Writing with Good Senses - Part IV - Smell
Our olfactory sense is the first to develop, I recall learning from college biology. Smells trigger memory faster than sight our sound or touch. Even after thirty years, the smell of apple pie reminds me of my Grandma Abernathy, though she died when I was quite young. But those pies were an early childhood pleasure, and nothing has ever compared quite as favorably to them in smell or taste.
Smell is one of our first lines of defense. I remember reading an article about this in which the wife kept saying she smelled gas. The husband smelled nothing. Finally, she grew concerned enough that they called the gas company. It took even the technician a while to find a miniscule leak in their gas line. The technician asked the man if his wife were pregnant. The husband didn’t think so, but that day, the wife found out she was.
Apparently, pregnancy enhances the sense of smell to protect the mother from breathing toxins, get away from fire, perhaps, way back, detect wild animals getting too close.
For myself, I use scent as an orientation tool. Think of the aromas you smell walking through a mall. Starbucks probably. One of those bath shops, and let’s not forget the candle store. We have a Coldstone ice cream shop right across the street. It doesn’t attract me, though I love ice cream. Why? Because the smell of the cakes and brownies baking is so overpowering, I get a sugar overload just walking past, setting up my gag reflex.
Yes, smell saves us from swallowing substances that aren’t good for us. If you smell bitter almonds, don’t drink the poisoned soft drink, Heroine.
Smell can be used as attraction. In my book Family Guardian, my heroine is a perfumer. Her nose is sensitive. She can pick the hero out of a crowd just by smell. She finds the bad guy by a peculiar aroma he carries with him.
In case you haven’t figured this out, scent fascinates me. I’ve read a number of books on aromatherapy, as well as Diane Ackermann’s wonderful book A Natural History of the Senses. Yet incorporating it into one’s writing can be really difficult. One can only mention the hero’s aroma of sandalwood or the heroine’s lavender fragrance so many times before you annoy the reader.
To involve scent in the story, one must get truly creative, for I believe we don’t consciously smell things as much as we see, hear, and even touch them. Scent, however, because of its importance to us as human beings, may draw the reader right into the middle of a scene more than any other sense.
Audrey remained on the platform amidst a collection of trunks and valises until the locomotive’s last whistle died from the valley and pine resin scent from the planks beneath her feet overpowered the stench of coal smoke.
With no other background here, you know this story is set somewhere in the past. Resin from the planks beneath her feet and the stench of coal smoke. The fact she can smell the resin implies heat enough to draw that out, thus using smell to suggest the sense of touch. Coal smoke is an older train. If I’d said diesel instead, the time would have moved well into the twentieth century.
Smell is so important to us one shouldn’t even sprinkle it judiciously through one’s writing. One should use it like ground red pepper in cooking—with an extremely delicate hand. Think of its impact on the reader, but do not, under any circumstances, leave it out or you are missing an opportunity to connect your reader to your scene.
August 21st, 2008 at 17:11
Wow, that story about the wife smelling gas, then finding out she’s pregnant. Amazing. I had never heard anything like that. I do agree, however, that smells can take you back to a certain place and time in your memory, there is no arguing there. I see the importance of incorporating that into the stories I write. Almost like getting the reader to identify with the character.
Awesome post Laurie. Thanks.