Writing 203: Xenosenses
Greetings and spinosity! You know, Raixhen Primales sure are spinous–is that a word? Either way, we are doing something today! Aren’t we always? As many of you know, and don’t know, I wrote about alien senses some time ago; fortunately I don’t age, so no worries how long ago it was! My beloved sister Anne has taken it on herself to show how to do them in writing in interesting ways. So off to you Anne, aka Lady Verbosa!
Side note: check out the comments below for additional things to consider!
Setting up your language
I’ve spoken before about how to write using human senses, both the big three (sight, audition, and touch) and poor forgotten smell and taste (which, since you’ve read that post, you don’t neglect!). Writing the senses well is vital for establishing both character and scene, two essential elements of any story. But what if your character… isn’t human? Shocking, right, that someone would think of including aliens as point of view characters!
But somehow, this exists! And it can be extremely fun to play with alien characters. While the following advice and examples are about point of view characters, this can apply to any character you have. You can read up on point of view to figure out how you’ll approach this, whether first, second, or third person, but the principles of writing senses are the same for each, and including alien senses is a fun way to bring in alternate ways of experiencing the world that reveals your characters and creates a lively and interesting setting.
Your language is important, and you want to be precise: use specific, concrete language for best impact. Every word exists on a spectrum between specific and abstract, and often the same word occupies different places depending on context. Specific words refer to smaller numbers or amounts of things, while abstract terms encompass a lot of things. If your language is specific and has definite, singular meaning, you’ll be more effective.
Similarly, you want concrete over abstract terms. This one is a binary, though again, the same word might be in the other category depending on context. Concrete terms refer to something available to the senses, while abstract terms aren’t available to the senses.
Wait, did I just say senses? Why, yes I did! That’s right, what counts as abstract or concrete is reliant on what senses there are! And this is where xenosenses come in!
What are xenosenses?
In a nutshell, you could say that
A xenosense is a method of perceiving stimuli not present in humans.
Basic, I know, but yeah, that’s it. You might wonder if it’s a method of perceiving reality, which, maybe? But not necessarily our reality. After all, you might have a sense where you see auras around people depending on their personality. Is that reality? Maybe? But not the reality most people accept. Actually, what is reality? And how does language fit into our perception?
Senses and language
Most people have a fairly uniform understanding of what is reality and what isn’t. In today’s world, a lot of this is determined by the scientific method. We can “prove” what is and isn’t true. Quotation marks there because it’s virtually impossible to actually prove something, but it is possible to show that all alternatives are false or that it follows laws of reality that are accepted as true. Humans are constantly changing, though, and we didn’t always value science and math, even though when we look back, we tend to prioritize the development of those things.
Nope, most people in the past relied on other things, primarily religion. Today, if you believe that the world was made in six days followed by a bit of laziness, you’re just wrong. But not too long ago historically speaking, that was just the truth. Everyone knew it. And while the nature of reality hasn’t exactly changed, people often perceived it differently. But was it reliant on senses, or our interpretation of senses?
Personally, I think senses have always operated in the same way regardless of how they were interpreted. This is true of senses today, too. When you’re depressed, things may appear darker and the negative side of things will be exaggerated. Thoughts tend to spiral, and often, life doesn’t seem worth living. Whether this is caused by a lack of dopamine or serotonin or it’s a buildup of black bile, you feel it the same. But the world hasn’t changed. Things look darker, but physically, your eyes are perceiving the world the same way. You’re just noticing different things.
We’re talking about language and senses, so let’s actually look at languages. Different languages use different words for sensory input. And there’s a theory that tackles this directly: the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis is, in a nutshell, that a person’s language determines their worldview, thoughts, and even how they perceive the world. When taken to an extreme, this results in Linguistic Determinism, which says a person’s perception is completely controlled by the language(s) they speak.
