Engaging Senses When Writing

When you’re writing prose you, generally, are always acting as the reader’s eyes. You’re describing the setting, and showing them the world. But we have five senses. Engaging them each is a great tool to use to really make your prose round out and bring a place, and scene to life.

Let’s say a character is getting into a car. Chances are the majority of your readers will have, at some point in their lives, done this. It could look like this:

Jude eased into the car, sitting quickly. They closed the door and buckled their seatbelt.

That works, sure. We can engage sight a bit better, obviously, though:

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car, sitting quickly as possible. They closed the door and buckled their seatbelt.

Again, that works, but we do have a full compliment of senses to play with here. Sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste. I, personally, find that adding too many senses at once can overwhelm and work against you, you can end up in clunk territory. Instead I like to hit one or two at a time, to build up the descriptions without making it just a big list.

Going back to our example, let’s try adding sound first:

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car. The cracked leather seats still managed a complaining squeak as they adjusted themselves, trying to get settled as quickly as possible They closed the door and buckled their seatbelt.

Now we know more about the car, in organic ways. But upping the sound a bit can create more detail:

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car. The cracked leather seats still managed a complaining squeak as they adjusted themselves, trying to get settled as quickly as possible The door closed with a complaining squeak and thump, and the seatbelt clicked loudly as Jude fumbled it closed.

Obviously, when you have wordcounts to pay attention to, you might want to trim that back and massage it, this is all just off the top of my head stuff here, so forgive it a bit.

This being a car, the chances of anyone tasting a bit of it would be rare. Not saying that no one has even sat down in a car and licked the dashboard, say, but it wouldn’t be my go-to under normal circumstances.

The thing is, you don’t want to use multiple sense just to set a scene, you want to engage those senses multiple times, in different ways, as you go, to make your world truly feel alive. So now Jude is in the car. We can “see” the car better through the use of sight and sound, and we’re off. So while they’re going along in the car you could just focus on what’s happening:

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car. The cracked leather seats still managed a complaining squeak as they adjusted themselves, trying to get settled as quickly as possible The door closed with a complaining squeak and thump, and the seatbelt clicked loudly as Jude fumbled it closed.

As they drove, Jude thought about the murder, the body in the trunk, and how Kevin planned to dispose of it.

All right, again, that works fine but in the first bit we use sound as our add-on, so let’s switch it up a bit and engage smell.

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car. The cracked leather seats still managed a complaining squeak as they adjusted themselves, trying to get settled as quickly as possible The door closed with a complaining squeak and thump, and the seatbelt clicked loudly as Jude fumbled it closed.

As they drove, a slight whiff of rot filled the car, wafting from the back, reminding Jude about the murder, the body in the trunk, and how Kevin planned to dispose of it.

Again better, but we can keep going a little bit, add some more sense action and use it to tell us more about Jude:

Jude crammed themselves into the small, old, car. The cracked leather seats still managed a complaining squeak as they adjusted themselves, trying to get settled as quickly as possible The door closed with a complaining squeak and thump, and the seatbelt clicked loudly as Jude fumbled it closed.

As they drove, a slight whiff of rot filled the car, wafting from the back, reminding Jude about the murder, the body in the trunk, and how Kevin planned to dispose of it. Jude cracked the window, flooding the car with the scent of freshly cut grass from the passing farm, and they drank it in deeply, using it to shove the worry deeper.

Look at how much we did above without even adding in touch or taste. You have more options then you might think, at all times. Every scene is a continuous chance to engage multiple senses and to use them to deepen your world and your characters. Remembering to deploy them on an ongoing basis can take your prose to a better place.

I will say, in contrast, there are times and styles where you want to pare down on senses instead. There are very brusque forms of prose out there that work wonderfully. But unless you are purposefully going for one of those, you will want to remember your senses and help the reader connect to your story through their use.

Remember the whole thing already lives in your head fully fleshed out and breathing. That’s part of why you’re writing it. But, with senses or plot or any information never forget the biggest rule:

The reader can only know what you tell them.

If you don’t tell them a specific thing, they can not know it. They can infer it, they can add their own choices, but if you want them to feel a certain way, or experience an event, moment, or setting in a specific way, you need to put in the work to make that happen.

It can not happen by itself. Engaging multiple senses can get you far closer to the reader living in the world you hold in your head.