I had a root canal this week. I’m glad it’s over and done, because that tooth was hurting. Still, there are at least one million ways I’d rather spend a Monday morning.

So I lay there, miserable, listening to the worst sound in the world, which is a dental drill inside one’s own mouth. And I was thinking about the other sensory information that was more or less unique to this particular experience. The ache of my jaw wedged open. The smell of burned tooth. The sight of little wisps of smoke wafting up from my mouth. The tastes of rubber and anesthetic gel. Yeah, none of that is very pleasant (although my dentist does have a massage chair, which is nice), yet those bits combine to create the full sensation of dental torture.

Naturally, this got me thinking about writing—which was way better than thinking about what was going on in my mouth. Writers usually describe a scene visually. We might add other senses if it’s vital: sound during a concert, for example, or touch during a sex scene. But I think it’s equally important to at least sprinkle in all five senses throughout a story in general. Doing so gives a much more complete portrayal and better immerses readers. In fact, it’s often the tiny, almost-overlooked sensory details that make a scene feel real.

Let’s consider a medieval city, for example. Our hero is walking down the street. We could describe what the buildings around her look like and what the people she passes are wearing, and that would be good. But you could probably already picture most of that as soon as I told you we’re in, say Rothenburg, Germany in the year 1400. Stone city walls, half-timber houses, cobblestones, men in hose and doublets. What if I employed our hero’s other senses too? A breeze brings her the mingled scents of horse shit and human waste, but also the sounds of dozens of people talking and haggling in a nearby market square. She passes a boy pushing a cart with squeaky wheels. Her feet are cold from the dampness that has seeped through her leather shoes, and she has a headache because her hair is pulled back so tightly from her face. When she licks her lips, she tastes traces of sharp mustard from her midday meal.

Don’t these additional details make the place and the character feel more real? We wouldn’t necessarily have to include all of them, of course, and it’s probably best not to dump them all at once as I just did. But if we take just a few of them and sprinkle them through this scene, I think we have a better story.

I make a conscious effort to involve all the senses all of my stories. Sometimes this is especially important. For instance, Venona Keyes and I wrote a book in which the main character, Kyle, has a stroke and suddenly loses his sight. The entire book is told from Kyle’s POV, so when he meets Seth a few months later, everything we know about Seth and their adventures together comes through Kyle’s other four senses. Writing that book was a good exercise in moving beyond just visual descriptions.

Want a fun writing exercise? Choose a familiar scene. A carnival, maybe. Target on Black Friday. A secluded lakeside beach. A cantina on another planet. A battle in feudal Japan. A Communist-era apartment in Warsaw. Now describe it using senses other than sight. And if you like, share your description in the comments here!

***

Kim Fielding is the bestselling author of numerous m/m romance novels, novellas, and short stories. Like Kim herself, her work is eclectic, spanning genres such as contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical. Her stories are set in alternate worlds, in 15th century Bosnia, in modern-day Oregon. Her heroes are hipster architect werewolves, housekeepers, maimed giants, and conflicted graduate students. They’re usually flawed, they often encounter terrible obstacles, but they always find love.

After having migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States, Kim calls the boring part of California home. She lives there with her family and her day job as a university professor, but escapes as often as possible via car, train, plane, or boat. This may explain why her characters often seem to be in transit as well. She dreams of traveling and writing full-time.

Follow Kim:

Website: http://www.kfieldingwrites.com/

Facebook: http://facebook.com/KFieldingWrites

Twitter: @KFieldingWrites

Email: Kim@KFieldingWrites.com

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bau3S9

A complete list of Kim’s books: http://www.kfieldingwrites.com/kim-fieldings-books/