The other day a friend told me a story that led me to remark on his
sense of hearing. His aural acuity seems to have actually gotten
stronger as he’s gotten older. “Odd,” I said. “Isn’t it usually the
other way around?” He agreed but said he thought it had to do with his
failing eyesight. His hearing had developed to compensate for his
decreasing ability to see.
Hmm …
That led to a general
discussion about differently he and I “see” the world. My eyesight is
pretty terrible, too — always has been — but I tend to have a very
strong sense of smell. It didn’t used to be that way. As a child, I
never noticed odors, but as I grew older and my eyesight worsened, my
sense of smell bettered. It also got a jump when I was carrying my
first child. I could smell certain restaurant chains two blocks away.
The sensitivity was so strong that I’d have to run in the opposite
direction. My sense of taste was very acute then, too. I couldn’t stand
the taste of packaged sweets because I swore I could taste every
lab-concocted chemical they contained. Yuck!
What does all this have to do with writing? It has to do with characterization.
There
are so many ways to differentiate your characters, to make them
memorable — an odd name, an accent. Obviously, a character’s driving
motive or overarching concern will define him, too. But one of the most
overlooked, and simplest, ways of delineating characters is the use of
the basic five senses.
Have one character acutely sensitive to
sounds; another to textures; and another to taste. One character walks
into a room and immediately notes the background noises: the television
or radio playing in another room, the sound of a truck going by
outside, the cry of an infant in a neighboring apartment. Another
character walks into the same room, stroking her dress because it’s
made of velvet and that makes her at ease. She prefers steel to wood or
vice versa. She chooses her husband’s jackets as much because of the
way they feel under her fingertips as how they hang on his shoulders. A
third character has a sensitive palette, so sensitive that he can not
only taste bitterness in food, but “taste” it in the air.
Most
of us, whether we realize it or not, depend upon one or two senses more
than the other three. Why not use that fact as an easy way of setting
your characters apart?
Taking it a bit further, you can also use
this to define your spaces, your settings. Some places are
overwhelmingly loud; others hit you first because of the odors (a fish
market, for example). What’s very interesting about this, however, is
the interaction between the objective description of a setting and a
character’s perception of it. I live in the city so I rarely notice its
noise, for example. However, when my friends from the suburbs visit,
it’s the first thing they comment on, even feel overwhelmed by.
Many
times, writers wrack their brains trying to find ways to describe or
delineate a character or place. Using the five senses is one of the
easiest ways to do it.
Wishing you days after days of happy writing,
