The Other Four Senses

I went for a stroll the other night and sat down at the basketball court near our house. And I thought about writing, of course, because that’s what you do at the basketball court, right?

I was thinking about how we get caught up not just in a story or in a character’s development, but in a setting. Some writing can really paint the picture for us so that we see the action and setting of the story like a movie playing in our minds.

Some writing goes further, and engages all our senses, so that we feel as though we are there in the thick of the plot. This is the sort of prose that creates worlds and transports us right into the middle of them.

What makes the difference between the two? One key distinction is in how we communicate to the four senses other than sight.

We can’t just paint word pictures that satisfy our mind’s eye. We need to speak to the reader in every sense, as much as we’re able. We have to speak to the mind’s ear, the mind’s nose, the reader’s mental nerves and tongue.

Sitting down in the park I close my eyes and…

I can hear warbling sirens off to the north, to my left. Fire trucks responding to a crisis, frenetic horns honking as they rush through intersections. Someone is running a power sander south of me, perhaps smoothing out rough planks of wood for a home project.

All around me, the breeze comes in short bursts, like the night sky is breathing on me. It combs through my hair and chills my neck, but plays with my chest hair like a lover’s fingertips.

The wind carries an aroma, a hint of homemade brownies, perhaps wafting down from one of the many kitchens above me on the hillside.

What aboout taste? I taste nothing, but my mouth feels dry, sticky, desperate for cool water after the exertion of crutching down the hill to this spot in the field.

As the crisp air begins to sink into my skin, I almost wish for a jacket. Now I’m ready to make the journey home. Muscles tense and I lift myself up onto the crutches with care.

Then I start up the gradual incline, my cast foot always feeling like it’s about to scrape the cement as I ascend. I push myself harder, my shoulders aching, my sides irritated and raw from friction with the crutches. My breath is loud now, deep and rapid. My chest thumps in time with the clak-clak of my crutches on the sidewalk. Even so, there is a faint rustle as a rabbit sprints across dry grass.

Senses put us there, and help tell the story.

You can paint a pic of a beautiful city with ancient and artistic architecture. But it tells me something more if the characters smell the scent of cherry blossoms on the breeze, if they hear the chittering of songbirds as satin petals fall from every tree branch, and the laughter and mirth of a Midsummer’s celebration beckons around the corner.

Likewise, it tells more story if the air instead hangs stagnant over the lovely town, as the characters choke on the odor of death and rotting flesh, and a shrill cry shatters the silence, expressing hunger.

Hopefully we can wordsmith to conjure up an image of a lovely setting. It’s the other senses that help really fix the reader there in that new world.

Try it as an exercise: sit in silence in a favorite or familiar location. Close your eyes and take in everything you can from what’s goings on around you. You might be surprised at what you’ve been missing.

Then when you write, your readers will be thrilled by what you’re not missing.