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Writing with the Senses

I. A World without Senses

Imagine trying to tell about the world around you without being able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch it. The result would be a dispassionate narrative, told in the third person. Others would find your writings as lifeless as the piece of paper upon which they were written. More importantly, your reader would remain disconnected from your story, unable to join you in the experience of its telling.

Life, unlike the pages of a book, is multidimensional and is meant to be experienced as such. You must awaken your reader's senses to the lingering sweetness of honeysuckle and the pungent fragrance of cedar. Say only that, "the plant smelled good," and you have robbed him of the opportunity to imagine that he can smell the fragrances that you are only writing about. Consider this writing sample that is devoid of sensory descriptors:

"Come. Walk with me into the forest. Smell the trees and the moist ground. Listen to the crunching sound underneath our feet as we walk. Up ahead there are small animals running away. You can just barely hear them. In front of us, the sun is shining through a break in the trees. Drink some of the water from the mountain spring."

II. A World with Senses

Sensory Descriptions are an essential part of joining author and reader in the same shared experience. Without them, your story, like the example above, is colorless, unremarkable, and boring. What if the spicy aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon in a baking apple pie didn't heighten the anticipation of tasting its fruity sweetness? Try to tell your reader about a sunset without talking about its rosy hues or the afterglow when its big orange ball has fallen behind the mountain. If you are going to be a good writer, you must be able to lead your reader through a multi-sensory experience. Let's look at a rewrite of the narrative you have just read.

"Walk with me, on a summer's day, deep into the woods, redolent with smells of evergreen and damp earth. Needles crackle beneath our soft footfalls as the scurry of small feet run from view up ahead. The afternoon rays of the warm sun splay their colors through the trees like multifaceted prisms. We cup our hands and drink deeply from the icy freshness of a mountain spring.

III. The Explorer in You

In the fifteenth century, men believed that the world was flat because no one had ever explored far enough to know any differently. In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail hoping to prove otherwise. While

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