Is this true? Well, there’s some debate. It’s a hypothesis, after all, and as I said, we modern humans are huge fans of the scientific method. (Vivian: It is actually categorically proven false in its strong form. The only thing remotely debated these days is the soft version which is where language gently influences how you interpertate the world.) Let’s go back to depression. Did humans feel depression before we had a word for “sad”? If we have a large vocabulary and can identify all sorts of sadness, do they feel the emotion more keenly? Let’s say Bob only knows the word “sad,” but I’ve written a blogpost on emotions and know lots of fancy words for it! I can say whether I’m feeling abandoned, fragile, remorseful, inferior, empty, and more. So are my emotions different than Bob’s, or different from a primitive human who doesn’t even have a word for sad?
On one level, I’d say no. Most humans are capable of the same range of sadness. But on another level, as someone who experiences depressive episodes, I’ve found it incredibly useful to know specific words because it lets me identify exactly what I’m feeling, which helps me accept and deal with the emotion. It’s almost as if my generic sadness sharpens when I’m able to name it. But on a third hand (we’re talking about aliens in this post!), I think the emotion is the same. It’s just how I interpret it that changes.
Any more concrete examples that indicate the senses themselves are different? The best one I’ve heard has to do with sensing and identifying north, south, east, and west. If I asked you to point to the north right now, how long would it take you? Depending on where you are and what you know about the location, you might be fairly quick about it, with a fair amount of accuracy, but most people would struggle and have to look around for indications. The vast majority of people could do it, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t sense direction the ways some birds do.
However, Aboriginal Australians use language differently. When giving locations, they don’t say “in front of” or “to the right of.” They say “to the north” or “to the east-north-east.” Because they speak this way, they’re constantly aware of the direction. Ask them to point north, and they don’t hesitate. But do they sense the directions, or do they just have really good spatial awareness? Wait, is spatial awareness a sense that is better developed with practice? Do we all have it?
Excellent questions! And because of that, I’m going to talk about true xenosenses. Humans might be capable of seeing auras around people, maybe they distinguish colors differently, maybe they perceive direction better with practice. Maybe the language you use creates your sensory perception, maybe it doesn’t. I’m not here to argue the hypothesis; I’ll just neatly sidestep the issue by dealing with xenosenses that people definitely don’t have!
Incorporating the xenosenses
So we’re back to xenosenses! Sorry for that little detour, but I’m not called Lady Verbosa for nothing! And it does matter, since what is specific and concrete depends on your senses and the language you speak.
The first thing to know about describing a xenosense is that you’re going to essentially use the vocabulary of other senses. As you come up with things, try to imagine how you might perceive them. Our imaginations are usually pretty limited to our experience, so close your eyes and imagine what this new sense is sensing, and how it would interact with your body. Does it seem like the type of thing you could see, like auras? Might it be something you hear, maybe a buzzing sound that gets louder or softer? What about feel? Could it be a pulling sensation, or perhaps heat? Maybe it has a certain odor to it, or maybe it’s something that creates a taste in your mouth. How exactly might this new sense be expressed in terms of our existing senses?
Embracing subtlety
One thing you don’t want to do is overuse new senses. As much as readers enjoy novelty, they also like familiarity. A lot of readers like sinking into the story, and if you have xenosenses used in a way that draws unwelcome attention, it’ll jar the readers and break their immersion. Which is generally the exact opposite of what the writer wants, since one reason we use xenosenses is to allow the reader to more fully inhabit the characters and their world.
Okay, so no jarring mentions. How do you avoid that? It all comes down to language and not trying to reinvent the wheel. If you have a sense that operates like heat and you use it as such, you’re probably not going to attract negative attention because people are used to reading about heat as a sensor. Maybe it’s heat combined with a rotten egg smell, and that’s what distinguishes it from regular heat. Feeling a bit toasty? Take off your coat. Feeling toasty plus you can’t get that icky scent out of your nose? Get the hell out of there, radiation levels are way too high! That can be a fun way to keep the reader engaged and paying attention.
But if you try to do something too unique, it’ll come across as trying too hard and interrupt the flow of the story. After all, if you’re spending a paragraph explaining what the sensory input is like, then that’s a paragraph where you’re not telling the story. Sometimes it works, sure, and you can easily write a couple of paragraphs and have them work, but only if you blend story or character development into them. If you need to stop the story, explain how the sense works, and then continue, and you have to do that every time the character notices something with that sense, it’s just not going to work.
