almost tasting it (scent and taste are closely linked, as I’ll discuss in a minute). Sometimes just “sour” is enough. It really depends. You can absolutely go all out, but just remember: what emotions is this evoking? What memories? Again, scents don’t exist in isolation. You want to describe the scent itself but also be aware of what it’s conjuring not just for your characters but for readers as well.
Damages
What if you didn’t have a sense of smell? Unfortunately, a lot of people with Covid are finding this out the hard way, though that symptom is far less common in recent variants. For most people, it was temporary, but it gave a lot of people an idea of what life is like without scent, and it’s not great.
We use scent to know what to avoid, such as the above spoiled milk or similar things that most people would take one sniff of and know to avoid. It also draws us in! It can be inviting and welcoming. And as I said above, it’s linked to emotions and memories, and this happens more than you might think.
Now, not everyone is at that extreme. Some people just have bad senses of smell. This might hurt your character if they’re in a situation where gas is filling the apartment and they don’t know it until it’s extreme. Or it might benefit them if they’re going through the Pit of Abominable Stench that keeps out any who might enter… except them. And of course some people have extremely keen senses of smell which can also damage them and their character. Basically, anytime you can incorporate smell, you should absolutely do so.
Taste
(Vivian:) Oh food! Such delicious food that is needed! But you need many things in food, and your body has to keep all nutritional needs in check. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could, while eating, tell if the food contains what you are in dire need of? Yeah, that is why something can taste so damn delicious suddenly; your body craves that taste cause it needs that stuff!
(Anne:) Taste has somewhat limited inputs, since it’s through our mouths/tongues that we actually sense it, but we can imagine tastes as well. As said about the other other senses, an imagined sensation still counts! Scents often evoke a taste or flavor, and without a sense of scent, things tend to taste bland and unappealing. Scent is an extremely important part of taste. Like scent, taste can evoke emotions, but it also does things like set the character’s mood (being full and happy after a good meal, angry after spending good money on a burnt offering, desperate when missing food), and taste also has story purposes if a character tastes something that warns them of danger, like poison or just something a little off. So despite the limited ways taste is accessed, it can still play a huge role.
There are five flavors that humans experience, the five of course being salty, sweet, umami, sour, and finally bitter. Each has a reason for existence, which I’ll let Vivian explain.
(Vivian:) To go back to my blog on Alien senses, they serve many purposes:
Salty: Keeps ion levels right for nerves
Sweet: Means energy because sugar = energy
Umami: Contains proteins = amino acids which are important
Sour: Acidic, which indicates vitamin C which humans need
Bitter: Hogwash mix of everything bad that might kill you…WHY DO YOU DRINK COFFEE!?
There is literally no flavor humans cannot go horny about.
Best Practices
(Anne:) Okay, so you want to include taste, but you don’t want your characters going around licking everything. How do you do it?
Well, as I mentioned, imagined taste is powerful. That’s probably what you’re going to use. In English, we even have cliched phrases that associate emotions with taste, such as having a bad taste in your mouth if you don’t like something. We have words like “bitter” and “bittersweet” that we use in contexts other than directly tasting things (“sour” often fits in there as well), so those are some natural places to incorporate it. However, in addition to those more neutral terms, you can get some direct tastes in!
(Vivian:) One thing to remember is also this, your body can produce tastes in its own mouth. Who hasn’t felt the taste of blood? Or taste it during intense physical exercise? It is common because it literally leaks into your mouth as you strain yourself, and other flavors can get in due to bodily reactions.
(Anne:) Excellent point! Sometimes taste is a natural reaction and just happens. An interesting note is that taste travels, so if something with a strong flavor is nearby, those taste molecules may very well get to you and cause a taste sensation. Other times, you can use your other senses to evoke taste, such as describing the sight or scent of luscious food. One of my favorite series growing up, the Redwall series, would describe incredible feasts just using a listing of ingredients that nonetheless evoked a powerful hunger. Here’s just one example:
Dishes went this way and that from paw to paw, snowcream pudding, hot fruit pies, colorful trifles, tasty pasties, steaming soup, new bread with shiny golden crusts, old cheeses studded with dandelion, acorn and celery. Sugared plums and honeyed pears vied for place with winter salads and vegetable flans. (from Martin the Warrior by Brian Jacques)
As you can see, simply listing these things evokes taste and, at least in my case, especially as a little kid reading this, all I wanted was to try these dishes.
And, of course, there are times when your character will eat something, stick their tongue out to catch rain or a snowflake, or maybe the enemy gags them to prevent them from screaming! You want to describe the flavors and textures with as concrete terms as possible here in order to create the best effect for your reader. Showing physical reactions to flavors also helps a lot, like a wrinkled nose at a rank flavor, patting one’s stomach in contentment, perhaps shutting one’s eyes blissfully as sugar crashes over them. All of this combines into illustrating taste and its impact on the character.
