Exercising the Senses

Someone recently asked me how to enhance sensory detail in their writing.  A writer doesn't want to bog down every scene with so much sensory detail that the narrative slows to a snail's pace, yet writing must have some kind of sensory detail to keep it interesting, fresh, and engaging.  So where is the balance?  How does one write enough detail but not too much?

I'd recommend pausing over the scenes that are the most significant, the scenes that the author wants to be most memorable and meaningful.  Then, count to five for all five senses.  Vision is easy.  But if you want a scene to be truly memorable, make sure you also feature something you can taste, touch, smell, and hear.  It may even help you to close your eyes in various places--at a park, in your room, in a library, in a classroom--and just write down everything you sense besides sight just to work on focusing on anything and everything but the visual.

When you sit down to write your piece, if you want a pleasant moment, have us smell melon body wash, taste freshly baked bread, feel the soft grass under the character's feet, see the vibrant colors of the flowers across the grass, hear the wind through the trees, etc.  Help us live that significant moment.  If it's a scary moment, we can smell our own sweat, feel the chilling breeze across that sweat on our skin, hear the eerie sounds of rattling wind through the branches, etc.  Create the atmosphere, just enough that we can experience it along with the character but not so much that we get bored.  Read it with someone else just to be sure.

And remember, the same hair color, eye color, etc can be described with very different words for just the right connotation.  The same color can be called golden, medium blonde, bronze, dishwater, muddy, etc. all depending on how you want the reader to feel about that character.  It's all in the sensory language.  I've heard it said that when you're describing a character, it's often best to minimize, to describe one or two primary features and leave the rest to the reader's imagination.

So that's it.  Mark the significant moments in your plot or characters you want us to remember and count to five.  If you can turn that moment or that sensory imagery into symbolism or metaphor or foreshadowing or alliteration, all the better.  Have fun!