Author Confessions: Use All the Senses

Another challenge for an author is to use all the senses in their storytelling, and if at all possible, do it without using the words see/saw, feel/felt, hear/heard, smelled, look/looked, taste, touch. Let’s take a simplified glimpse at ways to do that.

I’ll be referencing scenes from my book, Whitney’s Vow and see what we have for the senses:

Brides often entertained second thoughts on their wedding day, didn’t they?

Whitney Anderson’s sleeveless gown stuck to her back from the perspiration dribbling down. She was certain her deodorant had stopped working. The machine of a wedding day had taken over and she was a cog in its well-oiled gears. The backyard of her parents’ home basked in the sunshine as the temperature was a comfortable seventy-two degrees. So why was her body on fire?

 Her fingertips tingled and the small bouquet of daisies and roses pricked her palms. The aura of a migraine hovered around the recesses of her vision. She’d forgone her contacts and refused to wear glasses at her wedding. If she could only get through this day without passing out…Lord, please rescue me.

Sight: I could have written that everything was blurry, but instead I explained she had the aura of a migraine.

Smell: She might detect body odor as she wonders if her deodorant stopped working

 Touch: She touches the flowers and is pricked by the thorny roses. Persperation is dripping on her skin and her dress is sticking to her. She experiences heat even though the weather isn’t overaly warm

Birds chirped merrily in the tall trees, now in full leaf. An occasional trout flipped over the waterfall, tossed forth by the gush of water from the spring thaw. The men settled against the boulders, shaded by higher rocks and towering pines. The air was crisp, cool, and pure. Blake inhaled and grinned. 

Hearing:  He can hear the birds. He can hear the waterfall

Sight: The trees fully leafed out, trout flipping in the waterfall

Touch: Hard boulders, resting in the shade.

Smell: crisp, cool, pure air.

The mosquitoes started biting. The sun dropped lower in the sky, the trees casting long shadows on the path. Where were the men who were watching out for her? Every sound seemed suspicious, causing her heart to skip and race. Even the birds no longer sang. She sat and shivered.

Touch: She’s getting bit by mosquitos, it’s getting colder out.

Hearing: No birds singing. Any sound alarms her.

He headed to the bedroom suite. The bed was made up, and the room held the scent of lavender. He sat down and removed his boots. How could he sleep in this bed without Whitney beside him? It was one thing to do it overseas surrounded by smelly men on the hard ground or cots, but this haven screamed of his wife’s presence.

Smell: Lavender scent vs smelly men.

The quilt on the bed was made with scraps from their older clothes and reflected his penchant for black, blue, gray, and white mixed in with hers for pink, lavender, and a deeper purple with swatches of faded denim thrown in. He stood and dragged his hand over the quilt. She’d stitched it by hand as they’d talked in the evenings. Just patchwork squares but filled with memories. He touched one gingham fabric and remembered her wearing that blouse on their first date. Another was from a skirt she’d worn when he’d proposed. His patches were mostly solids and plaids. Did she have any specific memories tied to them as he did with hers?

Touch: He drags his hand over the quilt

Sight: Vivid description of the fabric squares and where they came from evokes memories.

Whitney was one big itchy mosquito bite. She couldn’t walk. She was rank with the odor of sweat and urine but at least they’d finally allowed her the privacy and space to relieve herself, untying her so she was able to maneuver her jeans for the task. She never saw her captor’s faces. The days were hot and her skin burned. Her hair was matted. Her scalp itched. 

Touch: Itchy. Burned skin. Matted hair. Itchy scalp

Smell:  Sweat and urine. Eww.

Sight: It’s what she didn’t see – her captors.

Whitney was only able to eat a few bites, but it was probably the best meal she’d ever had.

Taste: Well, at least she ate and it was good but that is really more telling than showing. See, even an author can find room for improvement in a story after it’s already been published.  I realized I really lacked in using more dynamic moments with food in my work, but maybe I don’t savor my own meals as much? It’s a thought anyway.

Real Life

Think about what happens when you walk into a room. Do you instantly register a scent? I’ll tell you if one of my dogs left me a nugget, I smell it before I enter the room. It is an odor I detest! Maybe a candle that is lit and burning. Much of our sense of smell is tied into taste and since we don’t eat all the time we won’t always have the sensation of taste in every scene. Not all senses need to be represented on every page, but hopefully enough that the reader will feel like they are experiencing everything the character is experiencing.

Consider that, smell, touch and taste cannot be experienced watching visual media (unless we’re talking physical art), but when a reader is experiencing the adventure of your character, they can connect to all the sensations that character is experiencing. Experiencing all the senses in our fiction can bring more realism to our readers, but we don’t want to overdue it either and take away from the story itself. It’s a balancing act but something I realize I need to grow in as well.