Tip: Using Senses Other than Sight in Your Writing

This seems like a little thing but it is really effective. You know how you always hear, "Show, don't tell," as basic advice to beginning writers? (Actually I think that one's a bit of an oversimplification, but I won't go into that now.) Well, look at the work you have read where sensual details have really resonated with you, work that has really left a sense of itself with you, and I'll bet you anything that the writer didn't just "show" through visual details but also through sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of tactile touch.

It's visual cues that most often show up in writing (and it's true we humans do get a gigantic proportion of our information through our eyes.) So it's all the more unusual, and striking, when something is communicated to the reader in the form, not of what was seen, but of what was heard, smelled, tasted, or touched. Think about how a smell will immediately take you back to a place or incident from your childhood.

Try it. If you substitute another sense than sight in even a few places, I promise your writing will be richer, and will grab more of the reader's attention.

For an example of this taken to the extreme, see Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. (That's the Amazon link, you can read the reviews there if you're interested.) This is the story of an eighteenth-century French murderer told, very effectively, entirely through the sense of smell. And not all of those smells are pleasant. Far from it. (Warning - not for the weak of stomach.)

Just got back from an hour with The Suspicious Room at the local Starbucks, have to go to work (at the day job at the publishing house) now. Write on!