Sensory Writing for Smell: 5 Tips to Remember
Anyone who’s ever taken a writing class knows that it’s important to use the senses when writing. Even so, we often overlook the sense of smell. At best, it tends to be thrown in more haphazardly than other senses and rarely used as part of the plot. That’s why using smell sensitivities and other scent-related facts well can make your story stand out.
5 Aspects of Scents That Can Improve Sensory Writing for Smell
1. Natural Ability
Let’s face it – not everybody has the same sense of smell. It’s more of a spectrum starting with unable to smell and going up to extremely sensitive noses.
A Bad Sense of Smell
It might be hard to notice at first. After all, you’d have to discuss smells with other people to realize that your ability is subpar, but it could have some definite side-effects. Some require being aware of the deficit, and some don’t.
- Not reacting at all unless the smell is strong
- Not realizing that they smell / their house smells / etc.
- Being afraid that they smell / their house smells / etc.
- What smells good v. bad
This might be helpful for cleaning something most people can’t stand the smell of, but the personal smell paranoia could overwhelm that benefit pretty quickly. Not to mention that the person might not be as fast to pick up on dangerous smells such as mold, smoke, and gas.
A Particularly Good Sense of Smell
There are pros and cons to having a keen sniffer, as well. While people on this end are more likely to be able to tell ingredients of a dish by smell, they may also be more likely to react to strong smells. Such as getting a headache the instant they get a whiff of cigarette smoke or a skunk.
Think about much fragrance is on your average person. The detergent/softener in the clothes, the shampoo/conditioner in the hair, and the deodorant used are a basic minimum of smells for most people. That’s 3-5 scents per person before perfume or cologne. In a crowd of 10 people, that’s 30-50 scents, not including any scent in the room like air freshener or food.
I imagine that with a particularly strong sense of smell, that could be a bit distracting or even overwhelming or irritating (let’s face it – not all smells mix well). And that’s a small crowd. Bigger crowds with more body heat will only complicate the issue.
2. Medical Conditions That Affect Smell
With the current pandemic and its symptoms, more people are aware that medical conditions can dull your sense of smell than ever before. Those medical conditions can go from irritating to deadly, and the side-effect of having little-to-no sense of smell gets added on to any other problems caused by the illness. Plus, no sense of smell generally means no sense of taste, which can be salt on the wound with more serious illnesses (If you don’t believe me, try tasting something while holding your nose).
On the other hand, other medical conditions and treatments can make your sense of smell more sensitive. Chemotherapy, for example, can sometimes make people develop scent sensitivities (see #5 below).
3. Meteorological Conditions That Affect Smell
Did you know that how well you can smell is affected by the amount of moisture in the air? On a particularly dry day, you’ll be less likely to smell well than on a good one. That’s why you often hear people talk about the world smelling richer after rain. The moisture in the air combined with the particles disturbed by the force of the rainfall lead to a stronger smell than usual.
4. Scent Memories
Scent memories are probably the most common use of smell in writing. It’s not at all uncommon for a character to smell something and be immediately brought back to
- an emotional memory from the past that acts as exposition or character development or
- a memory that had been blocked/forgotten and holds some essential clue.
When a character does that, we immediately accept it because we’ve done it, too. And the reaction is more powerful than most regular memories:
- sudden tears at a scent that reminds you of a dead family member,
- nerves or anxiety at a smell that reminds you of an abuser,
- calm or happiness at a reminder of good times from childhood, and so on.
The bond between scents and emotions stored in memories is widely accepted, and it’s pretty powerful. And if you’re not particularly tuned into scent, sometimes, you might not realize what caused the sudden memory or emotion.
5. Smell Sensitivities
This phrase is used for physiological reactions to specific smells. The most common are headache, nausea, and vomiting. They’re not considered allergies unless they also cause hives or breathing issues, and they can start
- for no apparent reason (in this case, the person often has multiple sensitivities but to similar things – like all synthetic perfumes or a similar group) or
- as an association.
Ever had food poisoning that left you unable to ever eat that food again because the thought of it made you sick? Or the smell made you sick? That’s one way the body protects itself by identifying possible dangers and tries to make you avoid them.
It is not, however, limited to food poisoning. Food you eat often while going through an illness or harsh medical treatments can cause the same reaction. The body’s not great at telling correlation v. causation, so if the food was eaten when the damage being taken care of, that food might be banned. And so might the hand soap or the laundry detergent.
Clearly, there’s far more to smell that we writers usually take advantage of, and I’m sure there’s more that I’ve missed. How else can writers use the sense of smell to enhance their writing?
