We experience the world through our senses, through what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. It’s our senses that define our existence, which is why it is imperative to incorporate sensory writing into your work.
Senses take a flat world and transforms it into a fully realized one with depth, texture and vibrancy. All five senses should be integrated into your description somewhere. If your story takes place in the woods, you might talk about the dappled lighting, moist ground, and sounds of the birds and animals moving about. It might smell of wet Earth or decomposing leaves. If your story takes place in a bakery, I would hope there would be talk of scents and tastes—touches of vanilla and chocolate and the feel of warm cookies straight from the oven. The goal is to offer details about your world through the five senses, not just sight and sounds, which are the most easily accessed and obvious.
Sensory description helps forge an emotional connection with your reader. It allows them to experience the world as your characters do and pulls them deeper into the scene. Using sense description is a great way to achieve a deeper POV, which allows your readers to engage emotionally with what’s happening in the story instead of being held at a distance and forced to watch what is happening instead.
The best description is complex. It doesn’t just provide details from one sense, but includes a combination of senses. Sight combined with sound or smell. Touch with taste. Explore the options. Don’t be afraid to combine two descriptions using one sense with one description from another for that perfect triad in your writing. (See my blog on the power of three to learn more about this.) Or add an entire list of items.
The strongest sensory writing focuses on the scents, tastes, sights, and sounds without alerting the reader to the act of smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing or touching. It is far more effective to say, “the bitter coffee jolted me awake” than “the taste of the bitter coffee jolted me awake.” Just drawing attention to the act of tasting, undermines the effect of the tasting. Eliminating phrases like “I saw, heard, smelled, etc.” is also a great way to trim length and go deeper into your POV.
The trick is to keep your description rooted in your story. Every type of story has a style. Every story has a mood. Description should always be realistic and appropriate within the tone and mood of your story. For example, fanciful descriptions in a hard-boiled mystery will jar your reader out of the story. It’s not appropriate for that kind of story. Be mindful of the tone of your story.
Also be careful to provide description from your POV character only, using his or her language, style and tone even when including sensory details. If you are using an omniscient narrator, keep sensory details rooted in the overall mood of the book and consistent with what has come before and will come after.
Below are some examples of sense description used in combination to great effect:
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
Earnest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell TollsThere’d been no breeze off the harbor that day, and a gray milk fog had wreathed the city’s canals and crooked alleys in damp. Even here among the mansions of the Geldstraat, the air hung thick with the smell of fish and bilge water, and smoke from the refineries on the city’s outer islands had smeared the night sky in a briny haze. The full moon looked less like a jewel than a yellowy blister in need of lancing.
Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows(the narrator talking about scars she received from her hawk…)
One is from her talons when she’d been fractious with hunger; it feels like a warning made flesh. Another is a blackthorn rip from the time I’d pushed through a hedge to find the hawk I’d thought I’d lost. And there were other scars, too, but they were not visible. They were the ones she’d helped mend, not make.
Helen Macdonald, H Is for HawkIn the doorways of the sun-beaten tenant houses, women sighed and then shifted feet so that the one that had been down was now on top, and the toes working. Dogs came sniffing near the owner cars and wetted on all four tires one after another. And chickens lay in the sunny dust and fluffed their feathers to get the cleansing dust down to the skin. In the little sties the pigs grunted inquiringly over the muddy remnants of the slops.
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
In this series, we’ll explore the various senses and their specific role in creating a deeper world. The blogs will include writing examples of each type of sensory writing. First up: Sight.