3. Using the Senses

The senses are how we understand the world. Without sense data, the world doesn't even exist for us. If you took away someone's senses, there's no way for them to even know they're alive.... or is there? We don't really know and that's a philosophical discussion for another day.

HOWEVER, what is clear enough is that we understand the world through our senses, and that you need to use that as a writer.

For most people, sight is the dominant sense - it's the one we're most aware of. However, touch and hearing are also pretty important - they're always there, and we certainly know when something's going wrong with them! And it's like that with smell as well. Most of the time, we're not that aware of our sense of smell but when it likes something - or dislikes it - we know about it pretty quickly. The same is true for taste. We activate it when we eat, but most of the time it sits dormant.

When I think about writing, I tend to focus on sight, touch and hearing primarily; I use smell sometimes, but only if there's a reason for it; taste really only comes into my writing if there's eating involved.

So my advice to writers is to focus on: Sight, Touch, Hearing, some Smell and replace Taste with Thoughts or Feelings - say how you feel about a sense, or talk about what it makes you think of. These will all help you fill up a page of writing.

And now, when I'm describing each of those sections, I can start to ask myself questions about the senses:

The Path:

I can see the tufts of grass, the broken leaves and twigs, the path itself - carved from years of other travellers.

I can hear my feet shuffling along, kicking the debris of the forest

I can feel the soft earth under my feet, broken by the harder pieces of bark or twigs

I think / feel a sense of being pulled along by the path - heading deeper into the forest in the way that my life pulls me forward

The Trunks:

I can see their rough bark, with lines that run along it like valleys or cliff faces

I can hear the sound of forest animals interacting with the bark - squirrels scuttling up and down it or woodpeckers hammering

I can feel the texture of it - soft in places, rough in others

I think / feel about how this feeling reflects how my life is - rough in places, smooth in others - and that is all a part of what nature is

You get the idea - and with this last one I did something really important:

You see, writing isn't just about saying WHAT happens, it's about looking for something deeper in life; it's about connecting our experiences with what is around us. And in that last section, I thought about the texture of bark - which isn't just rough, it's quite smooth in places as well - and then I wondered how I'd feel about it. Because I'd gone for this "reflective" tone to the writing, I just came up with the idea that the rough and the smooth is like life itself. That kind of spot isn't going to win you the Booker Prize or anything, but it will get you a top mark for GCSE!

The trick with writing, though, is remembering that you're looking for interesting connections between things, and you won't find those connections unless you start looking in detail. Breaking the picture up and then thinking about how we experience each section of it is a great way to find those connections.

Here's an example for you:

The Path: Notes

I can see the tufts of grass, the broken leaves and twigs, the path itself - carved from years of other travellers.

I can hear my feet shuffling along, kicking the debris of the forest

I can feel the soft earth under my feet, broken by the harder pieces of bark or twigs

I think / feel a sense of being pulled along by the path - heading deeper into the forest in the way that my life pulls me forward

And here's the paragraph that came from it:

The forest path stretched out in front of me. It was covered in tufts of grass, broken leaves and twigs, and hid the footprints of hundreds of years of travellers. My shuffling feet seemed so loud in the forest, and the odd bit of bark that I kicked in the undergrowth made me jump. But the earth under my feet was soft and mossy, despite the twigs and stones that occasionally poked their way up. I felt myself being pulled along the path, as though against my will, and reflected on that's how my life felt at the moment: like I was constantly being drawn forward by some idea that I couldn't understand, deeper into the forest.