Just put yourself in the character’s shoes. Their senses aren’t unusual to them. That’s just the world. They don’t make a big deal about it. After all, we might notice and comment on a loud crash that we hear nearby, but it’s the crash we’re interested in, not how the soundwaves interact with our ears and yada yada complicated stuff and that’s how we can hear. If we’re describing a beautiful blue sea, we’re talking about what we see, not how we see. So in your stories, don’t talk about the how. It rarely matters how a sense works, just what the result is. Don’t question why radiation is hot and smells like rotten eggs. Your character doesn’t. That’s just how it works.
Basically, don’t try to jump in and explain your brilliance, interrupting the story and drawing attention to the wrong part of the sense. Just let it be.
Coming up with xenosenses
And now for the fun part! How exactly do you come up with xenosenses? Well, look at your characters, and look at your world. What exists in your world that is important enough that life would have evolved a way to sense it?
It helps to first look at what makes your world different from ours. This can be something fantastical, like the presence of magic, or it can just be that the planet is like ours except it has tons of radiation. In those cases, then life forms capable of sensing magic or radiation are more likely to survive, so evolution would favor that sense. Why do we see? Because sight directly relates to our survival ability. Is sight universal? Nope. Resources are scarce, so if it doesn’t contribute to survival, it tends to get neglected and left behind. Keep that in mind as well: not every creature or entity in your world will have the same senses, and not just because of individual variation. Maybe there’s an ecosystem that has evolved in an area where the mana is thin, so being able to sense it was never an advantage. Why waste precious resources developing sensory organs when it doesn’t actually help?
It can be fun to look at your world and notice the little differences, then try to figure out what would give your creatures an evolutionary advantage. Keep in mind that your creatures might only sense portions of the stimuli as well. Humans hear a different range of sounds than dogs, for example. It’s all based on what helped people survive and leave offspring, and there’s rarely a reason for life forms to be able to sense every single possible stimuli.
Brand new senses
Okay, we’re set now, right? Yes, we are! Let’s have a little fun and see what senses I can come up with (with a little assistance from Vivian). By the way, I’m going to completely wing this and just see what I come up with. This isn’t the only way to do it by any means!
Electroreception
Your world is beautiful and serene… well, except for all that darn electricity that’s always around! Maybe this is the future, and entities have developed the ability to sense electricity in order to survive on spaceships where any fluctuation in electricity could be deadly. In that environment, it would make sense to be able to sense electricity, right? No need to get into the evolutionary details really, though you can if you want to.
I envision electroreception as a sparkly feeling in the fingertips, with receptors in the skin along with the nerves. Why this? Well, sparkly like getting shocked, and as the input increases, the sparkly feeling intensifies until it reaches the point where the buildup of electricity is dangerous, at which point the sparkly feeling is painful.
I imagine it short range, so only available through something similar to touch, hence why I’m using touch as my basis for this sense, because I don’t think “seeing” electricity fluctuations in the distance would be as useful as having information about your immediate surroundings, and I picked hands because that allows far more precision as an entity feels the flow of electricity and whether it’s at safe levels or not. By the way, if there isn’t enough electricity, it feels like a draining or sucking sensation that can grow painful as the levels grow dangerous.
But that’s just my initial thoughts for a world where sensing electricity might be vital to survival!
(Vivian:) AAAANNEEEE… Try making a distinction between passive and active electroreception. Passive is when you just sense electric fields other things generate on their own, active is when you generate electric fields and sense how they are disturbed by the presence of other things around you.
(Anne:) Active, you say? Well, not for electroreception. Too late for that! But maybe for our next one…
Empaception
The meaning of this one is obvious, right? What sense is this? Say it together! Empathy! Wait, not everyone got that… Well, I think it’s obvious! What does it mean to sense empathy? Well, actually it’s more like sensing emotions, but there has to be active participation because empathy requires some sort of interaction between two individuals.
