“All we have to believe is our senses: the tools we use to perceive the world, our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted.”
Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell: These are the secret ingredients to vibrant writing. We use these senses to connect with the world around us. Each day we surround ourselves with an enchanting web of sensual awareness. In our kitchens we see the morning light filtering through the windows, we hear the water running, we feel the penetrating coolness of the fridge as we open its door, we smell the coffee brewing, and we taste the hot, buttered toast. In our shopping malls we see the color collage of stores and kiosks, we hear the upbeat ambient music, we feel the smooth glossiness of the escalator handrail, we smell the antiseptic blandness of climate-controlled air, and we taste the sample eggnog latté handed to us as we pass by the café entrance.
The five senses play major parts in our everyday lives. Each adds context to our experiences: A sunny, cloudless sky can lift a sagging heart, a child’s giggle can hold us in a happy moment just a bit longer, and the sweet, drifting smell of fresh-cut grass can transport us back in time, to summers long ago.
In turn, describing our life stories using all five senses brings life to our writing and creates a sense of place for your reader to immerse herself within. When you write your life story, you need to capture the energy perceived by your senses and transform it into words that hum and vibrate. What greater gift to give a reader than to envelope her completely in your life? Here are some ways to do just that.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
The world is our visual utopia. It is a vast, neutral space in which we live our lives. Visual images bring our thoughts and feelings to life. We wake up to a blue morning sky, one that sends joy into our hearts. We look into the yard with its color splash of flowerbeds ruffled by the summer breeze. We pad quietly across the oak-varnished hallway into the kitchen, stepping gingerly over a black cat named Mildred who sleeps anywhere she chooses. We fill the red kettle with water and set it atop the black-coiled stove burner. The cabinet holds a mishmash of coffee mugs; we choose the coral blue one with I Love My Grandma scripted in white letters.
The power of sight is indisputable. Even when our eyes are closed we can imagine color. Our otherworldly dreams are often tempered with the animated colors of reality.
But there is more to sight than just color. Movement is a visual experience. When we attend a play, action is a key ingredient in our engagement and emotional involvement. Actors emote with their facial features, their hands and feet, their posture, their movements. Joy, anger, happiness, and grief are all captured through movement. When a character staggers across the stage, exhausted from battle, we can see his desperation and hopelessness. When a character skips spryly back and forth, we perceive her carefree demeanor. The same is true in real life. We can often see whether someone is listening just by the strain and tilt of a head. No words are necessary. What we see, we can feel.
Your life story will be primarily based on incidents—things that happened to you. Life is perpetually in motion, and everything we do is based on action. More than any other sense, sight dominates. We watch as a girl eagerly leans across the table to smell a freshly baked loaf of bread. She slices a piece, butters it, and tastes it. Her eyes close and her head tilts back slightly as she chews. Describing a scene with visual details adds movement to your narrative and allows others to witness the movie reel running inside your head.
“In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.”
The impact of sound is present in nearly every life experience you write about. You might recall the time you spent in your high school English class. The teacher was a strict grammarian, and you can still hear the critical tone in his refrain: “Lay or lie? Remember: You lay the pencil on a table, but people lie in a bed.” Even in his quiet classroom you could perceive ambient sound: the girl in the front row dropping her pen on the floor, the boy in front of you clearing his throat as he waited to ask a question, the period bell ringing from the hallway, all overlapped by the continuous low-level din of twenty-five students gathered in a closed space.
Life is a surround-sound experience that may dominate the other senses at times. The high-pitched wail of a siren arrests our attention, especially if it is approaching from behind. An infant screaming on a plane is hard to ignore. Thunder reverberating across a night sky causes us to turn our heads in the direction of the oncoming storm, and, perhaps, to shiver.
But even a sliver of sound—the hooting of an owl at sundown—can create a feeling of timeless wonderment. These small sounds can imbue a sense of reality into our writing, and they are often the most overlooked.
Another unique sound, the human voice, possesses a particular magic. Think of the speakers you have heard. Perhaps your church pastor or high school principal inspired you to reach beyond your comfort zone. How did they accomplish this? Was it only the words? In fact it was a combination of message and delivery. Words alone have their own power, but combine them with passion and elegance and you quickly enter the theater of action. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech had a rhythmic resonance that imitated marching music. Oration can be a powerful tool, and its foundation is its delivery through sound.
How do you make sound come alive in your writing? Little details are potent: the harmonic rhythms of an FM jazz radio station as you sit in your favorite chair reading, the cadenced swipe, swipe of wiper blades batting against the windshield, the roiling winds swooping in off the lake. These sentences are loaded with sound imagery.
