Using Your 'Unusual' Senses

One of the best ways to bring a scene to life is to employ the six senses. And yes, there are six! All too often, authors seem to focus on the two most common of these - sight and sound. Perhaps this happens because most of us tend to rely on our eyes and ears most in our own lives. But what about taste, touch, smell - and instinct? I'd like to examine the first three briefly and then discuss the also more in depth.

Taste: pretty tough to describe in the context of fiction, unless your character happens to be eating something in your scene, right? Wrong. Take opportunities to describe taste in unusual ways as well - in a battle scene, perhaps, with the character tasting the "metallic taste of his own blood." Or what about when the hero is kissing the heroine, perhaps trailing his lips along the smooth column of her throat, and tasting the faintly salty tang of her skin, or the sweet-bitter taste of her perfume? The "taste" of a cold winter wind that steals your breath and invades your mouth and throat can be a vivid and unusual use of the senses.

Touch: More common, perhaps, than taste, but still under-utilized, I think. We all think immediately of the touch of a fabric or someone's skin against a soft or hard object. What about the other factors of touch - like weight? You can describe what that heavy-hilted sword feels like in heroine's hands when she grips it for the first time, or the damp chill of the stones seeping through her gown as she presses herself back against the wall of the keep. Don't forget to consider describing touch in terms of sharp and dull, cold and hot, heavy and light, and everything in between, as well as the more typical "textures" we tend to gravitate toward describing.

Smell: Another we associate in romance, perhaps, with the more pleasant things, like perfume, or flowers, or the breeze. But don't underestimate the power of this sense in evoking the readers' own memories to your advantage: how many of you, for example, have cuddled a newborn baby and smelled that faint, milky-sweet scent of their skin and hair? It's a powerful image, especially when combined with another sense, like touch or sight. Or in the course of those few pages, include all of the senses - what the baby feels like in the heroine's arms, the scent, the sight of the bundled infant, snuffling about for its milk, the little mewling cries he makes when he's hungry. The use of sense powerfully ties readers to your characters, because it is what allows them to empathize - to "remember" those same experiences through the perspective of your character.

This brings me to the last, and least-often used sense: instinct. Allow your character's "gut reactions" to lead them, occasionally. That prickle of apprehension, tingling down someone's spine, the fleeting glance of recognition that fades before it can take conscious hold in the character's mind, the belly punch of realization, the moment before a strike comes out of nowhere and lays your hero flat - these instinctive moments are golden ones, if used correctly, for an author. Whatever you can do to bind your readers to the experiences and life of your characters is worth pursuing. It's what makes the reader "live through" your character and care about him/her.

So the next time you sit down to your writing session, ask yourself which of the six senses would add to your current scene - and then work them in for a more meaningful, lush and realistic reading experience for your audience.

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