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i hope i’m not just a mutual to you but also an enemy and a whore

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“Show, Don’t Tell!”: Using the Five Senses in Writing

This is an extended piece to my ‘Show, Don’t tell’ post. When writing the senses, I like to imagine the scene as if I were watching a movie. It’s the simplest way for me to picture and write when it comes to descriptions. You don’t want to overload the reader, but you do want to paint the picture instead of telling them. Staying aware of the five senses in your writing will dramatically improve your skill. It not only helps the reader be a part of the story but helps the writer set important scenes, without having to outright state what is happening. In this post, I will explain how I use the five senses in my writing. As always, my advice is subjective and only to show what I personally do. Whether you keep the senses in mind as you write, or you edit them in later, making sure you pay attention to keywords will help eliminate the stress of going back later to figure out what (maybe!) went wrong. 

SEE: On Sight

One of the easiest ways to go about elaborating sight is to eliminate words related to vision (look, saw, gazed, peek, etc). It also helps to stay aware of items, colors, sizes, etc. Do the same thing you’d do with words related to sight, eliminate them. Of course, don’t erase every word or phrase, but being proactive, keeping them in mind, and avoiding them will help you avoid overloading your reader with too much purple prose. (Granted, I would die for purple prose, but I understand that’s not everyone’s thing). 

Examples:

Jill saw Jack running. He carried a silver pail. He tripped and fell down the hill. 

 There are a lot of sight-words in this example. As the writer, it is your decision to choose what you want to elaborate on, whether it is one thing, or all of them. How much of the story you want to paint is up to you—

Jack’s feet blurred against the green grass as his toe caught his ankle. He rolled on his side, his silver pail flying into the air and reaching Jill first.

Jill craned her neck to find Jack staggering down the hill. Water sloshed from the sides of the bucket, swinging and glistening in the sunlight. He stumbled and grabbed for the handle with his second hand as the pail threatened to leave his grasp, and then he slipped, toppling down the hill.

In both of these scenarios, the reader can “see” that Jack is running and tripped without specifically stating that Jill saw it. They also “see” he had a silver pail and dropped it. 

Being more visually descriptive is also very important for facial expressions. It takes a simple mood and elevates it. Describing the expression also gives the reader the chance to “feel” that way too, almost like a mimic, which helps them visualize and empathize with the character.

Example:

Maxine made a disgusted face.

Think of what a disgusted reaction looks like; usually, it involves frowning, pinching your nose, sticking out your tongue, etc. Sometimes, it can help to look in a mirror and write what you’re seeing, too.

Maxine flared her nostrils and stuck out her tongue.

In the latter example, the reader is able to infer that Maxine is disgusted by how the writer described her reaction.

HEAR: On Sound

Describing sound can be tricky. It’s also hard to remember when to use it. We tend to think of sound in terms of music or voices—okay, okay, sometimes we sprinkle in animals howling or the wind blowing, too!—but sound can be incredibly important in setting a scene and is often under-utilized. Sounds let the reader know their surroundings without pulling from what is going on and adds intensity!

Examples:

Manuel sat nervously at the coffee table.

Again, as the writer, you can decide where to incorporate the use of sound. Here are a couple of suggestions, based on the above example:

Manuel’s fingers drummed against the table and drowned out the low whistle escaping from between his teeth as he exhaled. All around him, there was cheerful chatter, through which the barista’s loud voice occasionally sliced.

Manuel’s thoughts whirred and hummed, a dull grinding and the clinking of glass broke through the constant thump of his knee against the underside of the table.

In both of these examples, the reader was able to gather that Manuel was nervous (tapping knee, drumming fingers, low whistle). They are also able to gather he is in a coffee shop (or a restaurant of sorts) without explicitly saying so.

TOUCH: On Sensation

The best way to handle touch is by imagining whatever it is you are describing and what it feels like. If you don’t know how something feels, google it. Don’t describe a snake as slimy just because its scales are shiny and gives it a slime-like effect. That said, touch doesn’t just deal with what your character is physically touching. It can also deal with emotions and help to express them without saying outright how your character feels. 

Example:

Opal touched the silk blanket. She felt sleepy and closed her eyes.

Here we can elaborate on what the blanket feels like when Opal touches it and how she feels to indicate she is tired: 

The supple fabric slid between Opal’s fingers like water. Her tired muscles sagged and sharp, tiny pinpricks pressed against her heavy eyelids as she lay back.

The reader knows the blanket was very soft and also that she is tired without specifically stating she was sleepy. 

TASTE: On Flavor

Taste is a fun sense to mess with. It can show the reader so much more than how delicious the bread is (or how gross dirt is). I like to play around with taste in the weather/air, the taste of fear, the taste of cat hair in your mouth because there is always cat hair in your mouth… all right, maybe that’s a personal thing.

Example: 

The sun rose over the city.

What do you use for taste here? A city can’t taste, the sun doesn’t taste, but your character does!

