Higher Writing Unit: The Short Story

Writing the Senses

 Step One – It’s all in the Detail

Describing: • These require careful

 Colour processing of the
 Shapes details of the sensation.
 Sizes
 Movements • Your writing will come
alive by doing this.
 Sounds
 Smells
 Tastes
 Surfaces
 Step One – It’s all in the Detail

Example:

• The child was in the green garden with flowers, trees

and birds.
 Step One – It’s all in the Detail
The child was smaller than the tall green grass that was tattooed
with tiger-skins of sunlight. To the child, it was knife edged, thick like
a forest, alive with grasshoppers that chattered and chirped in the
air like monkeys. From the ground a tropic heat oozed, rank with
sharp odours of roots and nettles. Far above the child, like clouds,
elder blossom banked in the sky, showering fumes and flakes of
sweet perfumed air that suffocated. High overhead flew frenzied
larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing.

Example 1
 Step One – It’s all in the Detail

• In the above example a lot is going on with variety of

sentences, word choice and the use of techniques,
but without the time taken to pay attention to
details then all the writing skills would be wasted.
This is what makes details so important to writing.
• With your partner look for techniques that the writer
Laurie Lee has used to bring this description alive.
Underline and then fully explain areas of the text you
feel particularly appealing.
 Step Two – Which Sense - Hearing

Use words that have sounds similar to the sounds that

are being described thus meaning can be reinforced.
Techniques such as:

• ONOMATOPOEIA
• ALLITERATION
• ASSONANCE
• SIBILANCE
 Step Two – Which Sense - Hearing
The events of the next few minutes are difficult for me now to
sort out. I found it more difficult still at the time. All we heard
back there in the sidings was a distant cheer, confused crackle of
rifle fire, yells, heavy shelling booming on our front line, more
shouts, yells and cries, and a continuous rapid rattle of machine-
guns. After a few minutes, lightly wounded men of the
Middlesex came stumbling down Maison Rouge Alley to the
dressing-station. I stood at the junction of the siding and the
Alley.
'What's happened? What's happened?' I asked.
'Bl- balls-up,' was the most detailed answer I could get.
Example 2
 Step Two – Which Sense - Hearing

alliteration, word choice and onomatopoeia have been

used to convey in detail the noises occurring during the
attack.
Find examples which appeal to the senses. Explore
these.
 Step Three – Which Sense -Seeing
Sight is probably the easiest and most obvious sense to
appeal to.
Pay attention to:
• Size
• Shape
• Colour
• Movement
 Step Three – Which Sense - Seeing
Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the
Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The
paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed
with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as
forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out
of reach for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky
looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown
tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice
a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of
tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve,
deep purples, wonderful to see. Example 3
 Step Three – Which Sense - Seeing

• details about colours, shapes, lengths and quantities are all

observed and written about
 Step Four – Which Sense -Touch
As we are very tactile creatures the sense of touch is
probably the most important.
The next example comes from the novel Sunset Song
by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. He
describes the setting of the Grampian mountains in the
north east of Scotland during a very unlikely event - a
drought in Scotland. He uses personification of the
wind to get across the feelings of touch in the setting.
 Step Four – Which Sense -Touch
For days now the wind had been in the South, it shook
and played in the prickly moors and went dandering
up the smooth, hard sleeping Grampians, it danced on
the soft waters of the loch, its light hand upon them,
but it brought more warmth than cold, and all the
once sodden parks waited for fair rain that seemed
never-coming. Up here the hills were brave with the
beauty and the heat of it, but the hayfield was all a
crumbly, crackling drynes and in the potato park
beyond the biggings the shaws drooped red, grainy,
dry and rusty. Folk said there hadn't been such
drought. Example 4
 Step Four – Which Sense -Touch

describing touch/feeling makes the reader more aware

of the physical reality of the world in your story.
 Step Five – Which Sense - Smell

