Quick Fiction Fixes – Use your nose
But don’t just give your readers the visual descriptions—give them the experience of walking into the setting by stimulating their olfactory senses. In other words, smell.
Our scent memory is incredibly powerful. We don’t necessarily remember the exact smell so much as we feel certain emotions triggered by a smell, or even the mention of a specific scent.
Contrast a diner with the aroma of hamburgers and fries versus a Midwest farmhouse filled with the warm, spicy smell of Grandma’s apple pies in the oven. Or maybe walking into a New York high-rise office that reeks of the editor-in-chief’s Chanel No. 5 versus a Regency rose garden in the heat of summer.
Do a quick run-through of your manuscript and try to insert a sentence or a phrase in each new setting that will trigger your reader’s scent memory. You don’t need much, so don’t go overboard.
Be deliberate in your wording. Warm apple pie generates a very different feeling than hamburgers and fries.
Be specific in your wording. “Chanel No. 5” rather than “expensive perfume.” Or “hamburgers and fries” versus “greasy smell.”
You’ll be amazed at what a small olfactory phrase can do to spark up a setting.