Damages
(Vivian:) A common issue with taste is… well, the complete lack thereof. Some people are born such or for other reasons lose it. One thing to pay attention to for humans is that 90% of all flavor experience is in fact the nose. Molecules and stuff fly off as per usual and hit the nose and add to the flavor sensation. But the complete genuine lack of flavor where none of the known 5 flavors is… rather extreme and often due to illnesses. It can lead to severe issues in judging food, partially because it involves a loss of smell as well. The human nose and mouth are fairly good at judging how good food is, but when you lose it… you are going to have troubles.
(Anne:) Lack of taste completely is the extreme, and often associated with smell, so damage to smell is closely linked to damage to taste. And like everything, it’s a range. There are also people who taste things differently, like cilantro. Boy is there ever a debate about whether it’s good or it’s the worst flavor in existence. And there are a couple of chemicals that not everyone can taste. And of course some people love and need spicy food, while some people can barely tolerate paprika! So it varies. It can be interesting to have characters with conflicting tastes traveling together having to negotiate meals, and having characters traveling to foreign lands experiencing foreign foods is great for showing culture. Basically, don’t forget this one!
Potential Issues
Now, with all of the senses, there are some things to keep in mind. Basically, everyone differs in how they interpret the world around them through senses, and the senses evoke different things in different people. There’s a consensus on most things, but there will always be individuals at the edges who have radically different experiences. Whether you take these people into account is up to you, but you should be aware of it. You don’t want to ignore one of the senses out of fear of offending people. Let your characters have their own preferences, and if the audience disagrees, well, that’s on them.
High Sensitivity
(Vivian:) as an Autistic person, I can say this is something I have dealt with. I am fairly low on the spectrum by my judgment but I still can get the overload sensation and when things are off, I REALLY do not like it. Taste and feel are big ones for me personally.
(Anne:) Yup, that’s exactly the issue you’ll get with writing the senses! Some people have high sensitivity to the various senses. I mentioned this in the damages section because while it isn’t exactly a damaged sense, it is a different sense. People have preferences and describing something against those preferences can evoke strong emotions sometimes. Even I, who am pretty ordinary in how I interpret senses, have this. I hate most fish, so when I describe fish in books, it’s usually as “rank.” But when other people describe it, they’ll use beautiful positive language that I just can’t relate to and feel alienated from. It’s not a super strong reaction, but it definitely pulls me out of the story.
However, and this is important, that’s on me, not on the story. It’s not the author’s job to cater to every single person in the world!
(Vivian:) Nope, even as Autistic, I can appreciate what they are attempting to do because I know they are trying for something, even if it is not for me. There is a lot to be said for attempting.
(Anne:) One thing I do want to bring up is what to do if your character has high sensitivity. First of all, this is fine and good to include in your characters! Not only does everyone have their preferences, sometimes people really strongly have those preferences. And having high sensitivity is a great way to indicate that a character is autistic without coming out and saying it. This gets into subtext (read my post on subtext!), because you can subtly hint at that without coming out and saying a character is autistic or has something else that makes them especially sensitive.
(Vivian:) I, as an autistic person, approve of this message.
(Anne:) In addition to things like autism, you can also indicate temporary things about your characters. Maybe a character is craving weird foods, and also getting sick a lot, often in the morning… You guessed they’re pregnant, right? Maybe the light is blinding, and there are auras around everything… Migraine! So you can indicate a lot with this.
Basically, don’t worry too much about offending certain readers, and if your characters have heightened sensitivities themselves, it can say a lot!
Unusual Preferences
This is similar to heightened senses in that authors are sometimes scared off because of it. What usually happens is that they want a character with unusual preferences but are worried the audience won’t be okay with it. It’s also very possible that your sensory details will alienate someone who has unusual preferences, but as with heightened senses, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Sometimes it makes sense that your characters like or don’t like sensory inputs that contradict what most people experience. That can be a really good thing! Have someone who enjoys eating human flesh? Describe it in rich, lush, positive terms! Will your audience be grossed out? Probably, but you should embrace that! Maybe your character is a masochist and loves the sensation of pain, getting pleasure out of it. Describe it as they feel it, with enough detail to show that the average person wouldn’t! Will people recoil as you describe the various painful things inflicted on your character and be puzzled or worse by the pleasure they feel? Doesn’t matter! These weird preferences reveal so much about your character.
With both high sensitivity and unusual preferences, you shouldn’t avoid things for fear of offending or alienating readers. I’ve read plenty of books with descriptions and characters that don’t match my experience of the world at all, and I’ve felt pulled out of books as a result. That doesn’t mean it can’t be excellent writing that I enjoy. And if you have characters themselves with these things, it’s a powerful way of setting them apart and showing something about them that you might not otherwise be able to show.
Mini Practicum
So what does it look like when you tie all of this together? Well, let’s look at some of the things I’ve written, since this is something I work with in revisions all the time.
