In order to bring your story to life, you should provide as many sensory details as possible. This is another part of the “showing” versus “telling” issue.
The Five Senses (The physiological ways in which we perceive something.)
- Sight: How we see something and perceive it via a reaction between the eyes and the brain.
- Sound: How we hear something and perceive it audibly by vibrations in the eardrum.
- Taste: How we taste something and perceive it in a chemical reaction on the taste buds using one of the four types of tastes: sweet, salt, sour, and bitter.
- Smell: How we smell something and perceive it in a chemical reaction using olfactory receptors.
- Touch: How we touch something and perceive it using the neural receptors in the skin, hair follicles, tongue, throat, and mucosa.
Using the senses in writing
- Sight: What something looks like, where it is located, and how the character “sees” it.
- Sound: What a character hears in a scene, from a single sound to a cacophony of sounds.
- Taste: What a character experiences through eating or a memory of eating something. This is seldom used in all scenes.
- Smell: What a character smells in a scene. Often the sense of smell and taste are together.
- Touch: What textures a character feels in a scene.
Tips on when to use sensory details
- Use only the particular sensory details that are important to bring a scene to life for the reader.
- Sight is the most needed sensory description.
- Sound is the second most needed sensory description.
- It is not necessary to use all five senses in describing a scene. Too much description will slow
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