The Book on SHOW, DON'T TELL | How to Write More Visually

Use Six Senses - Not Five!

 Everyone always says "use the five senses!" In fact, it's almost as common as "show, don't tell". But, I'm here to tell you that you need to use SIX – not five.

Writing with the first five senses

I've talked a lot about writing 'visually', but good fiction writing is so much more than just visual. It's an entire 4D cinematic experience, piquing all of the reader's different senses, not just their mind's eye.

Humans experience the world through all five senses, unless of course they have a particular disability. This affects how we read – we expect the same experience in our stories as our real life. It helps us suspend our disbelief. Ipso facto, if your writing tweaks someone's many senses, it'll likely be more engaging (more 'realistic'). If you only tweak the one (i.e. sight), it's like you've numbed your reader to the wider world.

The five senses are...

Sight ... what do the characters see? What's in front of them, or in the corner of their eye? What's close, or very far? Is something crystal clear, or hazy and indistinct? Is their vision blurry for some reason? Is there a fog, a haze, a heavy rain, or snowfall making it harder to see? Is the sun too bright? Too dull? Do we see movement in the shadows?

Sound ... what do we hear? What's loud, dull, a gentle whisper? What's close or far? Is the sound pleasant or unpleasant? Is it sore? Do we have to strain to hear it?

---Check out this book's chapter on "Voice" for more ideas as to how to describe sounds.

Smell ... what can we detect with our nose? Is there an overwhelming smell, or a background ambience? Can we learn clues from a smell? Is it a nice smell, or a horrible smell? Is it sweet, savoury, acrid, salty? Has something happened and it has left an odour in the area? Is someone approaching and we smell them before we see them? What can we learn about a character from the odour of their clothes, their hair, their breath, their skin or armpits?

Taste ... not as easy to fit into a story, but taste is still one of our core senses (and a sensitive one at that). We taste whatever we put into our mouths. But we can also 'taste' air. Our reaction to taste is important character development, showing that we're refined, impolite, open minded, rude, young, keen, sensitive, inexperienced, unsurprised, joyful, grumpy...

Touch ... what do we feel? This isn't just what our hands can feel, although texture and temperature sensed through the fingers is very important information. But all of our skin feels all at once. So what do our feet feel? Our ears? Our back? Our genitals? How do our clothes feel on our body? Are we burdened by weight? Is there a spring in our step? What is the weather doing to our skin? Has the recent action sequence left us feeling a certain way? How long will we feel that way? Are we ill? What's that doing to our body?

---See the chapter on "Body Language" for a breakdown on the human body and how you might describe it.

When to use more than one 'sense'

Well, basically all the time. Whenever you're writing essentially any scene, but especially when something, someone or somewhere is being introduced for the first time, you can (and should!) play with more than one sense.

Then, every so often, check in with a few different senses to keep the scene 'alive'. For example, if we establish that it's raining and we are outdoors, we can't then abandon ever mentioning the weather again. If rain keeps falling, it will keep affecting us – either because we get wet, cold, shivering, maybe the pavement is slippery, or we can't see, or can't hear...

This might extend your sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes this won't be acceptable, as you need to keep things moving along (remember what we talked about earlier? Long sentences slow things down but add more information. Quick sentences add less info but keep the action rolling. Check out the chapter on Repetition in my book "The Book on Fiction Writing" for more). But most of the time the extra word count is a worthy trade-off for a more engaging scene.

Examples...

BORING: Bob walked into the room, looking like he'd just come through a sewer pipe. We shook hands.

INTERESTING: Bob sludged into the room leaving a trail of glistening brown footsteps. Good god, the smell was awful – I almost gagged from the savoury sewage stench emanating from his clothing, which lingered on my tongue like BP's latest oil slick. When I shook his hand – reluctantly – it was wet, slimy, and worst of all, hot. Did I wish it was cold? I'm not sure, but it was disconcertingly hot.

BORING: It was raining, hard.

INTERESTING: The rain beat down so cold and heavy it hurt my cheeks. Thousands of little stinging droplets assailed my face – making my hood more or less redundant.

EXERCISE: Go and find the last scene you wrote. Not a full chapter, just the introduction of a place, object, or person. Rewrite that scene again, focusing on a sense other than sight. Then repeat this process, focusing on one new sense at a time – same scene, different sense. Only one sense at a time! This will help you break the habit of writing about sight only, while also practising describing other senses.

And what about that 'sixth' sense?

Humans have a sixth sense, especially in books. Our sixth sense isn't something that we can touch, see, smell, taste or hear. It's just a feeling. Maybe it's at the back of the mind, maybe it's a shiver on our skin, maybe it's just doubt or anxiety. But sure as hell, it's there.

It's that feeling that you're being watched...

It's that strange urge to listen to a particular song, only for it to come on next on shuffle...

It's that certainty that it's quiet, too quiet...

It's that odd anxiety you get when you take a left turn and you grow increasingly confident that you were meant to go right, even though you've never been here before...

It's that second-guessing you feel when you walk up to someone's front door, but get a strong sensation you're at the wrong house...

When to use the 'sixth' sense

The sixth sense is most popular among action, thriller, and horror writers. Of course, it's a chance for their characters to 'sense' more about a scene, helping build anticipation and tension.

But anyone can use the sixth sense, as all humans have it and all humans tend to use it. It's your character's intuition, their ability to realise that something is off before having any evidence to back it up.

Our 'sixth' sense is derived from four places:

Our 'gut'

Our education

Our lived experience

The 'signs' pointing a certain way

Characters won't always know that they are deriving their sixth sense from these places. Our intuition often happens at a subconscious level. We just know.

Your characters can and should use their sixth sense whenever they're in a situation where their intuition might alert them to something being a bit funny. This will help you create anticipation and tension as mentioned earlier, but could also be used just to advance the plot – perhaps they feel something is wrong, so they make a particular phone call that begins the unravelling of the conspiracy. Or they turn up where they aren't supposed to because they followed their 'gut'.

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