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This weekend, I went to a beautiful little mountain town called San Sebastián del Oeste with a group of friends. In the morning, the fresh mountain air, cool enough to require a shawl, tickled my skin. It’s very hot these days at the beach as we wait for rain, so the hint of chill on the breeze was delightful. As a friend and I walked around the main square, a scent hit my nose. Memories of chanting, heat and deep spiritual connection flooded me before the intellectual side of my brain could place the smell, give it a name. Albahaca, I exclaimed eventually, basil, the main square smelt of Mexican Basil (a more aniseedy smell and flavour than the Italian kind, used more in curative rituals than in cooking on these shores).
I’m sure most of you reading have had this experience, that a smell can transport you in a second to memories long forgotten, to places that you seldom think of. I could be walking along the busy streets of Mexico City, get a sudden whiff of the aftershave worn by a boyfriend I had for two weeks when I was 15, and poof, I am back at school in an instant, my skirt a little too short, my fringe a little too long, my desire to fit in whittling around my bones. Smells have so much power, they can pull us out of our bodies, make us time travel, transport us to memories good and bad in an instant.
I share this to talk about the power of smells in creative writing. I have noticed when reading and editing writing that smell can often be missed in descriptive passages. It’s not surprising. We live in a very visual and auditory world, smell-o-vision still hasn’t been invented (as far as I know) despite promises of it being part of our future from as way back as I can remember. Also smells can be tricky to describe.
But I want to advocate for the power of scents to bring your pieces to life even more. And I would suggest trying to get creative with the descriptions. For example, the house was rich with the smell of cakes baking, conjures up a feeling and an idea for sure, but going a little deeper and saying the house was impregnated with the smell of cakes baking, the buttery vanilla tickled her nostrils, reminding her of foamy sponge cakes and cold autumn afternoons, tells us more. Going deeper with the cake example (I am not obsessed with cakes, I promise), the type of cake can also tell us a lot about the character.
What do each of these descriptions conjure up for you?
1) The rich perfume of dried fruit and densely packed caramelized muscovado filled the kitchen, the full notes of port just perceptible below the star anise and nutmeg.
2) The cinnamon spice mingled with sweet apple, the deep pastry buttering the air as the pie baked.
3) Sweet almond filtered out into the garden cut through by the sharp tang of the juiciest cherries, the smell of the last days of summer.
4) The acrid smell of burnt sugar and engorged raisins sat in the back of my throat. The crispy edges of cake would be smothered haphazardly with sickly sweet icing as if sugar could cover for the lack of attention always given to my birthday. Burnt toast, burnt cake, burnt bridges.
Obviously, I have gone beyond smells here, but hopefully you will see that different smells can conjure up entirely distinct scenes. Smell is a really fun way to let the reader travel off through their own memories and bring extra feeling and connection back to your piece. It is also really helpful in describing characters, the type of person who eats fruit cake might be different to the reader to one who eats a vanilla sponge, for example.
Have you had the experience of being transported by smell? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I’d also love to hear what those different descriptions conjured up for you. What do you imagine the kitchen to be like in the first example… and the last example?
Mentoring
I received this beautifully poetic testimonial from one of my clients this week:
“If the novice writer is a flower bud packed with creative potential and eager to bloom, then Susannah Rigg is the tender gardener and meteorological muse who nurtures, feeds, and allows that plant to unfurl and live out its biological destiny.” Anna Dulisse
I love this testimonial because it speaks to the tenderness with which I wish all writers could be held. Writing is brave work. Yes, I will nudge you when I see you moving away from your priorities, but I am certain that creativity expands with empowerment rather than demand and pressure.
If you would like to learn more about my mentoring options, please check out the mentoring page on my website or book in for a 20-minute discovery call to see if I am the right mentor for you.
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