“Touch has a memory.”
Touch is the cradle of all senses. Without it, human beings cannot thrive. For example, orphans left without direct human contact for extended periods of time tend to fall behind in their social development skills. There is even scientific evidence that touch can be healing. It is no surprise, then, that our life experiences usually embrace touch in so many ways. We feel the bear hugs we received from Grandpa, the slap on the back for a job well done, and the firm handshakes after a successful business interview. What about the first time you held hands with the person you would share your life with? How about the feel of waves curling around your feet on a hot summer’s day at the beach? Imagine the touch of fear as it surges through your veins like ice water while you walk on stage for your first-ever concert solo.
Touch connects us to the world, and our job is to reflect this connection in our writing. We can do this by bringing touch into every story we write. Use a dictionary of touch-related words such as brush, tickle, tap, slap, pinch, press, squeeze, and twist.
“The secret of food lies in memory—of thinking and then knowing what the taste of cinnamon or steak is.”
Taste is perhaps the most narrowly defined sense. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that taste is “the sensation of flavor perceived in the mouth and throat on contact with a substance.” This definition brings succulent images to mind: mint chocolate, sparkling wine, barbeque steak, jalapeño peppers, eggnog, and curry. Our taste buds pick up notes of bitterness, saltiness, sweetness, and sourness in everything we taste, and our personal preferences dictate what tastes good and what doesn’t.
Think back to your life experiences. What tastes do you recall when you think about the time you visited a terribly expensive restaurant or when you snuck a chocolate chip cookie out of the jar? It’s important, too, to move beyond your experiences of food. Can you still taste the briny salt water as it spilled out of your mouth during that long-ago trip to the seashore? What about the grit of desert sand on your lips? Or the taste of blood—metallic and stale—that flooded your mouth after losing your first tooth? These taste memories will add flavor to your life story; use them abundantly.
“Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.”
Our world is the great incubator of smell. From it emerge the thousand scents of Mother Earth: the muskiness of a primal forest, crisp mountain air, and the acrid aroma of a desert gulch. Many of our most vivid memories are of smell. The lush fragrance of bursting lilies can take us back to visits in Aunt Annie’s garden. The sizzling scent of a summer barbecue can enhance a warm August evening. The crisp tinge of burning autumn leaves is a harbinger of winter. Change is in the air, and we can sense it.
When you describe your first summer job in a restaurant, you relive the smells: chicken frying on the stoves, breads baking in the ovens, fries sizzling in the vats, coffee wafting in the still air.
When you remember past vacations and trips you experience more smell variations than usual. Traveling to new locales stimulates all the senses, causing them to become more effectively retained in your memory. You can endlessly breathe in the cotton candy-scented carnival you visited as a child. You can still smell the hot blast of jet fuel that stung your nostrils as you walked across the tarmac to your plane. That was the trip when you stepped into the musty world of an English country village after a rainfall. Or was it the exotic spices of a souk in Tangiers that took you away? Think of your travels—near and far—and let the essence of their smells guide your story.
We’ve discussed the five senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—and how they add vitality to your life stories. So how do you add these sensory details into your writing? Sometimes it is as easy as setting everything aside for the moment. Take a long look at your surroundings. Where are you now? Do you have your own writing spot tucked away in an alcove? Are you writing in your kitchen? Perhaps you use a picnic table out on your deck. What do you see? If you have a home office, maybe you are surrounded by mahogany cabinets and green file folders. What do you hear? Is there a faint humming from your computer? Birds chirping at the windowsill? What about touch? You feel the gentle tapping rhythm of your fingers flowing across the keyboard. You grip the coffee mug beside you, the moist condensation warming your fingers. You taste and smell a cappuccino with dense foam and cinnamon that tantalizes your mind and body, its aroma floating closer and closer to your lips.
Bring your story to life by describing these five senses. What do you see in your story? What sounds do you remember? Was the touch a memorable one? How so? How would you describe the taste of an expensive wine? What about the smell of a freshly bathed newborn? Is it the shampoo, the baby powder?
The five senses add depth and sparkle to your words. Use them liberally. Spread them across your story like frosting.
The five senses—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell—allow us to interact with the world we live in. They play an important role in your life story writing.
Take a few moments and explore your surroundings. Find one object—whatever is in front of you—to write about, and jot down a paragraph description of what you observe. Try to incorporate all five senses in your description. Which of the five senses do you rely on most? Which is the hardest for you to describe?