I’m dissecting the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie, using it as a cattle prod to search for little nasties in my manuscript. Yep, you can join in the fun, too. Let’s take a looksee at topic #21
21: Use all five senses in your descriptions. Smell and touch are too often neglected.
Wave that banner high and don’t forget about it. So many times I have been stuck, needing that little extra “umph” in a scene. Adding that little bit of extra sensory perception into a scene is awesome for really engaging your reader.
For instance, the smell of popcorn when you enter a movie theater. The fragrance of roses dancing on the breeze. The gritty surface biting into her flesh.
I don’t think there’s a better method of really engaging your reader than NAILING the sensory perceptions.
Do you have a favorite sensory perception? How about a great example ina book your reading?
Related articles
- Pleonasms … (wordznerd.wordpress.com)
Jennifer M Eaton 
😀
When I attended ThrillerFest, several of the lecturers touched on this. Most recommended using at least two senses per scene, but certainly more if one can–without overdoing it, of course. So, here’s to the creation of ‘stinky’ scenes!
I can see this as a very easy one to overdue– unless the target audience is middle grade boys. The the stinkier the better.
Yes, best to tailor our odors to the appropriate audiences. 😉
I’ve had a lot of betas telling me that I’m missing the sense of smell recently. So I’ve been paying a lot more attention to it, and I’m amazed by how much more my writing sparkles!