Can you write a description with just sight and hearing? No, but those two can organize how all five senses fit together.
(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)
Last week I wrote about the classic advice to “describe all five senses,” and how much easier keeping track of description is if we focus on alternating the main two. But of course writing isn’t supposed to be easy. Having two primary senses doesn’t excuse us from keeping all five in mind to cover a scene, or help weave them together to build the kind of high-powered suspense (or warmth, or humor, or whatever your own goals are) a story deserves.
Except, they do.
Sight and hearing aren’t just a shortcut, they’re models for writing all five senses. bit.ly/5SensesBy2
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Two Models
Think about it: what’s the basic difference between eyes and ears? Different writers might think of points like:
- Sight organizes our surroundings, with sound giving advance signs before something comes into view. (Or as we action writers call them, warnings.)
- Sight gives a complete “picture” of surroundings; sound often adds feeling with someone’s tone of voice, or a noisy object’s “personality.” More poetic writers can savor this.
- Sight shows everything (in theory); sound picks out which things are moving or active.
All true, and I think they all come back to one rule for organizing descriptions:
#Describing sight is about things’ positions; hearing is about their nature. #writing bit.ly/5SensesBy2
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When I look out my window right now, I see everything from the parking lot up to the sky—which also means I have to (literally) focus on different parts of the view each moment, and it means that if I don’t see someone walking up to visit me, there’s nobody right there. Hearing is more selective; someone standing beyond my door is hidden until he knocks, and I still won’t know if he’s holding a package or anything else until he (or she) makes another noise with that.
–That position vs nature difference is nothing new to any of us, but how often do we really think about it, as writers? Especially one further effect of it: if there is a sound, my hearing might still pick it up through walls and behind my back, and even when I’m not paying attention. (Say when a car alarm goes off when I’m trying to write…) But sight’s power and limits might lead to me walking over to check what’s off on the side of my window frame.
Of the two, focused sight is the one we keep acting on to get a clearer picture of what we need; sound gets broadcast to us on its own. For a writer looking to follow the moment, that difference is pure gold.
And best of all, the other three senses fit right into these patterns.
Touch is as position- and focused-based as sight, the way we have to reach out to feel anything that hasn’t come to us; it even has the same similarity that we already have a skinload of cold air, tight shoes, and other touches we’re always half-aware of and trying to focus past. And taste only has the range of our tongues, except when memory or “the taste of fear” stir something up.
Meanwhile smell works much like hearing: certain things jump right out at us because they—but only they—give off much scent, and they pour those sensations right into the air.
There may be five senses, but all they follow these two plans… and so does a character using them.
Stepping through the Senses
Since I always look at my writing as a chance to build different kinds of suspense, I think my scenes only work if I can build them in the right order. So if I want to drop a reader deep into one moment, I might describe all five senses at once. But more often, I’ll tie it all to the process of how my character is living through that scene:
Step 1) First outside senses: Is there something he can hear, or smell, before what’s important comes within reach of the focused senses?
A crunch of boots on the snow made him whirl around.
Step 2) Surveying: What can he see, touch, or taste as he first tries to take in what’s there? And, which pieces matter most to him, and what patterns (like barriers or possibilities) do they form in his mind?
One of the thugs staggered from the door, blocking the alley. Dark blood soaked his shirt, but Mark shivered to see the “dead” man’s wild eyes gleam brighter than the knife in his hand.
- As part of this, sound/smell components: check which few of those sensations would also create a sound or smell, and how those senses might “demand” a bit of our attention. So instead I could start those lines with:
- One of the thugs staggered from the door, scraping dully against the brick wall as he blocked the alley….
Step 3) Act & React (focus+changes): As the scene goes on, keep tracking what the character and everyone else do, the same way as Step 2. That is, use sight, touch, and taste to do their best to follow everything worth noticing, but watch for which things are adding a noise or scent to the mix.
Mark edged back, watching his balance as his heels picked through the treacherous bags of garbage piled behind him. The stink of blood as the killer stumbled closer brought sour vomit to Mark’s mouth.
- plus Background: For an extra layer, once and a while is there a sound or smell from outside the immediate area that could filter into the mix?
- The police sirens faded in the distance.
—Or if those sirens were to turn around, that “background” sound could restart the cycle as a new Step 1 of the police starting to drive into view. (Even if they don’t, if you know my Lavine series, you know Mark has at least four ways to survive that scene.)
That’s how I build suspense, or poetry or warmth or any other mood, by playing up the differences in the “focused” and “broadcast” senses to work them each in at their own places. Because to me (and I make no apology for saying it)—
Losing that distinction would be… senseless.
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