A Story That Makes Sense
By Jim Dempsey | July 11, 2023 |
Some years ago, maybe almost 20 years ago, I was running a series of workshops for young writers, and we organized a trip to a dance troupe. We thought this would offer some entertainment and a way to explore other creative activities. But the dancers got us involved too. All of us. Including me.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” I protested.
“That’s OK,” said one of the dancers. “Just listen to the music and listen to you body, try to feel if the music touches you somewhere.”
I tried. I wanted to be open to this.
I felt the music in my thumb, so I started tapping out the beat. That then became more of a slap as the rest of my hand got involved. Then my shoulders joined in. Arms. Legs. Before I knew it, I was dancing. Really dancing. It was fantastic. I loved it.
I was reminded of this experience recently when I read the following line from David Abram’s book The Spell of the Sensuous:
“A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And ‘making sense’ must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses.”
Sensational
The idea that you can feel as well as hear music is something I think we can all recognize, but we can also experience other sounds as a sensation. The classic example is the squeak of chalk on a board. But try it with other noises, maybe a birdsong or even a passing car, and see if you can feel that sound in your body, maybe a specific spot. Don’t think about it too much, just try to sense it. What does it feel like?
It’s easy to make the connection between smell and taste too, as you can get an idea of how something will taste from its smell. And both taste and smell have the power to invoke a memory – your ex’s after shave or perfume, that first vacation by the sea.
But can you imagine the taste a sound might have? That’s more difficult, but it’s worth trying. What would that chalkboard squeak taste like? Think about it for a moment. I’m getting something sharp and metallic.
And this is something you can use in your writing, to add richness and to, as David Abram says, have your story make sense.
Rich flavors
Food, for example, can invoke all five senses. You can imagine the taste just by looking at food, then, as I mentioned, the smell is so important. Then there is the actual taste, which comes with a texture and maybe even a crunch.
And think about noisy eating. That can invoke a feeling, an emotion even, and a very strong one in some cases, especially those who have misophonia.
There is also synesthesia. I had a colleague who could hear colors to the point where her neighbor’s drapes would give her a severe headache.
But we can all try to experience this mix of senses and add that to our writing to add another dimension and shift away from obvious connections and even cliches. The warm sweetness of a sunset; the blue feel of cold steel; the soft, pale sheet of wind covering your skin.
Again, you don’t have to think too much about the sense a particular scene invokes. Try to use your intuition, your sixth sense. That’s the sense that got that thumb moving all those years ago. And that lesson has stuck with me ever since. Even today, once you get me started, you can hardly get me to stop dancing.
How do you use senses in your writing? How do you make sure you story makes sense in this sense?
Jim Dempsey (he/him) is a book editor who specializes in detailed analysis and editing of novel manuscripts through his company, Novel Gazing. He has worked as an editor for more than 20 years. He has a master’s degree in creative writing and is a professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and is a trustee of the Arkbound Foundation. Jim is fascinated by the similarities between fiction and psychotherapy, since both investigate the human condition, the things that make us uniquely human. He explores this at The Fiction Therapist website. If you have a specific concern with your novel, send an email to jim [at] thefictiontherapist.com, or visit the website to ask for a free sample edit. You can follow Jim on Instagram @the_fiction_therapist.
Thank you for a thought-provoking article.
Something I’ve been trying to do is think about how different characters would respond more to different senses, so the same place or event would be perceived differently by two people for example one describes people by what they look like, another describes the sound of their voice. If the same two characters were describing an outdoor scene, the first might notice the colours of stones, flowers, leaves,the second would notice bird song and the sounds of wind in the trees and running water. It helps make two narrators different.
Excellent post, Jim. I’m now thinking that working through some of these examples for secondary or tertiary characters might help enrich the worldbuilding in a project I’ve just started.
I look at if from the other direction: that the first step to getting more senses included is to trim the number *down* from the full five. That is, sight and hearing are the obvious big ones… but just considering those, they work differently, with sight being the thing we consciously focus (hence the metaphor) on what we want, while hearing happens around all that in contrast to where we’d like to keep our attention. One is directed, the other is atmosphere, background, and surprises.
And smell works a lot like sound too: only some things give it off, but it’s just *there* whether you’re paying attention or not. While touch can be a follow-up to sight as you pick up or walk toward the thing that interests you, and if it’s food taste becomes the follow-up to that. (Though the air or sometimes surroundings can come *at* you with surprise touches as well, and so can internal feelings or tastes.)
“Use all five” is maddening advice, because it’s so much to keep track of at once. So I like prioritizing and contrasting the senses a few at a time, so I know how to work them all in.
My interpretation of the advice to use all five senses while writing is not to use them all at once and not always for the same thing. Sometimes a character can simply see something, and I like your example of taking them one at a time, connecting them from one to another.
Hmmm, doesn’t sentence derive from sense? Language has to make sense–literally. We are body and soul and we experience everything through our bodies, our senses, and language gives us the ability to put our thoughts into words. Abstractions become real through the specifics of lived experiences. My husband and I argue about this–he loves ideas, but I want to see an example :) I love stories that transport me, that make me feel as the story people do, and from studying my favorite books, I notice that the writing is carnal. It is natural for me to incorporate the senses. When I revise, it’s one of the ways to inject life into a flat scene (or delete it altogether, lol).
I find that evoking a sense per se—the taste of strawberry jam, say—tends to become strained. I never mentally taste the strawberry jam.
However, the experience of tasting it can be artful and effective, I think, as when that jam is made by Aunt Harriet from September berries picked in her own yard, jarred by her in gingham cloth-topped jars tied with red yarn, given out to the family at Christmas and spread on biscuits on a January morning when there is snow outside and late summer on your tongue and you smile and know that you never want to die.
I would like to see you dance, too. One of my favorite dancing memories is of being at a wedding and watching Joyce Carol Oates waving her long, stork-like limbs on the dance floor next to Mary Higgins Clarke moving like a stately yacht around the floor.
What was most interesting in the jam example was that I could feel the texture of the gingham without having that sensation described.
That last sentence is a beauty, and a name drop to beat all.
Good post, Jim. I would add that the perception should be in keeping with the POV character’s experience and understanding. A four-year-ols wouldn’t know whether an odor smells like wood smoke or rotten eggs unless she’s smelled each one. A car would be red, not scarlet or crimson.