So with empathy, you have to extend an empathic field around you in order to sense emotions from nearby entities. What sense would be best to base this on? I’m thinking either touch or sight. If you do sight, you can do things like auras that a lot of people are familiar with, but that’s also kind of predictable and boring. Plus, it just seems to me like if you’re extending a field, you’d feel it, not just see it. So let’s try touch.
We’ll say extending your empathic field feels like your body expands until you start bumping into people, or in this case, their emotions, and the feel of those emotions is how you identify them. Anger is pretty gritty and coarse, isn’t it? And sorrow is like silk. Happiness is obviously velvet, and jealousy is like a whole bunch of sharp little spikes. And scarily enough, some people are completely invisible… definitely psychopaths there, stay away!
(Vivian:) I feel targeted here…
(Anne:) Only a small target! 😈 Anyway, this gives your character some control over when they use the sense, though I would imagine if the stimuli is close enough, it would brush against the shield regardless of whether it was actively being used. Clingy people are so sticky, aren’t they? Not sticky like glue, but sticky in that way young kids always seem to be.
In terms of telling a story, this control makes it easier to incorporate more smoothly. Sometimes if you have a xenosense that’s passive and you don’t ever refer to it, or you forget to mention it in a situation where it would be noticeable, your readers will either completely forget it exists or get really annoyed that you’re not commenting on it. If you have something active, then you can control when the reader is aware of it, and you don’t have to worry about forgetting it. Well, you usually don’t, I guess you might legitimately forget, but if that’s the case, you need to work on your worldbuilding! Don’t add major things and forget them! That’s got to be one of Vivian’s rules… huh, it’s not… New rules needed!
(Vivian:) For this one, a word of caution: do not use this as a crutch to tell what other characters feel, and be aware of limitations since if it is inconsistent, readers will wonder why it's never working properly.
(Anne:) Inconsistent use is almost worse than forgetting it's there. The one good thing with this setup is that instead of saying “Bob felt sad to her” you’d say “Bob was like silk against her mind” and then the reader would have to figure out that silk is sadness through other contextual clues. That helps prevent the kind of clunky exposition Vivian warns about, because you do not want to use this as a crutch! Use it carefully.
Magnetoception
(Vivian:) You can do active/passive here as well, but evolutionarily it is not likely to be any active here. As active magnetic fields you control means generating a current, and you’re back to sensing electricity being easier. But hey, who knows? Maybe your aliens figured it out evolutionarily.
(Anne:) I feel like I don’t know enough about this one to even attempt active, so let’s go with passive. I like feel for this one, just like for electroreception, except completely different! With electroreception, I wanted something immediate that they felt with their hands. Skin contact was necessary (though maybe being right next to something could also zap you sometimes!). But this one seems like you could feel it from a distance, and luckily, there are plenty of things we feel from far away!
When we think of magnetic forces, we think of being pulled together or pushed apart. That’s part of touch, just touch at a distance. We feel the force, and I figure the most logical way to show readers what magnetoception is like is to imitate the pull/push we already associate with it. Honestly, if you do anything else, people are going to side eye you and it might break the suspension of disbelief.
So depending on where the magnetic force is coming from and how it’s… emitting magnetoms? Yeah no, let’s stick with magnetic fields. Based on that, you’ll either feel a pull or push, and the stronger it is, the closer the force is. That one’s pretty basic, because magnets are something every kid plays with. (Right?)
Magiception
(Anne:) Okay, we’re going to need a third eye for this one. Well, not exactly an eye, per se, since it won’t be used for vision, but that’s the basic look we’re going for!
In fantasy worlds, magic is an expected element, though depending on whether it’s soft fantasy or hard fantasy, the magic may or may be relevant to the story at hand. But in a world with such a mysterious and powerful thing, it’s only natural that it would produce stimuli that would benefit life to sense. There might be little bugs that migrate between patches of light magic and avoid wind magic, and they’re going to need to be able to sense where everything is!
