What's That Smell?
Layering Sensory Detail into Your Story

By Melinda Rucker Haynes
Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved

I was watching a reality TV show the other day–I think it was Ten Years Younger–when a cosmetic dentist told the makeover patient that he was using gas on her to take the edge off her pain. He wasn't going to put her under general anesthesia because "when your eyes are open you feel things LESS."

Why would that be true? Think about it.

For the majority of people the visual modality, seeing, is their most used informational channel or lead representational system of the five senses–sight, hearing, taste, smell, feeling. It is said that when one loses a perceptual channel such as sight or hearing, their other senses compensate and become stronger, more acute. My friend has lost her sense of smell and taste, so she's really into the texture of food and her memories of what she likes to eat. She still won't eat fish, which she loathes, but is crazy for marshmallow Peeps, though she can smell nor taste neither.

You might be wondering which is your lead channel? How do you remember things? Do you remember in mental pictures? Hear your memories like a sound track? Perhaps a combination of your senses? Through constant use one sense may be a little or a lot stronger than the other four perceptual channels.

I used to say that I'm a visual person. Perhaps this is because when I was very young my dad trained my visual memory, which came naturally to him as he's an eidetiker or possesses photographic memory. But as I've learned about the mind and how we process our experiences and thoughts, I've discovered that I depend most on my feelings to navigate my world. My procedure is to mentally reason and physically "arrange" or work whatever's appearance and sound until I FEEL good and right about it.

Since that is the heart and soul of my creative process–how the heck do I actually produce books? I get an idea for a plot from something I hear, see or remember and it's usually in the form of words or a storyline/situation that I hear in my mind. Then the idea begins to take shape as a sort of grayed-down, flat picture that I'll add a soundtrack of words to like a voice over. This is probably due to my telling myself serial adventures when I was a little girl in Mmmmmelinda SoundOVision :>)) My initial creating is all mental until I jot it down or key it into the AlphaSmart. Then the story idea becomes written word–still flat and colorless, though.

After I've got the story idea or a spandex plot, I need to people the story. I have a general idea about the character types I want to suffer and grow :>)) through the story action. Though I must confess that I'm not all that interested in what they look like, other than they've got to look different from each other or occasionally have some physical characteristic will be cause for conflict. The way I begin to figure out who the heck these people are is to name them. I spend as much time researching each novel's characters' names and their meanings as I did before my son was born. Really, naming children is easier because I believe those little unborn souls are hovering near whispering into Mommy's ear the name they're going to be called in this life. If I get a potential fictional character to do the same thing, I'll let you know. :>))

When I've got the names then the characters begin to individuate and take on emotions, goals and conflicts. And the more I work with them, that is, write them doing and saying within what has now become their story, the more the book will begin to look and feel right to me.

I've been told that my stories have a real sense of place and atmosphere. What I know is when I'm describing settings and moving people around in the story, I'm exercising my visual memory or ability to mentally visualize/imagine. I can close my eyes and put up a picture from memory or imagination on my mind's screen then describe it. You are probably good at visual imagery, too, given that you're a writer. Maybe you think you could be better at it, or enjoy it more. If so, close your eyes and allow yourself to play and create images. Imagine or pretend you can create mental pictures, if you have to. In other words, fake until you make it. When you write you're creating a thought-to-word picture that your readers have to translate into their own pictures or sounds in their minds according to their own representational systems. We all want to create well "sensed" stories that connect with readers' emotions. Remember, thoughts create feelings or emotions, so writing effectively is communicating your thoughts or imaginings to readers' minds where their thoughts create feelings of pleasure and excitement or disappointment and disinterest.

If you belong to a critique group like I do, you have more than a feedback opportunity for your WIP. You can immediately experience how your story may be processed by readers. Yes, yes, they're writers reading from a critiquing perspective instead of readers going along for the ride, but you as the story's creator can learn a lot about yourself and your writing nevertheless. Remember my friend who lost her senses of smell and taste? I've been critiquing with her since 1991. She'll read through my pages and sometimes point out where she's "bumped" in the story because I've failed to address how things smell. Potentially, any reader might be pulled out of a mechanically well-crafted story that doesn't have balanced sensory detail from all five perceptual channels. And if you're writing a paranormal with way more than the five regular senses, you've set a really interesting task for yourself. Just how does a psychic hear or feel her information from the spirits? What does that sound or feel like? Unless you've discovered your own psychic gifts, you're going to have to imagine those sounds or feelings as you do the other fictional elements of your story. If my WIP begins to bog down or seem flat and unreal to me, I'll start looking for any missing multi-sensory detail that, when added, can draw me and the reader back into the story and keep us there before I tear the book's fiction elements or mechanics apart.

So goes my creative process as this moment. Tomorrow it could change to some degree, but I don't expect what I want from my creating to change much. I intend to keep creating and doing that which helps me to FEEL good and right.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it–for now.