I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find describing stuff really hard.
Like, oh, there’s a building. OK, it’s, um… brick? And a bit big, maybe? Maybe I can talk about its purpose – it looks like an old church, there might be some ivy on it from disuse. Great, cool. Building. Sweet.
That works a lot of the time, and in general you want to be sparing with the fancy prose, since too much of it can get overwhelming pretty quickly. It’s like, I don’t know, some very expensive herb or spice or other that adds a lovely flavour when used sparingly but tastes like absolute tongue-melting yuck in large quantities.
But, y’know, sometimes you do want a little bit of that lovely tasty evocative… herb. I’m losing my train of thought here. And I’m hungry now.
Point is, it’s nice to give your readers that feeling of being all wrapped up in the world, feeling the vibes you want them to feel through vivid imagery. (Depending on your genre and personal style, of course, so take all this with a grain of salt as it applies to you.) Visual imagery is probably the most common – describing the way one thing looks by comparing it to how another thing looks, as in ‘the bird’s wings were wide like a sail’ or something. It’s a simple but effective way to give the reader a stronger impression than simply saying ‘the bird’s wings were a bit big, I guess’.
So when you want something even more evocative, why not lean on a classic technique? (Again, be careful – overuse can quickly lead to purple prose! Unless you’re into that, in which case… go wild with it.)
Blend different senses together
Synaesthesia (or synesthesia for some non-U.K. English speakers) is, according to Wikipedia, a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. In other words, it’s when your senses get a little mixed together: you might smell colours or see musical notes, that kind of thing.
So that’s a thing that some people really do experience – they very literally experience multiple senses in this way – but in literature it also means the blending of different senses in more metaphorical ways. Using synaesthetic imagery and metaphors can bring a different dimension to your prose, almost poetic, and I think it can be a really effective way of conjuring up a sensation for your reader.
Obviously you’re free to mix and match whichever senses you like, but here are some of my favourites.
Describing sounds as visual or tactile
I probably overuse this one, if I’m honest, but I really like it.
See, I like sounds. I make music sometimes, so sound is something I think about and get immersed in a fair bit. But I’m bad at describing sounds in themselves; I find it hard to explain what something sounds like purely as a sound.
Instead, I often talk about sounds in terms of what they might look or feel like. Some sounds are crunchy or gritty or rough, others are clean or bright or smooth or dark. That’s a very basic bit of synaesthesia right there.
When I’m feeling a bit more purple prosey, I often describe voices with comparisons to natural landscapes, for some reason. The first time I did this was in Each Little Universe, in which Riegel O’Ryan is described as having ‘long hair like red stone dust blowing down a cliff towards a tumultuous sea, and an accent to match‘. More recently, in, um, a book I haven’t released yet, but it’s upcoming, so keep an eye out!, a large, imposing figure’s deep voice ‘crackle[s] like the trunk of a winter-frosted tree breaking under its own weight‘.
I like to think these are more vivid and evocative ways of communicating the effect that these characters’ voices have. Not necessarily the exact sound, but the impression they give, and I think in writing it’s all about getting the impression across with whatever tools you can.
Describing smells or tastes as visual
I remember an early creative writing assignment at uni in which I described a hospital room as yellow. Yellow walls, yellow floor, yellow mood, even the pillows smelled yellow. I was quite happy with that.
It rings true to me, actually. When I was in hospital as a kid (not so much these days, I think), I distinctly remember the bed smelling a bit like Pringles or something, a kind of starchy scent that to me just felt very yellow.
Anyway, I think it’s often tricky to describe smells except by comparing them to other smells (and tastes are similar, since taste and smell are so closely linked), but borrowing from other senses can give you a wider set of options to play with. I think colours are a solid choice, but you can of course go wild and find whatever comparisons you like!
Describing tactile or emotional feelings as tastes
It’s worth noting here that there are more senses than the classic sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Proprioception (feeling the movement of your own body), vestibular sense (balance), and interoceptive awareness (things like your own heartbeat, digestion, and temperature) come into play too. I think, especially for fiction writing, emotional feelings also count here. It’s not the most interesting to just say someone felt sad, after all; you’ll more often talk about physical feelings elicited by that emotion to convey the depth of feeling.
I think taste words are really useful for those difficult-to-convey sensory experiences. There’s a lot of depth to our vocabulary when it comes to taste, so applying that vocabulary to other areas that don’t have as much evocative language immediately associated with them can be useful.
For example, if I’m feeling sad, perhaps that comes across as bitter or sour (maybe I even talk about my emotion tasting like a specific thing, like burnt coffee or overripe berries). If I’m happy, I might experience that as rich, sweet, or even meaty or something. A sense of satisfaction might be expressed in a simple simile: ‘she felt as if she’d just eaten a huge, delicious, perfectly seasoned meal‘.
Sense language is your playground
There are a lot of words out there to do with sensory experiences, and a lot of comparisons you can make. You can draw on literally any experience or sensation and apply it to anything else, even something that doesn’t feel related at all, and create these fascinating new blends that express what you’re trying to say far more effectively than just talking literally and factually.
For more writing tips, I’ve got a whole page full of ’em right here.
Chris Durston 