One great thing about senses is that once a creature is more self-aware, they can take control of the sense for their own purposes, essentially. So a humanoid creature might go from simply being able to sense where the fire magic is to being able to follow their senses to the source of the fire magic and then use it for fireballs!
For this sense, I think you need to be able to sense the stimuli from a distance, so I chose vision as the model for it. You never want your xenosense to totally replace your base sense, so I don’t want to have the character be able to see swirls of color representing the various magic forces and nothing else. They still have vision, after all. This is different. So when you’re describing the sensory input and those pretty colors, make it clear that this is in addition to visual input. It’s adding a layer of complexity, not replacing.
Anyway yeah, that stimuli has to go somewhere, and it’s natural a body organ would have evolved given how important this is to survival, so a third “eye” it is! As you develop your senses, always keep in mind that something in the body needs to receive and process the stimuli. So far, everything we’ve done is internal, since we’ve basically been working with touch, but now we need an external body part and what better than a third eye?
Teleception
It seems like whenever a people have telepathy, it actually uses sound. Not something like sound where it’s described using the same language as sound, but where it actually… is sound? And it could be soundwaves that ordinary people don’t hear, there’s nothing wrong with going that route, but we can be more creative than that!
No, we’re going to view telepathy as its own force on the world, and this one is a combination of active and passive. I think the reason people associate this so strongly with hearing is that it almost always involves language, and for people who can hear, speaking is audible. But deaf people speak perfectly well, just in another medium, so language isn’t the sole domain of sound! You could easily do touch for this one and feel the words as they come to you. But we’ll go with the classic and say that when you receive telepathic stimuli, the easiest way to describe it is using hearing. Plus, we haven’t done one of these with audio type stuff yet, and it can be fun!
(Vivian:) I want to point out that given this is related to thoughts, quite a lot of people do not think in terms of words or sounds. A lot of people think almost entirely in images and some people like me are wholly incapable of picturing in our head, or at least it is so difficult that it is not worth the hassle.
(Anne:) This is very true, and one reason why I’m hitting on the spoken language part of it as opposed to only the thinking parts. But I’m only considering it teleception if it’s your body interpreting something similar to a formal language that we can understand in similar terms as a spoken language. If it’s a sharing of emotions or non-language stuff, it goes under empaception (for our purposes at least; in your worlds, you do you!).
One great thing about things like language is that there’s so much subtlety that we use talking about it, so there’s a lot you can bring into this new sense. You can bring up tone of voice, have sarcasm or humor, talk about mismatches between words and actions, you can even show relationships with words and the stimuli we’re receiving from other senses. Is their voice warm but eyes cold? Well, we can keep that same contrast!
But Anne, weren’t you just complaining that people make it too similar to hearing things? And aren’t you now recommending we use exactly the same strategies? And the answer is yes to both! You monolinguals might not follow this next part, but when you learn to speak another language, it’s important to stop translating every single word into the new language and just think in the second language, essentially. That’s why not everyone is great at translation: when you speak a language well, you know how to say things that you can literally translate into another language but even if you’re fluent in both, you may not know how to get the actual meaning across.
So think of teleception as a second language. Within a person’s mind, they have two languages going: the kind they receive from audio stimulus, and the kind from telepathic stimulus. These run along similar but not identical paths so that while, for writing purposes, you might use language to get across the thoughts being sent to you, it’s with an awareness that this is a translation only, and not exact. To make sure people understand that teleception is different, make sure to have mismatches sometimes. Things that don’t translate literally, or the character can’t translate at all. Maybe in that case, describing emotion would work best! But in some way, you want to show that these are not literal words being spoken to a person, they are an entirely different process whose end result is similar to how we interpret the spoken word.
(Vivian:) Just a fun thought for this, imagine a teleceptor, that is the word now, that thinks in terms of words meets a person that only thinks in terms of images…hehehe…
(Anne:) I think I’d argue that the teleception sense would create a third, different thing that encompasses both of them! The more, the merrier!
(Vivian:) Which is a valid way to do it if you want, or they cannot get each other… Whatever works in your story! 😀
(Anne:) Never underestimate the power of miscommunication and conflict!