A lot of people focus on sight, hearing, and feel in their writing, or just on sight, honestly, for descriptive scenes. That’s assuming you have descriptions, of course. Some people imply things, but I recommend the occasional description to ground your reader. It’s a stronger way to engage your reader. And incorporating all five senses (or more, which I’ll discuss in a later blog!) grounds your reader further so that they’re really experiencing your world and characters.
I, like many authors, fall prey to this overreliance on a single sense, or one of the big three. It’s something that I’m fine with in my early drafts, but I go back and change in revision. You don’t need all five senses in every single scene or description, but you do want it occasionally. I scatter in the senses throughout in little references and action beats. For example, in Rise of the Phoenix, the Imperial houses use sickly sweet floral air fresheners while Tamarudian houses prefer the pure air, and the protagonist Tahirah’s reactions to those scents reveal her history with both types of people. I also try to include them when introducing new locations.
For this mini practicum, I’m actually going to look at a dark fantasy novel that I’ve been working on for quite a while and hope to publish soon. For this brief description, Varan, one of my protagonists, enters the city of Aradél at night for the first time. It’s the hub of life for an entire region, and it’s a nocturnal city built on an elevated disc alongside a mountain. He arrives in a carriage that has taken him up from ground level. Here is my initial draft before adding in all the senses along with a later draft after adding them. You may notice other flaws, especially in the before version, but that’s because it’s an early draft, and even my later draft still needs some polish.
Before
As the light from the moon, Veseles, began to lessen, Varan was able to look around at the city. The buildings were incredibly tall, stretching up even from this high point, until they appeared to touch the sky. Without the bright sunlight, they grew out of the night itself, twinkling with the reflections of stars. The buildings were stark but the strict design softened in the moonlight, gleaming with the figure of the dragon everywhere.
After
The city shimmered with life in the light of Veseles. Varan had only seen it in the daylight while it slumbered, but now it rumbled and churned with the movements of tens of thousands of people. The carriage landing lay in a cleared off space with a direct path to the gleaming gold palace, but the bustling streets were clearly visible as shopkeeps hawked their wares and people pushed past each other to reach their destinations. The taste of cooked meat in the air teased his tongue with a savory richness and mingled with scent of smoke from the torches lighting some of the storefronts, the flickering flames driving away the darkness with orange and gold sparks. Wires crisscrossed the streets above everyone’s heads, and glowing golden orbs swayed from them, buoyed by the breeze that ruffled through the chaos to caress Varan’s arms and glide up his shoulders, bringing the city to the forefront of his awareness.
Analysis
Hopefully you can see how the second version actually brings in the senses instead of relying on vision alone. The first version isn’t too bad, really, and could pass in some stories. If this were a minor location, it might even be enough to just give a brief visual description. There’s some good poetic language like growing out of the night itself, and specific details like the dragons everywhere. However, it’s empty. There’s filter language, first of all, when it says he was able to look around. We don’t really need to be told that, since we’re told the moonlight is lessening, then showing what he sees. Second, it’s just visual, and it’s so brief. Just a few specific details that, while good, aren’t nearly enough. From this passage, the city is just some tall buildings in the moonlight.
One of the reasons I expanded this section the way that I did–adding descriptions of what was happening in the city–is because my writing group wanted more of the city. When you first enter a location, it’s good to pause and really bring it to life, and since this is a significant location in the story, I wanted to make sure to give it its due. Not too much, since Varan is only outside a few minutes as he walks to the palace, but enough to paint a vivid picture.
To bring the city to life, I placed people into it. That’s always a great strategy. Readers connect to people so showing what other people are doing in a location can reveal a lot about that location. In the case of Aradél, it’s the capital city and it’s nocturnal, so of course it would be buzzing with activity! And we can tell both of those things (important, nocturnal city) just from the descriptions without it being spelled out.
In terms of the senses, there’s obviously visual, but I added the rest. He hears a variety of sounds, he smells food and smoke, which are described in terms of flavors as well to evoke taste, and he feels the breeze. All five senses in a single paragraph, hopefully used discretely enough so that it doesn’t feel like I’m forcing them in. I think the only one that might not feel natural is feel, with the breeze at the end. Maybe that’s forced? I’m not sure. I might add it to the next paragraph in some way instead of putting it here. As I said, a work in progress, but you can already see the vast improvement.
Summa Summarum
I’ll keep this brief, since I’ve already said enough. Basically, there are five senses and you want to use all of them to create good, engaging prose. While vision, audition, and feel are easy, scent and taste often get left behind. Incorporate everything! The more you describe things involving all five senses, the more you ground your reader in the scene. And the more you ground your reader, the more invested in the story they’ll be.
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Anne Winchell. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as the senses are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, both versions of the scene, all of the ideas and names in the mini practicum, and all of the specific examples from Anne’s books as well as all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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