Using the Five Senses for Evocative Description

Writing description is a delicate balancing act.

Too little, and your readers are left hungering for character and setting details that would bring the story to life in their imaginations. 

Too much, and the action slows to a crawl. Worse, you might be accused of writing “purple prose.”

Too late, and by the time you reveal the important details, readers will have made up their own. And believe me, when they discover the image they’ve locked in on doesn’t match your description, they’ll be completely thrown—maybe even mad enough to throw the book aside!

It takes practice and skill to know when description will enhance the story, what kind of description fits this particular scene, and how much you need to draw the reader in.

The Five Senses are the basic building blocks of description, so let’s take a closer look at each one. (And just because I can, I’m going to indulge in some shameless self-promotion with brief examples from Castles in the Clouds, book 2 in my Flowers of Eden series, now available for pre-order and scheduled for release next August.)

1. Sight. This one’s the most obvious. We take in vast amounts of information just by what we see around us, so it’s important not only to effectively describe the appearance of our story characters but also to place them in very specific settings: a café, a forest, an art gallery, the beach. Here’s how Larkspur Linwood describes her literature professor:

He would look so fine today, dark hair slicked back and shiny, broad shoulders tugging against the fabric of his starched white shirt.

And here’s an example of a visual description as Lark’s younger sister sees a dust storm approaching.

“Oh, no. No, no, no!” Standing in the middle of the cotton field, Rose Linwood looked west toward the darkening sky. 

Not rain clouds, which would have been bad enough this close to the cotton harvest. Not clouds at all, but a roiling reddish-brown mass of topsoil blown in from the drought-parched farmlands of Texas and Oklahoma.

2. Sound. In analyzing our surroundings, the sounds we hear are right up there with what we’re seeing. Voice tone and cadence give us vital clues to a speaker’s meaning. A noisy neighborhood lawnmower can drive us to distraction. A wailing siren warns of danger. In this brief example, Lark and her family have just enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with new friends.

As the ladies served dessert following the simple but delicious meal, a pattering on the roof alerted them to the light rain beginning to fall.

3. Smell. It’s a proven fact that our memories are tied very closely to the sense of smell. I’ve even heard real estate agents suggest that their clients bake cookies right before a house showing to create a homey and welcoming ambiance. Here’s what Lark experiences when friends welcome her with a home-cooked meal:

The mouthwatering aroma of roast beef filled the kitchen. Lark and her family hadn’t had to tighten their belts quite so much at the farm in recent months, but even so, she hadn’t smelled anything so good in ages. Her stomach growled in response.

4. Touch. Temperature, texture, dryness or dampness—all these play into our sense of touch. In this snippet, Anson, the story hero, comforts Lark during a difficult time.

She felt so good in his arms, so perfectly right. If only the circumstances were different. If only it hadn’t taken a moment of need for her to let him hold her this way. He tipped her head back, cradling her messy bun and wishing he had the right to loosen the pins and lose himself in those silky golden tresses.

5. Taste. When it comes to description, taste is probably the most underused of the five senses, but it can be a valuable tool. Here’s how taste is used in a scene where Rose Linwood must deal with the aftereffects of the dust storm described above.

How many meals had they eaten that grated between their teeth and left their mouths tasting like a sandy creek bed?

And for something a bit more romantic, here’s Anson imagining a kiss with Lark.

Could he bear to be near her every day and keep things strictly platonic, when there were moments—too many of them lately—when all he could think about was how her lips would taste beneath his kisses?

Are you taking full advantage of all five senses in your story description? One way to do a quick spot-check is to gather five different colors of highlighters or colored pencils, then print out several pages of your manuscript. Assigning a different color to each sense, mark descriptive words or phrases with the appropriate color for whichever sense was used. A visual survey will tell you very quickly which senses you rely on most often, as well as which ones you haven’t used much and might want to consider working in. 

When using description, be specific. Choose the most accurate words.

