Is your writing falling flat? Struggling to breath? Lying deader than a cadaver in an ill-funded med clinic?
You need to liven things up a bit.
How to do this, you ask?
By employing the 5 human senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste.
Is this everything you can do? No. You can do these 7 things, for starters.
But it’s a solid trick, and it’s what we’re focusing on here.
As humans, the 5 senses are how we interact with the world. We stop to smell a bed of roses, subsequently suffer the sting of a bee. We taste a summer strawberry, hear a tractor chugging in the field. We feel the earth beneath our feet.
Carla walked to the convenience store. Cars sped by her, pedestrians shrugged past her, she could hardly see the street ahead of her.
Carla walked to the convenience store. Cars roared and whizzed past her, she could almost feel the sound of their engines reverberating in her ears—underground in the distance the subway—she could hardly see the street ahead of her. Pedestrians bumped into her, jostling her, brushing her clothes. And the smell. First the concentrated human smell, then food, cuisines the world over, but here, all here, and then the trash. There was always trash.
Is this a perfect piece of writing? Of course not. I sketched it out in 5 minutes. Woe be me to spend more time than I have to on a blog. But do I believe it’s livelier, more evocative than the first example?
More engaging?
Yes, I do. Because I’m working to engage the senses.
Examples of Engaging Writing
All the below examples make good use of sensory description and input.
Let’s start with two near perfect examples from the realm of scent, from the novel Perfume, The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind.
‘In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin, people lived so densely packed, each house so tightly pressed to the next, five, six stories high, that you could not see the sky, and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed. It was a mixture of human and animal smells, of water and stone and ashes and leather, of soap and fresh-baked bread and eggs boiled in vinegar, of noodles and smoothly polished brass, of sage and ale and tears, of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines, only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below. The people who lived there no longer experienced this gruel as a special smell; it had arisen from them and they had been steeped in it over and over again; it was, after all, the very air they breathed and from which they lived, it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin. Grenouille, however, smelled it all as if for the first time.’
The sense of place we get here comes almost entirely from descriptions of smell. Yes, we can see the houses packed tightly together, but we are immersed in the world through scent.
Let’s look at another example from the same book, but one that evokes a specific smell, rather than describing a setting with them.
‘This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, nor that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water… and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris… This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk… and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk—and try as he would he couldn’t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way—it really ought not to exist at all.’
Out of curiosity, and because I’m apparently a masochist, I dug up a story I wrote when I was 15, about a city that robs criminals and their families of their senses. There’s a rebellion, of course, and two teenage protagonists. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but let’s look at an excerpt.
‘They sat in almost complete silence, rarely talking, until three faint gunshots were heard in the distance, sending a wave of birds into the horizon. Joseph stared at them, watching them fade into the dusk, then started as he realized Miria was shaking beside him. He sensed she wanted to get up and run, but was held back because of her condition. It wasn’t easy to bolt into the forest when one was blind.’
Ok, two teenagers in a forest, listening to gunshots. One is blind. I’d like to add more sensory detail while keeping the same relative length. If I can sneak in more information about these characters at the same time, all the better.
‘They did not talk, but they did not sit in silence, either. They sat in the forest. And to Joseph, the forest was alive with the murmurings of the natural world, and he saw the swaying branches and swooping birds. Miria could not see these things. Nothing murmured to Miria. The forest spoke clearly to her, even sang, of these swaying branches and swooping, chirping birds. Then the forest ceased to sing. Then, though distant, the following seemed in Miria’s mind an explosion: three cacophonous gunshots.’
I tried to use more words that connote sound, like spoke, and sang, and cacophonous. And I wanted to hint that Miria was blind without explicitly saying so, while building on these ‘sounds’.
I think the second version is better.
But be wary. Yes, we have 5 vivid senses to play with. That doesn’t mean every sentence and paragraph should be chock-full of sensory input. The story needs to move.
Used appropriately, and wisely, sensory details will add impact. But work them in organically. Don’t let them bog down your story.
I could have gone on, and on, and on about the sounds of the forest. And there’s something to be said for crafting an ultra-rich setting. At the end of the day, though, again, the story needs to move.
That’s what makes it a story. So, instead of rambling on about rustling leaves, I moved toward another sound, one that would propel the story: the sound of gunshots.
To follow up on this, let’s go back to my first example:
Carla walked to the convenience store. Cars sped by her, pedestrians shrugged past her…
Maybe someone is watching Carla through binoculars. Maybe she’s got a bomb in her purse and you want the writing short and punchy. In the moment, you might not care about what the city smells or sounds like, but that Carla gets home safely.
That’s fine. As I said, there’s a time and a place. A strong writer knows what they’re after.
To finish, let’s look at one last example, from the inimitable Gabriel García Marquez. The book is Love in the Time of Cholera.
‘To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter.’
I’m finishing with this example because it engages the senses while developing character.
This is the character Florentino Ariza falling in love with the character Fermina Daza.
While we see this happening—while we see the story moving—we are regaled with sights and poetic sound. ‘The breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils,’ and ‘the gold of her laughter’.
We dive deeper into Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza’s perception of her via the senses.
This, I think, is a good point to end on.
Summary: engage the reader by engaging their senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. Don’t bog down the story, though. Work in these details in a way that builds setting, character and/or propels the story.
Final Exercise
Take an old piece of your writing, something you think can be made richer, and work in more sensory detail.
Do it organically, in a way that moves the story forward.
If you’d like, use the contact form on my site to send me your work. Paste the original first and the new version after.
I’d love to see your work. And, in the future, I’m interested in showcasing some of this work, or maybe doing a live critique (with permission, of course)…
Until next time, signing off.