Use All of Your Senses

There is no doubt that sight is the most powerful of our five senses. Hearing comes next, but it doesn't even come close to rivaling sight. However, we do have 5 five senses, which means we can describe things in five different ways.

When I read stories, they tend to play as movies in my head. My mind creates mental images of the scenes and the characters and they move around as my eyes move along the pages. When I write, I find the same thing happening; my mind is showing me the actions and I am recording what I see. This is all well and good, but it tends to focus on the visual too much.

Suppose the hero walks into a dungeon in the basement of an old castle. We can see cobwebs and stone walls and shackles, but what else is there? Can you smell the concoction of sweat, feces, blood, and iron that lingers in the air, reminding the hero of the atrocities that once occurred there? Can you hear the deathly silence (or perhaps the phantom screams of the prisoners once tortured there)? Can you feel the rust on the prison bars or the dust settled on an open logbook? Can you taste the stale water standing in a tin cup?

I will admit that taste is a particularly difficult sense to write for. Tasting things requires a great amount of trust that the object will not poison or otherwise harm us. However, taste is closely related to smell, so a smell that is particularly strong or thick can be tasted, despite not actually having the object touch the tongue.

When you use more senses in your writing, you add depth and realism to your story. We are doing more than seeing the action; we are experiencing it. Although the other four senses are not as powerful for knowing our surroundings, they make up for it by acting as powerful triggers. Smell is notoriously powerful. The right smell can trigger long lost memories from decades in the past. Certain tactile feelings are similarly unforgettable. Sounds, such as a familiar voice, can be thought to help bring people out of comas or regain memories after amnesia.

If you are going to incorporate other senses into your writing, remember to make them natural. They shouldn't be a gimmick, nor should they feel like they've been artificially inserted. Talk about what somebody smells when that character is taking a deep breath or when a particular scent is noteworthy. The point is to create an immersive world.