More tips for using description effectively:

1. Describe only what your viewpoint character is consciously and logically aware of in the scene.
2. Use concrete nouns and active verbs, avoiding adjectives and adverbs except as necessary to flesh out the image.
3. Don’t go crazy with your thesaurus. Use it wisely to find the best and most accurate descriptors. 
4. Especially don’t go hog-wild finding unique words to substitute for “said” in dialogue tags. Better yet, skip the “said” phrase and instead use a beat (character action) to identify the speaker.
5. Be selective. Decide what description really matters in any given scene. Leave the rest to the reader’s imagination.
6. Work description smoothly into the forward-moving action; don’t do a “description dump,” especially not in your opening scene!
7. When describing your viewpoint character, try to be a little more creative than having her looking in a mirror or other reflective surface.

What other tips would you offer about writing effective description? If you’re brave, share a line or two from your wip where you’ve used one or more of the five senses.

Join the conversation for a chance to win your choice of one of Myra’s published books (including The Sweetest Rain, Flowers of Eden, book 1), OR a copy of Word Painting Revised Edition: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively, by Rebecca McClanahan 

Award-winning author Myra Johnson writes emotionally gripping stories about love, life, and faith. Myra is a two-time finalist for the prestigious ACFW Carol Awards, and her Heartsong Presents romance Autumn Rains (November 2009) won RWA’s 2005 Golden Heart for Best Inspirational Romance Manuscript.  Myra and her husband are the proud parents of two beautiful daughters who, along with their godly husbands, have huge hearts for ministry. Seven grandchildren take up another big chunk of Myra’s heart. Originally from Texas, the Johnsons moved to the Carolinas in 2011. They love the climate and scenery, but they may never get used to the pulled pork Carolinians call “barbecue”! The Johnsons share their home with two very pampered doggies who don’t always understand the meaning of “Mom’s trying to write.”

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It's all in the details

A few days after Christmas, my husband and I drove over to Asheville, NC, to tour the Biltmore Estate. Wow! Think Downton Abbey, Carolina-style! The Biltmore became the country home of George Vanderbilt, grandson of the famed industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt. Construction began in 1889, and the house was opened to family and friends in 1895. In 1898, George married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, and they raised their only child, Cornelia, there.

Can you imagine a family of three living in a 250-room house? According to the website, “The finished home contains over four acres of floor space, including 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces.” The estate grounds cover more than 8,000 acres!

We weren’t permitted to take photographs inside the house during our tour, but you can click this link if you’re interested in taking a look.

In my photos of the exterior, though, you can’t help but appreciate the intricate details that make the house unique. Every angle and curve, all the adornments and statuary, the turrets, the pitch of the roof—each feature engages the eye and enhances the dramatic style of the house.

By now, you’re wondering what any of this Biltmore trivia has to do with writing. The answer?

It’s all in the details!

Details—specific, focused, and distinctive to our story—are crucial to drawing readers in and making them believe the story world is even more “real” than the room in which they’re sitting.

It’s the difference between “Olivia put supper on the stove” and “Olivia added a pinch of fresh basil to the simmering marinara, her grandmother’s recipe, handed down through six generations of Bellinis.”

Now, obviously, if we went into this depth of description throughout our manuscripts, several things would happen. Number one, we’d soon be way, way over our target word count! Number two, we would bog the reader down in unnecessary information. Number three, if the story ever did make it into print, critics would likely call us to task for writing purple prose.

So the key is to decide which details are most relevant in each scene.

Scenario #1. Your heroine is called to her boss’s office, where he tells her she’s fired. What will she be most aware of in that moment? A chip in her nail polish? The distinguished cut of the boss’s designer suit? The pungent smell of the lemon-scented furniture wax the cleaning staff used on his desk?

The answer? It depends. If she’s in denial, she might focus on the nail polish chip and the manicurist appointment she hasn’t had time to make. If she’s resentful because her snobby, rich boss holds all the power, she might zero in on his expensive suit. If she’s so sick of that lemony smell every time she gets called on the carpet for some minor infraction, she might be more than ready to blow this pop stand and look for work elsewhere.

Scenario #2. Your hero’s dog just got hit by a car and is near death. The hero rushes to the vet, where an attractive tech (your heroine) hurries to help. Is he likely to pay much attention to how great she looks in scrubs, or the beguiling way one errant curl dips across her alabaster forehead? I doubt it. In that moment, he’ll be focused on comforting his beloved pet while pleading for the vet to save him. Yet I’ve read more than a few romance novels in which characters in dire circumstances often seem unrealistically distracted by each other’s appealing qualities.

