{"id":3602,"date":"2015-08-17T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=3602"},"modified":"2015-08-16T20:36:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T03:36:13","slug":"sensory-detail-smell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/sensory-detail-smell\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensory Detail – Smell"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you put the sensory detail of smell in writing? Let’s sniff out ideas.<\/p>\n

Take a deep breath and imagine the smell of:<\/p>\n

fresh lemons<\/p>\n

watermelon<\/p>\n

chocolate<\/p>\n

coffee<\/p>\n

fish – cooked, or freshly caught<\/p>\n

roast turkey right out of the oven<\/p>\n

popcorn – movie popcorn with melted butter<\/p>\n

How would you describe these smells to someone who cannot smell or who never smelled these particular scents?<\/p>\n

What does a crunchy red apple smell like? Does a red apple smell the same as a green apple? Does an apple smell different if it’s crunchy or mushy? If it’s cold, it might have that earthy smell of a river. Or an apple might smell like a hot summer afternoon in an orchard. Can you put apple smell into words?<\/p>\n

If you can, walk through an orchard or a field where the earth has recently been plowed. Inhale. Describe that earthy smell.<\/p>\n

What does a river smell like?<\/p>\n

Describe fresh cut lawn.<\/p>\n

What about describing smells for other things? What does” old,” ancient” and “calm” smell like?<\/p>\n

Here are some ideas:<\/p>\n

old . . . smells like parchment paper<\/p>\n

ancient . . . smells like musty book<\/p>\n

calm . . . smells like summer rain candle<\/p>\n

But what does parchment paper, musty book and rain candle smell like? Can you describe these smells?<\/p>\n

How about adding sounds:<\/p>\n

“old” sounds like coughing and wheezing<\/p>\n

“ancient” sounds like rattling breath<\/p>\n

“calm” sounds like church . . . sitting in church<\/p>\n

The following is from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury:<\/p>\n

There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. . . What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theatre one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A glorious line about smell:\u00a0 “The air took on its mossy evening smell.” \u2014 Elizabeth Sims, September 215 Writer’s Digest.<\/p>\n

Your turn:<\/strong> How do you infuse smell in your writing? Tell us. We want to know.<\/p>\n

\"Lemons\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"River\" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/a>\"red<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you put the sensory detail of smell in writing? Let’s sniff out ideas. Take a deep breath and imagine the smell of: fresh lemons watermelon chocolate coffee fish – cooked, or freshly caught roast turkey right out of the oven popcorn – movie popcorn with melted butter How would you describe these smells […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[13,6,105,329,10,16,11],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-freewrite","tag-freewrites","tag-just-write","tag-the-write-spot","tag-writing-freely","tag-writing-prompt","tag-writing-prompts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-W6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3621,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions\/3621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}