Another month, and another authors’ Round Robin. This month our topic is set by author Skye Taylor…
Using the senses in writing: how important is it to draw the reader in to experience what your characters are seeing, hearing, smelling, etc?
I’ve thought long about this one and my feeling is, reading is a different experience for everyone. There are some readers who love a plot-driven book in which working out the mystery is key. For them, the sensory experience is perhaps not as important as working out whodunnit. Some like a book filled with laugh-out-loud scenes and dialogue. There are even some readers (gasp out loud!) who never read a novel, and prefer factual memoirs and non-fiction.
I love to read all genres – I just love reading – but the sort of books I love most are character-driven novels, where I feel a strong emotional connection with the main protagonist.
Romantic novels are a great example of this type of fiction. YA novels, too, often provoke a strong emotional connection in readers. They’re read by teenagers, whose emotions are acutely felt.
I’ve just finished reading I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, by Erika L. Sánchez, and loved it. The author uses sensory language throughout, so I thought I’d give some examples from this book on how she engages the reader through the senses.
Engaging the reader with sensory language
If readers are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching everything the character does, this immerses them directly in that character’s world.
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter begins straightaway with what the main character, Julia, has seen:
‘What’s surprised me most about seeing my sister dead is the lingering smirk on her face.’
Right from the start we’re looking out of Julia’s eyes. Her description of her sister’s wake is filled with her sensory experience, from the screams of her mother, to ‘the floppy green couch’ she feels where she’s sitting.
The language the author’s chosen brings high emotional intensity, as in this terrible scene Julia is painfully aware of everything that’s happening around her.
Using sensory language to ground the reader in the setting
Besides evoking emotion, sensory language can be used to give the reader a strong impression of setting. Again, I loved how Erika L. Sánchez does this throughout.
‘We ride home in a thick fog of silence. The apartment smells funky because we forgot to take out the garbage before we left.’
The heroine, Julia, lives in a cockroach-infested apartment with her parents that she longs to escape. In just a couple of lines the author evokes this through her senses.
The setting is Chicago. I’ve written before about using the seasons as symbolism, and the sensory language around the weather in Chicago again reflects Julia’s emotions:
‘I hear the ice crunch beneath my feet. I hate that noise. I always feel it in my teeth.’
Julia is going through a period of deep unhappiness, but there are occasional burst of light in the dismal winter. On a joyful day sledging with her friends, Julia looks up ‘at a scrawny tree, its branches covered by frost’, and is ‘stunned by how beautiful it is.’
Using sensory language to create vivid imagery
I just love a novel filled with beautiful imagery. By using the senses, the author of this novel creates an arresting picture that stays in the mind and brings the scene alive.
At the wake, Julia says of her sister: ‘The top half of her face is angry-like she’s ready to stab someone-and the bottom half is almost smug. This is not the Olga I knew. Olga was as meek and fragile as a baby bird.’
When Julia tries to explain her deep depression to her boyfriend, she says ‘Connor is always a good listener, but today he feels distant, as if he were on the other side of the world and we’re talking through two paper cups connected by string, like in cartoons.’
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Using sensory language can transform a flat description into a vibrant scene. Through sensory language the reader will see, hear, feel that scene in exactly the way the main character does, literally experiencing their world with them, and immersing them right into the story.
For me, this immersion in someone else’s imagination is the beauty and wonder of reading fiction.
I’ve chosen just a few examples from I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, but if you’re interested in reading more, I highly recommend this novel.
And if you’d like to check out what the other authors in this month’s Round Robin have to say on this subject, please click on the links below.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s topic!
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Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3cc
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Helena Fairfax 
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