Historical novelists face another challenge: incorporating the ideal balance of historical detail to set the stage without flaunting every morsel of research they unearthed. It may not matter exactly how your heroine stokes a wood-burning stove as much as the fact that she’s cooking on one—unless she’s never done it before and the hero has to demonstrate.

In my historical novella Settled Hearts, coming in April as part of Barbour’s The Oregon Trail Romance Collection, I knew I couldn’t describe in full detail what it was like for my characters to travel for months over rough country, all their provisions packed into a 4-by-10-foot covered wagon. But I did have to do the research so I knew what they were facing.

Then I salted in the specifics when it mattered most. I listed a few of the supplies they purchased before setting out. I described the biting flies as they traveled along the Platte River. In one scene, the hero has to hitch the oxen to the wagon, so I found a YouTube video showing exactly how it’s done, then sprinkled in the details as the hero interacts with the heroine, standing nearby.

The key to writing effective, evocative description—prose your readers won’t skim to get to the real action—is to make it relevant. Include the details but choose them carefully. Make each detail matter to the viewpoint character in that moment. When you understand what your character would most likely notice and why, it’s just a matter of describing the scene from that character’s perspective.

Remember, it’s all in the details!

~~~~~~~

Late-breaking addition!

(can't believe I forgot this!!)

One lucky commenter will win a copy of  
The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description 
by Sharon Lippincott

~~~~~~~

Myra and hubby at the Biltmore

Although currently residing in North Carolina, Myra Johnson proudly claims her heritage as a native Texan, and she sorely misses real Texas barbecue! Myra is a two-time ACFW Carol Award finalist, winner of the 2005 RWA Golden Heart, and winner of the 2014 Christian Retailing’s Best Award for historical fiction. Married since 1972, Myra and her husband have two bright, beautiful daughters, two mission-minded sons-in-law, and seven amazing grandchildren. The Johnsons share their home with a couple of very pampered rescue dogs.

Coming in April and now available for pre-order: 

The Oregon Trail Romance Collection

Nine romantic adventures take readers along for a ride on the Oregon Trail where daily challenges force travelers to evaluate the things that are most precious to them—including love. Enjoy the trip through a fascinating part of history through the eyes of remarkably strong characters who stop at famous landmarks along the way. Watch as their faith is strengthened and as love is born despite unique circumstances. Discover where the journey ends for each of nine couples.

How Writing Blind Improved My Descriptions

By

Regina Jennings

Blame it on Mary Ingalls. Ever since reading the Little House Books as a child, I’d always wondered what it would be like to be blind. How would I find my way around? How would it change my relationships? How would a character describe the world when she can’t see it?

When I first heard about the novella collection A Match Made in Texas I started thinking about creating a blind heroine. I knew that writing from a sightless point of view would be challenging, so a shorter story was the perfect chance to try something new. Enter Grace O’Malley. When the book opens she has already lost most of her sight and is limited to what she can catch through a very limited tunnel of light. Expecting that she will soon lose even that, she is trying to prepare both physically and emotionally to live in total darkness.

So, the obvious challenge I faced was describing the setting so that readers could picture it, even when the heroine couldn’t. In Grace’s case, she would rely heavily on her memory.

It wasn’t cheating to let her describe a room as she remembers it. Another fix was to have her mourn the loss of the beautiful scenery of the canyon surrounding her, giving the readers a chance to picture it, too. And while getting accustomed to her new cabin, Grace shares what she hopes it looks like, allowing readers a glimpse into her preferences even if the description might not be accurate. Another help for setting the scene was to use other characters to describe something to her—a realistic solution as her friends help her adjust to her new situation.

So there were several options available for describing her surroundings. The real challenge came where I didn’t expect it—describing the action and dialogue.

Currently, it’s the fashion to use action beats instead of tags when writing dialogue. Instead of “he said/she said” we’d rather see our characters conversing. We don’t need to hear “he teased” when we can see his smile, but what about Grace? If someone is with them, then maybe they could comment on his physical reaction, but at some point Grace and our hero Clayton definitely needed to be alone! What do we do for beats then?

