The First Look Literary Ladies Guide to Using the Five Senses to Improve Your Writing

By Ann Kellett

Readers experience fiction through what the characters see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

But where does the writer even begin?

Start here!

This book helps you strategically use the five senses so that your readers will be fully engaged with your characters as they move through your fictional world.

It's short and practical, with examples from best-selling authors and tips on how you can create characters that make your book un-put-downable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Kellett
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393160328

Ann Kellett

Ann Kellett, Ph.D., has 30+ years of full-time, award-winning book editing experience, with happy clients around the world. Check her out at firstlookliteraryladies.com and annkellett.net.

Book preview

Introduction

I’M GLAD YOU FOUND this little book.

Its purpose is to help you strategically use the five senses so that your readers will be fully engaged with your characters as they move through your fictional world.

This is important. As the great writer Flannery O’Connor noted, The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins.

As you write, you probably see scenes unfold in your mind as if you’re watching a movie. Your goal is to immerse the reader into the scenes right along with the character (and through the character’s eyes if you’re using the first-person point of view).

Being a passive observer is fine in the highly visual context of a movie. We literally see everything we need to see.

On the written page, however, that’s not the case. If we withhold information or make the reader guess what something means, she will quickly become bored or frustrated. We’ve got to fully immerse the reader into the character’s world, like an actor in a play rather than someone sitting in the audience watching events unfold on the screen.

If she feels that she is merely eavesdropping on the characters, then she feels like an outsider—and outsiders rarely care enough to keep reading. Only when the reader gets into the heads of your characters and understands the choices they make will she keep turning the page.

Infusing the characters and plot with the five senses is an excellent way to do this.

What We’re Doing

WE KNOW A CHARACTER largely to the extent that we know what she perceives. Her five senses shape her thoughts and actions and thus help form her identity.

Through them, the reader can experience what she experiences and understand what makes her tick. If a character is interesting, we will want to know what she thinks and how she handles the adversity that comes her way.

In addition, we can use the five senses to strengthen the action that moves the plot forward. Our senses are powerful psychological triggers as well as information processors.

Remember, all it takes to kick off Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is for the protagonist to taste a piece of madeleine cake dipped in tea. That’s enough for events