Write what you smell

Possibly, you could use smell to evoke a feeling or memory instead of trying to describe the smell itself. Might that work?

The sense of smell.

I can see the valid reasons for writing about smell in your novels because it is one of the senses. I never thought about a person who had no sense of smell because how else would you know if something is dangerous but this could be done in a novel with a lot of medical jargon. I do write humorous poems about smells of things that we often take for granted you know those smells that have been prerecorded by a certain sound.

Use people around you and people here. Ask "what does a brush fire remind you of?" Maybe keep a record of what different things smell like to different people. Hey, maybe I should do this also...and I have no trouble smelling!

Thank you

Thank you so much, Galoot! The sense of smell figures prominently into one of the cultures in my sci-fi novel, and I've been searching everywhere for a word that would be equivalent to blind or deaf, but for the sense of smell instead. There is one character with anosmia, but up until today I've just been saying, "She can't smell."

just a thought

might sound corny, but try writing your smell sequences with the computer monitor turned off. then, if possible, have the smell near you . . . now if you are writing about a brush fire that might not be so feasible. sometimes writing with the monitor off forces you to feel and put forth the words that your eye will prematurly erase as a possiblity. just a thought . . . sometimes the tricks work for me.

Annessa

It's a hindrance when it comes writing Galoot, but needn't be a roadblock I don't think. You'll just have to do what writers have done since time immemorial: use your imagination and fake it (based upon your own reading/research of course).

I'd start underlining passages in books that describe smells and copy them into a notebook, gradually building your own reference book. Check with a trusted beta reader or two if you're uncertain whether your own efforts "smell" true.

I don't recall the senses of smell or taste playing a large role in any book I've read but it's true that a passing mention can add verisimilitude to a scene: the piney woods; the earthy loam etc. Is it possible that because of your condition you have an exaggerated sense of the importance of describing smells in writing? (I confess to being one of "those" readers whose eyes glaze over when faced with a long descriptive paragraph. I skim quickly, eager to get on with the story.)

I have a hunch you're talented and smart enough to find solutions. And yes, we have at least one regular here who is deaf.

aka eraser said:

but it's true that a passing mention can add verisimilitude to a scene: the piney woods; the earthy loam etc.

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But a passing mention is just that. It's not something that needs to be described in great detail. If you say "grandma's kitchen always smelled of baked apples and Pine Sol," most people will recognize those scents. You really don't need to say that baked apples have a sweet-tart scent tinged with cinnamon, do you?

You don't have to describe a smell if it's "common." I mean, the smell of a beach or tree or french fries or oranges... Sure, there are people who probably have never smelled those before, but you describe every smell (or any of the five senses), your book will end up 1200 pages long.

Describe the smell if a) it's unusual or b) it's important to the story. When describing smells, use metaphors, tap into the readers' sensory memory. Build layers:

The kitchen smells like burnt food -- okay, but what kind of food. Burnt food is very generic. I can't really smell it.

The kitchen smells of burnt flesh -- better, but what kind? Burnt chicken smells differently than burnt steak or burnt fish.

The kitchen smells of burnt steak mixed with three-day-old rotten fish -- now we're going somewhere. We might not precisely know what the smell is like, but we can imagine burnt steak and rotten fish... Now do we need to say what kind of steak or fish? No, because that kind details is overkill.... unless, of course, the POV character is a dog and he's trying to solve a mystery by following a precise smell...

Sometimes you do want to detail your setting with smell, even if it is not unique. In that case, baked apple-pie and pine sol would be just fine.

The vocabulary of English – or, I suppose, any other language – doesn't do justice to smells, because smells are ineffable. Consequently, smells are hard to describe even for a writer whose nose works. I mean that we don't have anything for smells that comes near to the variety and precision of color words or words for the shapes of objects. People who try to describe an unfamiliar smell resort to saying what else it smells like, and they don't do very well. I might say "A skunk smells something like the odor they add to natural gas, but different, more acidy or something, uh, I don't know."

It doesn't seem to me that smells are usually very important in fiction. Movies do their job without smells. How badly do you think you need them?

You could try associating smells with color or sensation. You know how tabasco sauce burns the back of your throat? It does the same thing to your nose...it smells like fire might taste.

It doesn't seem to me that smells are usually very important in fiction. Movies do their job without smells. How badly do you think you need them?

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In movies smell is done through the visuals -- a garbage can full of rotten fruits, gun powder, sewage full of rats, etc. The visuals tap into our connected sensory memories -- when we think of rotten garbage we think of the smell associated with it. In writing, we may do the same thing, by vividly describing the visuals.

Galoot, Brother, I think NOT being able to smell is an interesting, not common issue that would really add colour to a story. What a great character. Think a person like Jennings in "Paycheck" by Philip K Dick only with no sense of smell instead of no memory...I don't know I think it might make some sort of neat sci-fi story if you put this person in a position where he must do something that having a sense of smell would help...

I say embrace your anosmia and use it to your advatage. You can write what you know.

For other writing, just ask your friends to describe to you what "musty" is, the phyiological reaction or the images it brings to mind. Kinda like in "Mask" where the mc shows the blind girl colours - hot potato is red, ice cube is blue..

Even better, you have all of us - friends and writers to help. Maybe start a "What does it smell like" thread and get a bunch of different descriptions from all of us.

Just an idea.

Mike

Gallot,

I'm just curious if you can taste? From what i understand, smell and taste are very closely linked senses.

Foul smells come from biologically produced chemicals that nobody would ever dare ingest.