Scifiception
Okay, this one is a little… vague. It’s basically whatever scifi element is in your world. Fantasy has the advantage there because all fantasy worlds have some level of magic, so it’s natural to talk about magiception. But with scifi, there could be a variety of different kinds of novum, or strange things that are believably plausible in our world. We’ve talked about some other specifics that are more common or logical ways to approach the senses, but what if there’s something totally alien and completely unique to your world? Well, that’s where this comes in!
First, rename it. I mean, I guess you don’t have to, but you probably should rename scifiception to whatever specific thing is being sensed. Then, think about your novum. What is that weird thing you’re bringing into your story that’s plausible in some way? Maybe it’s a new element. Okay, that’s cool! Do you need a new sense for it? Maybe? Actually probably not. Don’t invent new senses when old senses will work. That’s a waste of resources and evolution isn’t a fan of that.
(Vivian:) Evolution only works so far and evolving a whole new sense takes a great deal of selective pressure to evolve. Unless it is really early on, at which it is much easier as rigid structures are less… rigid. But for a scifi sense you could do…
Digital, okay, this is not a biological sense but it is halfly taken from a franchise I do enjoy, Warhammer 40k. But basically it is a fusion of machine and biology to where digital structures interact with your brain and mind and is functionally an additional sense.
(Anne:) So basically, can it work? Definitely. It’s on here, isn’t it? But just be careful you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel evolutionarily speaking.
(Vivian:) To add some senses like here, you really need to work on extra physics most of the time… Do we have that on the list, or is it just Struo we’ve got so far?
Variations on existing senses
When you’re writing about a sense that’s just a variation or extension of an existing sense, you want to keep in mind one thing: use language from our existing experiences. You can come up with some cool new vocabulary if you want, but give people concrete, specific terms so that they know what to imagine. And one note about expanding existing senses: combinations work very well.
Infraredception
Okay, we’re all snake people now! And we can see into the infrared! Well, I guess we don’t technically need to be snake people, but snakes are one group that can see infrared.
(Vivian:) HOLD UP! We do not quite know how they perceive infrared and what it could be compared too. We do, however, know that they do sense infrared, and more importantly, that it is quite distinct from the human sensation of your skin just getting warmer because of infrared light. It is much more specific and targeted. But I wanted to mostly make it clear that humans can feel infrared light, but you cannot sense it as its unique light the way certain snakes can. Back to your regular Anne.
(Anne:) Thanks, Vivian! So on the one hand, infrared is vision - light waves and all. On another, it’s heat - the whole infrared bit. So which do you go with when describing this? You can honestly do a combination. You don’t want to dismiss either. If it’s just vision, it can be harder for people to understand because it’s something we already do sense, just with touch. But if you only use touch, well then, what’s different about it? This is one where a combination of sensory words can work well.
Ultraception
Purple is clearly the best color, so if you want your character able to see ultraviolet light, just come up with more terms for violet! …Right? Probably not. That would end up a mess, since people tend to associate different color names with different colors and that’s not actually that useful in describing ultraviolet light at all. I’d even go so far as to say useless. What do you do instead?
(Vivian:) HOLD UP! Yeah, I had to do the symmetry. Tetrapods–land vertebrates–actually evolved originally to see red, green, blue, and UV, and most do to this day. It is only mammals that lost UV and green due to the dinosaurs. Primates later got green back. So this one has a lot of precedence in reality.
(Anne:) That’s one reason why this one is sometimes more understandable to people, but again, think combinations! This is another one where heat can work well, or maybe a prickly sensation. I always think of sunburns when I think of UV rays, so for me, purple or violet isn’t even the color I associate with it. You can naturally have whatever visual cues you like, and it’s good to have them to indicate that this is an expansion on vision, but to show that it’s more than what humans normally perceive, combining that second element is useful. Who knows, maybe this is where that rotten egg taste comes in! Stinky red or purple is no bueno.
