Using Your 5 Senses: Giving Life to Your Description
Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste…
If there’s one piece of writing advice that we hear very often, it’s that you should “Show, and not Tell.” I agree with it to an extent, though not fully. We won’t get into that today, though.
Sometimes, that piece of advice is right. For instance, consider these statements: “I am walking in the town. The town is quaint, and the people are nice. I’m having a pleasant time.”
Clearly, you can’t see the town that “I” am supposedly walking in. You don’t know what makes the town quaint, what “nice” means, and the extent to which “I” am having a pleasant time.
In other words, you know nothing about the scene I have just told you. This is where “Showing” comes in.
The Power of Showing
Let’s transform that paragraph into something more… tangible, shall we?
Told:
“I am walking in the town. The town is quaint, and the people are nice. I’m having a pleasant time.”
Shown:
“The aroma of freshly baked bread wafts into my nostrils as I stroll down the uneven cobblestone path, flanked by cottages, lawns crowded with beds of flowers. It reminds me of the fluffy doughnut I had last night — of the sweet tang of citrus jam flowing from fluffy dough.
Children frolic in the sun, playing their games of tag. A pair of women who were chattering to each other wave and wish me a good morning as they pass. The day is young, but and I am awash with vim and vigour.”
Differences
For starters, the “shown” example is much longer. Showing takes more effort than telling. You have to create the scene for the reader — you have to immerse them in it. Telling is dunking a bottle of water on your friend’s head. Showing is bringing them to the sea and going scuba diving together.
What have I done to “create the scene?” How did I show you what I told you? It’s simple — I made use of the five senses.
If you want, you can go back to the “shown” paragraph and pick out the clauses in the sentences that correspond to the different senses. Otherwise, read on.
How Did I Use the Senses?
- Sight: Flanked by cottages, lawns crowded with beds of flowers. Children frolic in the sun, playing their games of tag. A pair of women waved at me.
- Hearing: The women chattering to each other. They wished me a good morning.
- Smell: The aroma of freshly baked bread.
- Touch: The uneven cobblestone road.
- Taste: The sweet tang of citrus jam from a fluffy doughnut.
I have made the scene come more alive with that description. I gave the reader the information that they need to construct that scene for themselves.
How to Use the 5 Senses:
Sight
Sight is the easiest to use — in fact, it’s the most widely used, even if the author is telling instead of showing. After all, humans use our sense of sight the most out of all the 5 senses to process the world around us.
We all know how to describe a scene using sight — just show the readers what your character is seeing at that point in time. It can be the man in the fedora across the street, or the darkening sky signalling the arrival of rain.
Hearing
Hearing is another easy one to use, mainly because it is difficult to block out noise completely. As you’re walking down a street in a busy city, you are likely to hear cars zooming across the road, the chatter of people as they pass you by.
The only time your character can have their sense of hearing taken away is probably when they’re listening to music at full blast, or they’ve put on noise-cancelling headphones, or they’re in a soundproof room, or when they’re deaf.
Hearing someone talking to them is a given. But what about other sounds? Those that you don’t normally consider?
Picture the scene you have in mind. What is happening in that scene? Are there birds chirping overhead? The incessant rumble of machinery in a factory? The zapping of electrical sparks?
The peripheral noises are important. Focus on them to set the mood, the atmosphere of the scene. Rolling thunder indicates that a storm is brewing — something bad is about to happen. The gentle trickle of a stream probably means that your characters are taking a relaxing hike in the woods.
As you can tell, those two sounds set very different tones for different scenes.
Smell
Smell is another great way to set the mood, alongside sounds. Just like your ears, you can’t turn off your nose. Smells will find a way to penetrate your nostrils and tickle your olfactory senses.
Scents can also ground the reader in the location. If you’re in a flower field, you’d probably smell flowers. In a farm, you’d probably smell manure or fertiliser. The reader can have a better idea of the location, and the smell makes it easier to visualise.
Scents help to give cues as to specific things in the surrounding area. Like the example earlier, the smell of freshly baked bread tells the reader that there is possibly a bakery nearby, or someone’s baking bread. If there’s a corpse, you’d probably smell the stink of decay.
Touch
Touch is slightly different than sight, smell, and sound, mainly because you can (sort of) control what you feel. If I see something that looks slimy, I probably wouldn’t touch it. If that happens, I wouldn’t be able to describe what I’m feel.
Of course, that is what you would think if you limited your definition as to what “touch” means. The sense of touch is more than just what you choose to feel.
Temperature and humidity affect your characters’ sense of touch. The biting cold, and the arid heat is something that can be felt, though your character is not voluntarily touching them.
The “uneven cobblestone path” as described in the example earlier is another example of touch that your character cannot avoid.
Taste
Similar to touch, it is also rather difficult to describe taste. After all, you can only describe what your character puts into their mouths. Which means that it’s great for when you’re writing about meals, and sometimes kiss scenes.
For each thing on earth, the taste is usually unique. As such, to create the most vivid image of taste imaginable for your readers, you should compare them to already-known foods. For example, if I wanted to describe something sour, I’d write: “A citrusy tang fills my mouth.”
Why that description is more effective than just saying, “It was sour,” is because it compares the taste to a citrus, like oranges. It’s highly likely that your readers would have eaten some form of citrus fruit before, so they can associate your description with that taste.
Food isn’t the only thing that you can compare taste to. If your character is bleeding in the mouth, they’d tend to taste something metallic. Fun fact: this is due to the metal, like iron, in your blood.
Rubber (latex), too, has a distinct taste that your readers may know as well.
Conclusion
Utilising the five senses can bring your scenes to life. It works on the basis that you are not describing your scene to your reader, like how you would tell a story. You are effectively immersing them in the scene using the power of association.
Sight, smells, and hearing are senses that are more commonly used, because we perceive most of the world with these three senses. Taste and touch are not employed as often, because what we taste and feel can largely be controlled, and so they will not apply in every scenario.
Thank you for reading, and I hope this helps! Good luck on your writing endeavours!
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