A "musty" odor, for example is associated with damp, enclosed spaces where mold has formed. The mold is the source of the odor. A "musky" scent, on the other hand is almost always a body-odor. "musk" can be revolting, or sexually arousing, depending on what part of the body is "stinking" and who it's coming from.

Most bodily odors contain pheremones that are not consciously detected, but are picked up by an olfactory node known as the "vero nasal organ". Because the pheremones excite sexual organs, the "musky" odors associated with them also tend to be erotic, but these same "musky" odors become overpowering when the person in question has not bathed in a while, and so musk has a revolting side.

Bad breath is the exception. Breath would never be described as "musky". A clean mouth won't produce any noticable breath. After a person has eaten or drinken, their breath will, for a while, smell of whatever they've ingested. This is usually not revolting, but as bacteria in the mouth begin to break down the residue of ingested substances, the odor becomes quite foul.

Farts, as you must know, are never enjoyable. We are hard wired to avoid animal waste, of course, because contact with it can make us ill or kill us. The same sense of revulsion goes for rotting foods, and we are very keen to detect even the slightest traces of such chemicals.


The smell of food, for the most part, is described according to it's taste. A freshly baked pie will smell sweet, for example. When it comes out of the oven, the hot air inside the pie will escape and expand into the cooler atmosphere of the room and the house. Even after it has cooled, the smell will hang around for a while.

Plants also give off odors, usually pleasant. Grass and deciduous trees don't normally get noticed, tough after a rain storm, especially an electrical storm, the leaves and blades undergo chemical changes that can be detected as a vague sense of "freshness".

Flowers and weeds are primarily distinguished by their odors, which usually correspond to their appearance. A beautiful flower will ususally smell nice. A weed will look odd or ugly, and usually don't smell at all, or smell vaguely "musky" again.

I could go on, but I guess the point is that smells are primarily biological. Rocks don't smell. There are also smells that come from industrial chemicals. Gasoline, for example, has a distinct smell, but we know it's not coming from any kind of creature.

Galoot said:

How does a blind man describe what a sighted person experiences in the forest? He has no concept of what it looks like. Unless he wants to write only for other blind people or include only blind characters in his work, what does he do?

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Wow. I had never even thought about this as an issue before, for a writer. I had a great uncle who had no sense of smell -- didn't know there was a word for it -- and he always used to explain to us that he could understand what something was "supposed" to smell like if he could associate it with a reading from one of the other senses.

For example, to him, a pile of burnt tires smelled "dark, thick and murky." Fresh cookies smelled "warm and chewy." While warm and chewy isn't a smell per se, when he described things that way, it made perfect sense, and I always knew exactly what he was talking about.

Of course, he always said that my great aunt smelled "red and rosey" because he brought her a red rose every Friday for the entire 57 years they were married.

Galoot said:

Misttok,

I get asked that all the time. Yes I can. Beats me if I can taste as vividly as you can, though.

- Galoot [size=-2](Sorry about the spelling. I couldn't resist.)[/size]

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Sorry, Galoot. I must've been using the french variation or something.

PattiTheWicked said:

For example, to him, a pile of burnt tires smelled "dark, thick and murky." Fresh cookies smelled "warm and chewy."

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Those adjectives that Patti's greatuncle used aren't smell words at all. They go with other senses or bodily activities associated with the objects. It'd never occur to me to describe cookies as smelling chewy. I wouldn't walk into someone's house and say "Mmm, it smells chewy in here. Are you baking?" So, Galoot, don't have your character say that, either.

Mistook wrote about smells of animal, vegetable, and bacterial origin. There are mineral smells, too. At least, there's one: wet sidewalks. Nothing else smells like a wet sidewalk. I don't know whether the smell comes from the concrete or from the dust on it.

Ripe fruit has more scent than green fruit. When fruit goes bad, the pleasant smell it had when fresh takes on an overlay of corruption, as if the good fruity smell had intensified but something you don't want were added, something evil.

Although smells are hard to describe, human recognition memory for them is superb. The best smell I've ever had was newborn kittens, two litters many years apart. They didn't smell like flowers or food or anything else in my olfactory experience.

I just thought of something. To me, the smell of food is usually a precursor to taste. So the smell of say, cookies baking, might be a pale version of the taste of the cookies. Maybe useful, maybe not.

maestrowork said:

In movies smell is done through the visuals -- a garbage can full of rotten fruits, gun powder, sewage full of rats, etc. The visuals tap into our connected sensory memories -- when we think of rotten garbage we think of the smell associated with it. In writing, we may do the same thing, by vividly describing the visuals.

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Movies, and books, also use character reactions to smells in order to describe them.

I'm just curious if you can taste? From what i understand, smell and taste are very closely linked senses.

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Yes. It's the old science experiment where if you hold your nose and bit into an onion and an apple, you can't tell them apart. I think the same is true of an apple and a potato.

Sorry, I'm off on tangent. Ignore me.

Eating chocolate makes one's s*** really not stink. True.

So now you can say you do it for medical reasons.

smell

reph said:

Those adjectives that Patti's greatuncle used aren't smell words at all. They go with other senses or bodily activities associated with the objects. It'd never occur to me to describe cookies as smelling chewy. I wouldn't walk into someone's house and say "Mmm, it smells chewy in here. Are you baking?" So, Galoot, don't have your character say that, either.

.

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I don't know, I sort of like these descriptions. Anyone can describe something by using words that apply, but it takes talent to find surprising descriptions using words you wouldn't normally apply. I love the phrase "It smells chewy in here." I think it makes perfect sense.

I've also had people say, "It smells happy in here." They were right. And, of course, there's "It smells like Christmas, doesn't it?"