Radioception
(Anne:) Hear that noise? Is it a radio? No? Maybe you’re sensing the radiowaves… That’s an extension of an existing sense, and naturally, there are going to be some environments where it’s to the benefit of life to manipulate this. Let’s start with–
(Vivian:) HOLD UP! Yeah, like UV and IR, these are electromagnetic waves, but they are incredibly noisy environments, especially on Earth. Imagine if an animal could sense radiowaves and humans were blasting them out like you do? Yeah, it would be panda-monium… hehe. Jokes aside, the properties of radiowaves makes them mostly fit for space.
You can see in this image that certain types of light absorbed (the grey area) by the atmosphere, and those are no good trying to look at if it's too much as it is like a giant wall of blindness. But hey, EXERCISE TIME! Can anyone see from this image why the sky turns red when the sun sets/rises?
(Anne:) This is clearly an unknowable question! But if you think you know the answer, let us know in the chat! (spoiler: it’s not actually that difficult but we’ll still compliment you!). ANYWAY as I was saying before that rude interruption, let’s start with an environment where this would benefit life. As Vivian points out, we’re going to need to get away from enormous sources for there to be a purpose in finely distinguishing it.
So space it is! I mean, this is speculative fiction, so of course there’s going to be life all over space. We already had people who could sense electricity to help detect the functioning of spaceships and the like, so being able to detect radiowaves might be a really good adaptation.
For example, if you’re an ebil space monster searching for new people to destroy, it would be to your advantage if you could sense radiowaves to find people! I’m thinking this would be an extension of hearing, like a faint buzzing, though perhaps paired with a buzzing feeling. Lots of buzzing, I guess that's how I’m imagining this one!
Methaception
(Anne:) This time, I’m going to write an opening so flawless that Vivian won’t have an excuse to jump in. Let’s start with methaception, or sensing methane, a wonderful odorless–
(Vivian:) HOLD UP! Methane might be odourless for you, but there are a lot of smells that humans cannot smell but dogs and other animals react to. What smells you have is highly dependent on what your species needs, and sprinkle in extra because some extra around is going to be needed. But methane can be popular because it is a common component for CNO (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) life on Earth, and it is used as biogas fuel so other species wanting it makes sense!
(Anne:) …Well there went my attempts to get it right! With this type of sensation, I’m thinking it’s a combination of scent and taste. Scent, because yeah, that’s how we normally detect gases, but some cause taste reactions too, since scent and taste are so closely linked. For us, it’s odorless, but to an entity with methaception, perhaps it’s kinda stinky and leaves a foul taste in the mouth. I’m saying this mostly because it’s in cow farts, as people who read about climate change and surprising sources of methane will know!
However, for your species, they might need methane to survive. So in that case, it wouldn’t be off putting but instead enticing. After all, the senses are designed to help people survive by getting what they need in the environment. There’s a reason fruit is so sweet and tasty! Vivian talks about some of the reasons for the various tastes in this post, and you can apply that here. Depending on what purpose methane serves for your species, it might be sweet and highly desirable, or maybe salty to fill that needed niche of nutrients. It’s up to you, but I would encourage you for this one to not leave it at scent but have it impact taste buds too!
Summa summarum
(Anne:) Basically, you want to express xenosenses the same way you do regular senses, with distinct differences depending on if they’re entirely new or extensions or modifications of existing senses. It’s important to pay attention to language, too! Use specific, concrete language that takes full advantage of the language in which you write.
(Vivian:) Hey, Anne, how about a practicum set in my universe? A short tale where you do some of these to show how it can be done in actual writing?
(Anne:) That’s a splendid idea! If anyone has a request for a particular xenosense to explore, feel free to drop it in the comments! If we get it before the post is written, I’ll do my best to include it!
As is my usual advice for writing, have fun. I had a great time imagining how I would write all of these different senses, and you can do the same! Challenge yourself, but don’t try to be completely original. Your readers need familiarity, but other than that, go crazy!
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Anne Winchell. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as the Sapir-Warf Hypothesis, the relationship between language and senses, and xenosenses and possible ways to portray them are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific 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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