Use Your Five Senses to Jazz up Your Writing

One of the simplest techniques to add life and breadth to your stories is by using your senses. All five of them: smell, taste, touch, auditory and visual. Okay, you may include a sixth–that extrasensory sense we all have but need to fine-tune: intuition. For now, let’s talk about the Big Five. See how many you can spot in the first paragraphs of my book, THE TRIANGLE MURDERS:

At twenty minutes to quitting time, Fiona stopped typing and let her hands fall still. Something was wrong.

She smelled it first, a familiar odor, like she’d left the iron on a shirt too long. Then she saw it. Wispy ribbons of smoke coiling up into the room from a gap at the bottom of the door. Fiona could almost taste it now, foul and acrid, an insidious miasma curling around her feet, her legs.

She leaped up, rushed to the exit and threw the door wide. In the corridor, a screen of smoke shimmered like a gathering of ghosts in the hallway but no flames were visible. The floor felt warm. Hot. She tread on the balls of her feet toward the elevator. That’s when she heard it. The sound of glass breaking. Not a tinkling like a whisper, but a painful splintering. Then a rumble shook the building. Fiona’s heart thrashed crazily and for a moment that was all she could hear. She had to get out, down, all the way down to the street. Ten floors.

In these few sentences, my character uses four of five of her senses to experience the smoke and fire. I could make the case for touch too, if you count her typing, throwing the door open, and treading on the balls of her feet. Indeed she is “touching” her environment. Voilà, all five senses!

In mysteries, in particular, the senses are important. A scene in the morgue would not be as effective without a mention of the smells, first of the chemicals, disinfectants, etc. and then of the body. Depending upon the cause of death, bodies will not all smell the same. A victim found floating in the river will have a different smell from one who was burned to death in a fire. Describing these smells is vital for the reader to get the visceral reaction you want. Visit a morgue if you can (or care to) to be able to describe those smells firsthand.

Sprinkle a few pleasant smells around as well. The ocean spray at the beach, a freshly washed puppy, a new car, a newly-diapered baby, or oils, lotions, perfumes wafting off your characters. Add interesting smells like the pages of an old musty book, a worn-out leather jacket, or an old storage unit recently opened after many years.

Detectives, cops, amateur sleuths, FBI agents–all law enforcement professionals need to be observant, starting with the most obvious sense: sight. They must notice things the average person doesn’t. Not only what a suspect looks like, but little details like did he have manicured nails, did she wear earrings, were his teeth yellow, crooked, were his eyes bloodshot, did the roots of her hair show? Pros are trained to pay attention to these details, so your professional law enforcement characters must also.

The sense of sight can be used effectively in many ways. Did your character witness a crime? How? Did she see the perp? Or did she just hear a shot behind closed doors? Was she the victim of a rape? What did the rapist look like?

What did your character really see or think she saw? Eyewitnesses, as you know, are notoriously unreliable. In a museum exhibition on “psychology” we hosted at the Science Center I worked at, visitors were asked to watch a video of a purse snatching in action at a train station, then asked to select the snatcher from several photos after. Very few were able to pick the real thief. Why? Hair color changed, mustache gone, new glasses on.

Plus, did the witness herself wear glasses or contacts and have poor distance eyesight? Did something interfere with the visual cues, ie: a distraction to turn her focus from the crime? You can have lots of fun with the sense of sight.

Sounds are just as important. Or the absence of sounds as when a prowler tiptoes around a carpeted house but then steps on a squeaky joist. Background sounds give readers clues about where the scene takes place. The sounds of ocean waves, train whistles, foghorns, or freeway noise help set the stage as can crickets chirping, owls hooting, or a lion roaring.

Characters’ “voices” are reflective of their personality and attitude. What does the voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, gravelly, squeaky, soft? These auditory cues give the readers insight into the character and where he’s from. Does he have an accent or speak in a distinctive dialect? Is she shrieking or whining all the time? Can you barely hear her whispery voice? How does the voice shed light on the character’s early development? Was she always shy and fearful, or self-confident, aggressive, even a bully? How would the voice reflect these characteristics? Use voice to paint a fuller, more complete picture of your characters.

And finally touch, the kinesthetic sense. A little harder to use, but if woven well into scenes, can be very effective. Feeling the smoothness of a new wood floor on your bare feet, crying out after your fingers touched a hot stove, feeling soothed as the warm bathwater reaches up to your neck.

A mother and her child can demonstrate love with a simple kiss, an erotic sex scene can heat up the pages with the proper “touches,” and petting or hugging an animal will surely make the reader feel the sweet bond between species that just a look or a word of love can never do. Touch, feel, experience.

It’s easy to forget the senses and just get on with the story. Without them, however, your prose will be flat, dry and, frankly, boring.  So who will read your story in the end?