Yellow light spilled over the streets, soaking the grit from the rainbow puddles into the air. The bitter grease lingered and settled in his mouth, strengthening every time he scraped his teeth against his tongue. 

Experiment with taste in your writing. Describe things you wouldn’t normally think to taste, like crude oil*. The internet is a good resource when it’s something you don’t want to try yourself, like crude oil**. Chances are, someone out there has already tried it and explained what it tastes like online.

SCENT: On Smell

Ahhh, smell. Smell lets the reader know so much: they can figure out where a character is, what they’re doing, where they are, etc., just from a few scent-related descriptors thrown around. Smell is also useful in triggering memories or past events.

Danny walked through the forest.

You can use so many of the five senses here! But since we’re focusing on scent, let’s zero in on that:

A crisp hint of pine lingered in the air and blended with the pungent decay of the brown needles underfoot.

Without stating anything about a forest, the reader has an idea of where Danny is. You can also use smell to show emotion! 

Danny was in love.

How do you smell love, K? Well, you’ve got me there: you can’t. But as a writer, you can think of what love means to you and of things you associate with love, and work from there. Personally, I imagine it would have a sweet smell, maybe too sweet.

A rush of flowery sweetness filled his nostrils as the handsome young man walked by.

There you have it. Of course, there’s a lot more to writing the five senses, as there is with anything, but this is to give you a basic idea of what I do when I’m writing. Being proactive and keeping the senses in mind while writing can be tough and exhausting, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And you don’t leave it all for editing! Remember: the most important thing is to keep practicing. 

Happy writing!

* Please do not taste crude oil. I can’t believe I have to type this, but some people want to eat Tide Pods, so here I am.

** Do not taste crude oil. You will die.

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today’s the day

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Alan Rickman            

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0zXiOivLsQ9ZQghBxJr_6Q

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The Simpsons Season 9999 Episode 0

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i remember when i was doing a religious simpsons painting in my painting 1 class and the professor had been talking about trends that annoyed him, specifically people painting bart back when he taught in the 90′s. i took my painting off the easel and turned it around and my 50-some year old professor had to cope with seeing imagery of bart simpson as a cherub 

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Claire Curneen SCULPTURE

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Didn’t you kind of injure yourself in the witchwind thing when you slammed down too hard?

A Discovery of Witches | BUILD Series London

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Matthew Clairmont

A discovery of witches 1.03

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i’m more active at @halfbloodsev

still post / follow from here for non-hp things

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“but there is a line where i both exist / & unexist”

— torrin a. greathouse, from “The Principle of Explosion,” Therǝ is a Case That I Ɐm (via dianaprincie)

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NO!

2012 / 2015 / 2018

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a resume is just a ref for your worksona

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My stepfather combined “that’s a tough nut to crack” and “that’s a hard pill to swallow” and ended up saying “that’s a tough nut to swallow” and I haven’t functioned properly since i heard him say it

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Did anyone notice how quickly the internet turned into a Lovecraftian horror scenario?

Like we’ve got this dimension right next to ours, that extends across the entire planet, and it is just brimming with nightmares. We have spambots, viruses, ransomware, this endless legion of malevolent entities that are blindly probing us for weaknesses, seeking only to corrupt, to thieve, to destroy.

Add onto that the corrupted ones themselves, humans who’ve abandoned morality and given up faces to hunt other people, jeering them, lashing out, seeing how easy it is to kill something you can’t touch or see or smell. They’ll corrupt anything they think could be a vessel for their message and they’ll jabber madly at any who question them. Their chittering haunts every corner of the internet. They are not unlike the spambots in some ways.

Add on top of that the arcane magisters, who are forever working at the cracks between our world and the world we made. Some of them do it for fun, some of them do it for wealth, others do it for the power of nations unwise enough to trust them. There are mages who work to defend against this particular evil, but they are mad prophets, and their advice is almost never heeded, even by those who keep them as protection.

All people know several spells to use the internet. Facebook asks you for the magic words to log in, so does your email, so does your twitter and on and on. The spells are words or a gesture with the hand, some use the colour of your eyes, or the shape of your finger. Our chief of security joked about requiring users to give a drop of blood before they could log in. Many do not understand the humour of mages.

The cracks between the two are breaking. IP cameras filled our world with eyes and the magisters learned how to open almost all of them. We all carry magic slabs of glass that if you hold it up to your ear can sing to you with a loved one’s voice, but if you look at it with your eyes, can show you a corrupted human with bleeding orange skin scream the profane with a thousand voices. The other day I saw someone hack a moving vehicle. At one point they made it stop. At another they made it so it couldn’t stop. Some of our best and brightest are going to create an army of four winged bats hovering throughout every city and we are going to connect them directly to the dimension where the nightmares live.

I’m not saying it’s all bad, but I am saying Cthulhu lies deathless dreaming in this web we built him and he is waking up.