Sense of smell can be difficult to describe so, you need

to get inspired:
• Use a thesaurus to help you with words about smells.
• notice descriptions of smells when you see or hear them such
as advertising: "lemony fresh", "fresh pine scent"
• adjectives can describe the general, overall quality of the
smell: wispy, rancid, airy, musty, stale, fresh, putrid, faint,
light, floral, acrid; burning smell;
• you can use a noun or noun phrase: a stench, an aroma, the
smell of leather, it smells like strawberries; smell of baking;
smell of burning
 Step Five – Which Sense - Smell

•use verbs for the smells: smells can waft, district, dull, attack,
permeate, confuse; wrap around you; follow you
•words associated with other senses can be used: a smell can be
dark, bright, sharp, seet, bitter, harmonious
•smells can be personal emotional reactions: soothing,
comforting, jarring, caring
•use of figures of speech such as metaphor, simile: the smell
clawed at the nostrils, the smell was like a smooth sensation.
 Step Five – Which Sense - Smell
He drank the milk in the dark room and removed his boots. The
smell of freshly turned earth was on them and combined with
the musty air of the grain he'd been scattering . The old man
smoked as was his custom, filling the room with a strong acrid
aroma. He sat drawing at his pipe, the dulling, acrid smell mixing
with a sweeter, sharper perfume. The sound of the grandfather
clock ticked the minutes away and an ancient cat breathed a
pungent breath of fish, newly eaten. Andy went up to bed with
the stair creaking under his weight. He smelt Johnnie's earthy
clothes, his sweaty, stale socks like rotted rope and putrid
underpants, and, finally, the light, familiar aroma of a hand
rolled cigarette.
Example 5
 Step Five – Which Sense - Smell

With a partner write down all of the references to the sense of

smell and explain how the writer has been successful.
 Step Six – Which Sense - Taste

There are many words to describe taste. You can be as creative

in your approach when describing tastes as when describing
smells (see previous page). Here are some words to get you
started:

•alkaline, cheesy, burnt, crispy, vinegary, buttery, bland, raw,

ripe, sour, spicy, hearty, hot, tasty, sweet, bittersweet, gingery,
overripe, oily, fruity, fishy, sugary, salty, luscious, rotten, sour,
spoiled, peppery, mellow, medicinal, bitter, tangy, greasy,
delicious
 Step Six – Which Sense - Taste

Madeleine was now ready for dessert, the course she relished
the most. She had eaten the gingery lemon soup with sour
cream and thought it too tangy. The next course, mussels with
seafood risotto: well, the mussels she found vinegary and the
risotto was fishy, peppery and, due to too much oil, greasy. The
next dish was an improvement - a crispy duck with burnt
mushrooms and a spicy sauce with some ripe banana fried was a
taste revelation! Dessert called her: she hoped for a buttery
sponge with sweet custard and tangy fruit, as the menu
promised.
Example 6
 It’s all in the Detail
Layering the details and the sense descriptions
•A writer will very rarely focus on one sense at a time as the
previous examples have done. (This is why it's a good idea to
read to the end.) Writing your description with a mix of the
senses is the usual approach. The reason for this is simple: it
gives a richer, more complete picture of what is being described.
•To do this you can layer details on top of one another. This
creates a series of related details that, taken together, create an
image in your readers' minds.
 It’s all in the Detail
For example, in describing a room, you might start with its size,
then describe the windows, the temperature, the colours, how
the floor feels to touch, the sounds that can be heard from it,
and finally how the air in the room smells.

•Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray begins with a

description of an artist's room and garden. In this amended
extract Henry Wotton is sitting in the studio of Basil Hallward,
the artist. Wilde has focused on a layered description paying
attention to the separate senses in detail.
 It’s all in the Detail

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and
when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of
the garden, there came through the open door the
heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume
of the pink-flowering thorn.
 It’s all in the Detail
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he
was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable sweet-
tasting cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam
of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a
laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to
bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and
then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the
long, soft tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the
huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,
and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of
Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily
immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
 It’s all in the Detail
The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through
the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence
round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to
make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was
like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

Go through the text identifying details of each sense and

examine how the writer is describing it. Look closely at how the
writer is layering the description together, which creates a
strong image of a place, object or person.
SORTED!