Let’s look at an example. In this scene, Clayton has insisted that Grace allow him to cook for her. If Grace had her sight, the scene might be written like this:

Grace washed her hands and face as Clayton stoked up the fire. Once the flames danced, he closed the iron door and reached for the skillet. By the time the ham was charred, Grace’s stomach grumbled. She pinched a piece of cornbread from Emilie’s tin.

“I saw that.” Clayton pointed a fork at her, his eyes twinkling.

Grace shrugged and popped the stolen bit in her mouth. “I wish my rolls would’ve taken. They’d go perfectly with that delicious ham.”

“Stop your belly-aching,” but his smile softened the order. He slid the iron skillet across the table, wrinkling the tablecloth in the process. She only had time to smooth it before he passed her a plate and took his seat.

Of course, this won’t work for Grace. Clayton’s twinkling eyes won’t be visible across a table, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what’s happening in the room. And how boring would it be to read “She heard him sit…” “She heard the plate hit the table…”? There had to be a better way. Better verbs. Here’s another stab at it using Grace’s true POV:

No longer needing to count her steps, she hung her bonnet on its peg. The pump groaned and water gushed into the basin.

“Your turn.” Clayton handed her a towel.

While she washed her hands and face he poked at the fire until it crackled and soon the ham sizzled in the skillet. Grace’s stomach grumbled, so she pinched a piece of cornbread from Emilie’s tin.

“I saw that.” Clayton slid the bread away from her.

Grace popped the stolen bit in her mouth and sat at the table. “I wish my rolls would’ve taken. They’d go perfectly with that delicious ham.”

“Stop your belly-aching,” but there was a smile in his voice. The table groaned under the weight of the iron skillet. The heat rolled over her face like the ripples of a sun-warmed stream. A plate slid to her.

Can you hear those verbs? Groaned, poked, gushed, crackled, sizzled, slid? Even though Grace can’t see anything in the room, she knows exactly what is happening, which is natural. We instinctively know what’s going on around us, even if we aren’t looking in that direction. For instance, right now you can tell what’s going on in the next room—unless you have unusually stealthy children—in which case you might want to go check on them.

So instead of worrying about all the descriptions I couldn’t use, I made a cheat sheet of noisy verbs to help me.

How fun are those? And you know what? I found myself going to this list even after I finished writing Grace’s story. Why? Because noisy verbs talk to us. When writing in deep POV, we often hesitate to describe anything out of sight for the protagonist, but these verbs free us up from that limitation. They pull double duty. Not only can you hear them, but they also create a visual image of what is happening, and the more senses you can involve, the more immersed your readers are in the scene.

Although I’d thought that writing through a blind person’s eyes would limit my descriptions, it forced me to dig deep into the tool box and come up with a broader range of verbs and that improved my writing. 

I guess I owe Mary Ingalls a thank you, after all.  

Look at your own work. Find a sentence and spice it up with a noisy verb then post before and after in the comment section. Leave any comment to get your name in a drawing for a copy of A Match Made in Texas.

Also, if you've already got the book, I will substitute a Post-It Note Cube with a picture of A Match Made in Texas on the side. The winner gets to choose, book or Post-It Notes.

A MATCH MADE IN TEXAS

by Karen Witemeyer, Regina Jennings, Carol Cox and Mary Connealy

There's a secret matchmaker at work in frontier Texas!

In the small town of Dry Gulch, Texas, a good-hearted busybody just can't keep herself from surreptitiously trying to match up women in dire straits with men of good character she hopes can help them. How is she to know she's also giving each couple a little nudge toward love?

Regina's book--An Unforeseen Match

Hoping to earn an honest wage on his way to the land rush, Clayton ends up on Grace's doorstep, lured by a classified ad. He may have signed on for more than he expected though--and he may have found the one woman who can keep him from moving on. 

Regina Jennings is homeschooling mother of four from Oklahoma. She enjoys watching musicals with her kids, traveling with her husband and reading by herself. When not plotting historical fiction she plots how she could move Highclere Castle, stone by stone, into her pasture and how she could afford the staff to manage it.

Regina’s novella An Unforeseen Match is included in the collection A Match Made in Texas. She is also the author of Sixty Acres and a Bride and Love in the Balance. She loves to hear from readers at her website - www.reginajennings.com and on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

About A Match Made in Texas: