Saint James High School

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Creative Writing
Information Sheet No. 2

Topic: Sensory Experience in Creative Writing

MELCs:
1. use imagery, diction, figures of speech, and specific experiences
HUMSS_CW/MP11/12-Ia-b-4
Objectives:
At the end of the module, students will be able to:
1. determine the function of sensory details in writing creatively;
2. assess the significance of using sensory details in your write-up; and
3. improve a dull paragraph using sensory details to attain its creativity.

What is the difference between watching a movie and reading a novel? Kindly write your
opinion/s in the space provided below.

As you observed, if you have read a novel, the readers will be immersed with the story
they’re reading if the author himself/herself provides a vivid detail of what the story is.
When we say vivid, it allows the readers to paint a clear picture of what the author is
trying to convey. We may not see anything but the words being used will take us to our
imaginative thoughts that we will be able to clearly understand who the characters are,
the setting, and even the plot.

That is the power of SENSORY DETAILS.

“We experience life through our 5 senses. Life is full of sights, smells, touch,
tastes, and sounds that we unconsciously connect with emotion. If an
experience touches multiple senses, the stronger the memory that is created
and the more likely we are to recall that which gave us the experience (positive
or negative).”
- Huffington
Post

Incorporating the senses in writing a story enables the author to link with the readers.
Since you are the writer of your own story, your job is to convince the readers to stick
around. They need to get hooked with the plot, connect with the characters, and wait for
the next story.

So how do you make your readers invest? Make them a part of the story.

You can do that with sensory details because they are intrinsically human. The bright
glare of morning sun in the eyes, the taste of salt, the feel of fur brushing against skin,
the whispering sound of the wind, and the fresh earthy smell of the ground - all of these

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details connect your reader’s human experience to the constructed experience on the
pages, allowing them to take part in the world you create.

5 Different Types of Sensory Imagery

1. Visual imagery engages the sense of sight. This is what you can see, and includes
visual descriptions. Physical attributes including color, size, shape, lightness and
darkness, shadows, and shade are all part of visual imagery.
 The man had flowing brown hair and overgrown stubble
 His chocolate eyes turn caramel in the sun
 When he walks, he has a slight limp in his left leg but tries to hide it

I know that in writing, you won’t only focus on how things look, but still, the sense of sight
is the most important sense to create and engage in a good sensory description. In the
absence of a movie camera, describing how things look with words is the only way you’ll
enable your readers to “see.”

Take note that when you attempt to paint a vivid image, describing every tree and
building and passing dog in sight, isn’t necessary. Visual elements show your reader
what is most important to notice, and gives insight into what your characters notice as
well. Instead . . .

 Focus on just a handful of details (and allow readers to paint the rest of the picture
for themselves).
 Make those details the best ones you can find.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892). “The color is repellant,
almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning
sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.”

The descriptions of color in the lines above depict visual imagery. “Faded,” “dull,” and
“lurid” are all adjectives we can associate with color. Meanwhile, “smouldering,”
“unclean,” and “sickly” are unusual descriptors, since they’re typically associated with
people, not colors. By using a combination of commonplace and unusual language to
describe color, Perkins Gilman both invites us to imagine the actual color of the
wallpaper and imbues it with emotional weight, transforming this room into a symbol of
the character’s emotional frustration and oppression.

Remember that a good description isn’t about the quantity but it should focus on
the quality.

2. Gustatory imagery engages the sense of taste. This is what you can taste, and
includes flavors. This can include the five basic tastes—sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and
umami—as well as the textures and sensations tied to the act of eating.

You’ll mostly evoke the sense of taste under two circumstances. When the characters
are eating and drinking. But always look for ways to incorporate taste descriptions in
more unexpected situations in your novel. For example…

 When a character arrives at the coast, the usual thing would be to have them smell
the sea. Instead, have them taste the salt on the breeze.

 When a young boy captures a frog at the bottom of the garden, have him lick it…
then recoil.

 And when a woman returns to her childhood home, have her taste her mother’s

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 roast chicken when she’s still 100 miles away.

A person sees and observes much more than they eat or taste, but all that means is
there must be a balance. Of course, this is not a rule set in stone. It all depends on your
narrative!

A Room With a View, E.M. Forster (1908). “The hour was approaching at which the
continental breakfast begins, or rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot
chestnut paste out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly of the
paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the great unknown.”

By describing the taste of food with inedible objects and concepts, Forster continues to
balance the expectations of travel with its realities. He also calls attention to the idea of
attaching meaning to seemingly unimportant things: here, a not-too-tasty candy takes
on the weight of the great unknown.

Even if you don’t actually describe a taste, just mentioning the thing we taste with
– the tongue – can be powerful in descriptive fiction.

3. Tactile imagery engages the sense of touch. This is what you can feel, and
includes textures and the many sensations a human being experiences when touching
something. Differences in temperature is also a part of tactile imagery.

Like all five senses, touch can be painful or pleasurable.Make it pleasurable, like the feel
of cool cotton sheets on a summer night, and the readers will experience the pleasure
along with the character.

Make it painful, like being head-butted on the nose, and the readers will wince. Like you
just did.

Sometimes, a touch is neither painful nor pleasurable, but simply helps to describe the
person or the place. For example…

 A greasy stove.
 Cracked lips.
 A cold handshake.

Having your character scrape the ground with a boot, or pick at the hem of their tattered
sleeve will keep the narrative and by default, the reader, in tune. It’ll also let readers sink
into the story naturally.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847). “I heard the rain still beating continuously on the
staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees
cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-
doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.”

Descriptions of temperature and moisture are tactile imagery. In this case, the rain and
Jane’s physical discomfort mirror her dark mood.

Sometimes the touch itself is what’s important, not what the thing being touched
feels like.

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4. Auditory imagery engages the sense of hearing. This is the way things sound.
Literary devices such as onomatopoeia and alliteration can help create sounds in writing.

Auditory details are fabulously useful, particularly with mood setting. Auditory elements
are atmospheric, which means they evoke an environment. And when you forge a strong
environment, your reader will instantly fall into the sphere of your story.

 The jungle buzzed and chirruped with insects as the sunset

 The cacophony of voices grew to a deafening roar in the overcrowded lobby
 Rain pattered softly on the window as wind whistled through the cracks like a wailing
spirit

Few settings are silent. And if they are truly silent, describing the absence of sound will
be interesting in itself.

Characters speaking and coughing and banging things with hammers is one way of
adding a soundtrack to a scene. Another way is to incorporate the sense of sound into
the description of settings and characters.

Sounds are tricky to describe accurately, so the use of figures of speech such as
onomatopoeia and simile will help.

Moby Dick, Herman Mellville (1851). “The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the
surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic
bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it
would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost
seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and
hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the
headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;—all these, with the cries of the
headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the
wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched
sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;—all this was thrilling.”

This passage uses kinesthetic imagery—surging, rolled, tip, dip, slide, shuddering—to

give the feeling of motion on a boat. Sound is also important to this passage: we can
imagine the scream of chickens, the gasps of the oarsmen, and the hollow roar of the
ocean.

Give a sensory experience readers can connect to emotionally. It’ll pull them in,
and ensure your words will make an impact. So pump your story full of these
sensory details.You readers will be begging for more.

5. Olfactory imagery engages the sense of smell. Scent is one of the most direct
triggers of memory and emotion, but can be difficult to write about. Since taste and smell
are so closely linked, you’ll sometimes find the same words (such as “sweet”) used to
describe both. Simile is common in olfactory imagery, because it allows writers to
compare a particular scent to common smells like dirt, grass, manure, or roses.

Smell is the most nostalgic of the 5 senses. Which of us can’t reminisce the memories
back in school when we smell the old pages of the books, or to childhood summers
when we smell freshly-mown grass?

Incidentally, smell is a useful way of getting characters to remember an event from the
past, in the form of a flashback.

For descriptive writing, evoking the sense of smell is a great way of saying a lot with very
few words. Try to imagine the following…

 The smell of fried dried fish and egg in the morning

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  Strong scent of durian in the refrigerator
 Freshly ground coffee in the rainy season

The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899). “There were strange, rare odors abroad—a
tangle of the sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the
heavy perfume of a field of white blossoms somewhere near.”

Chopin compares the smell of the sea to smells that we associate with the earth (weeds,
soil, flowers) throughout The Awakening, both adding a layer of complexity to her
imagery (beyond the usual salty, briny, fishy smells associated with the ocean) and
positioning the sea as part of the earth. This foreshadows the pull this character will feel
toward the sea.

Remember that in order for you to give your readers a sensory experience, you
must activate your 5 senses and do not only focus on one sense. You must have a
vast vocabulary of adjectives to vividly create an image of the picture you’re
painting. Your role is to let your words capture the hearts and minds of the readers
to be able to make a connection.

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 Self-Check No. 2

Fill the picture in their brain with real sensory details, and you’ll pull them right in.

Name: ____________________________ Section: _____________________

Teacher: ___________________________

I. Activate Your Senses

You are to fill in the matrix with your description of the given topic using your 5 senses.
Make sure to incorporate sensory details in your description. Write in paragraph form
with a minimum of 3 sentences. You may use a separate sheet of paper and just attach
it here.

SENSES DESCRIPTION

Visual imagery

Using your sense of sight, describe the

physical attributes of the person you are
idolizing/ admiring.

Gustatory imagery

With your sense of taste, describe what you

ate for lunch.

Tactile imagery

Close your eyes. Touch the thing that is

closest to you. Describe the texture and the
quality of the object you are touching.

Auditory imagery

Activate your sense of hearing and tell me

what you can currently hear.

Olfactory imagery

Your mother/father is cooking for dinner in

the kitchen. Try to distance yourself and
describe the aroma of the food that he/she
is cooking.

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