In a recent post I talked about the smell of cigarette smoke being used a description. Smell is actually an incredibly evocative sense for me, and I love reading it and working with it in my own writing. Readers of Salt and Silver may remember that our main character Allie spends a lot of time talking about what things smell like. For example:
I open my eyes when I feel Roxie’s hand on me. I know it’s her. I can smell her the way I can smell demons and Ryan. The way I can smell Amanda (vodka and a slowly rotting liver and the Dr. Pepper-flavored lip gloss she used for years because I gave it to her); the way I can smell Stan (stale makeup and stale sex that never quite washes off and the burned plastic smell of a perflectly executed wallride on a really top of the line skateboard); the way I can smell the diner (bleach, pancakes, pot roast, blood); the way I smelled the dead underneath Bath & Body Works (blood, blood, copper, iron, blood, and horrible horrible flowers).
For me, describing the smell of something can bring a level of realism to an otherwise fantastical narrative — it can be a way of giving the reader an entrance into something they’ve never experienced (and in the case of demons, probably never will). It can also be an immediately accessible universal, if you want to play around with those — almost everyone knows what burning wood smells like, or the smell of the air after a thunderstorm. If you need to do a quick description to catch the reader up, throwing in a universal scent can get you where you need to go quickly and with a bit of panache.
Explore your own senses beyond just the visual — scent, texture, hot/cold/wet/dry, sounds, pressure… Then see how it can be applied to your writing to create something interesting and evocative for your reader.
Here’s an excellent blog post on a similar subject: Read React Review‘s “Smells Like Romance Spirit: On the super noses of our heroines and heroes.” Allie has a psychic nose! That is my only excuse.
