# How do you describe something you can never experience?



## The Green Shield (Jan 4, 2016)

I have anosmia, which means I can't smell anything. Period. I could stand near a pile of dog crap and not smell it at all, only reacting to it once I see it. By extension, all of my characters have anosmia as well because I don't know what scent smells like. My question is, how would I describe scent if I can never know what it smells like? 

I don't mean the obvious like "Oh, I smell burning- OH GOD, FIRE!!" I mean the subtle kind. For instance, I assume a bowl of carrot soup smells differently from a plate of cabbage, pork, toast and macaroni and cheese, no? Or the difference between each type of perfume? 

Let's say I had a character walking in after just putting on perfume. The narrator smells it and the narration wants to compare it to something sweet. Like butterscotch except...I've no idea what it smells like. And it'd be tiring really fast if I kept using the term butterscotch to describe sweet smells.

Or what if I wanted to describe a smell that's supposed to invoke nausea? The best I came up with is, "a scent that could only be compared to sogged meat being left out in the sun too long."  

You see what I'm saying? If the story calls for scent to come into play, how do I describe it if I've no idea what the scent is supposed to be? 
Thoughts? Advice?


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## Terry D (Jan 4, 2016)

Read. Read. Read. Read how others have described smells, research the smell you want to convey. Talk to people about the smell you need to describe. Google a smell and see what you get. You will need to experience smells vicariously, but your imagination will help.


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## Sam (Jan 4, 2016)

What Terry said. 

Read, read some more, and fill everything else in with imagination.


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## Kyle R (Jan 4, 2016)

The scents I describe are mostly just tastes, only originating from the air. I'll say it smelled salty, or sweet, or bitter. Or like cigarettes and licorice. Or like a sweat-drenched mop.

Do you have a sense of a taste? If so, my approach would be to simply describe scents as if you're describing aerial versions of taste—as that's pretty much what it is (more or less).

Just something to consider. Hope you find the solution you're looking for! :encouragement:


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## The Green Shield (Jan 4, 2016)

Kyle R said:


> The scents I describe are mostly just tastes, only originating from the air. I'll say it smelled salty, or sweet, or bitter. Or like cigarettes and licorice. Or like a sweat-drenched mop.
> 
> Do you have a sense of a taste? If so, my approach would be to simply describe scents as if you're describing aerial versions of taste—as that's pretty much what it is (more or less).
> 
> Just something to consider. Hope you find the solution you're looking for! :encouragement:



That's exactly how I approach it as well, imagine taste if it were in the air instead if in the mouth. Fortunately, I still possess the sense of taste, which is good because I kind of need to eat to live. 

But thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll be sure to read more literature and pay special attention whenever scent crops up. Google and Youtube will likely become my fast friends.


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## EmmaSohan (Jan 4, 2016)

For me, cabbage smells like cabbage, basil smells like basil, and if I could recognize a bowl of carrot soup by smell, I could say nothing more than it smells like carrots. Or if I feel like I can recognize the smell, but I can't think of what it is, I can say it smells familiar.

So you don't really need to know anything about smells to fake my knowledge.

If I asked you what salt tastes like, you would have the same experience, right?


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## Riptide (Jan 4, 2016)

Huh, interesting. Even though smell is crucial I use hearing more in my writing. Smelling not so much. A sewer smells like trash. So I'm with Emma on the it smells like carrots. And then Terry and Sam. Just read and figure out how people react to a certain smell. Like the dog poop you mentioned. How'd you react to it? How others react gives you an inkling on how it smells. Also, taste and smell kinda blend as two senses which is why sometimes when you're sick you don't taste anything and when you hold your nose you can easily down medicine. So using taste to your advantage can cover some of the bases. If it taste bitter it might have a bitter smell.


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## Patrick (Jan 4, 2016)

It's funny that something as important to our most intimate relationships as smell is so absent from prose. It's the sense that is tacked onto the prose to fulfil an amateur's checklist. It can be used wonderfully at times, however, but I keep my own ideas secret, so they aren't stolen. You've received some good advice on how to think about smell from your unique perspective. The simple answer is, create a new experience.


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## bookmasta (Jan 4, 2016)

It's rare that I use smell as a sense for one of my characters. Mostly it's all physical- action and reaction.


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## Blade (Jan 4, 2016)

The Green Shield said:


> You see what I'm saying? If the story calls for scent to come into play, how do I describe it if I've no idea what the scent is supposed to be?
> Thoughts? Advice?



To be honest smells are virtually impossible to describe even if you can smell them. You wind up saying things like "sort of burnt-musty like" or 'sickly-solvent sort of". You can refer to a smell that would be a common denominator like a rose but going for a unique one leaves you fumbling in awkward analogies.:blue:



bookmasta said:


> It's rare that I use smell as a sense for one of my characters. Mostly it's all physical- action and reaction.



This works very well.:thumbl:


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Smells can be powerful if used in fiction, but they can also be rather benign. If you need a smell, "like X" can work just fine--you might not know what Chanel number 9 smells like, but we get the idea when your character walks in and: "The scent of Chanel number 9 hit his nostrils." That works just fine.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Smells can be powerful if used in fiction, but they can also be rather benign. If you need a smell, "like X" can work just fine--you might not know what Chanel number 9 smells like, but we get the idea when your character walks in and: "The scent of Chanel number 9 hit his nostrils." That works just fine.



No, no, the smell of chanel number 9 is like a bad sponsor's logo in the middle of a movie. The girl who enters the room in a white dress, the breeze that accompanies her through the open door, and the sweetness of passing summer that is a summons to all your nostalgic blood. That is a scent.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Blade said:


> To be honest smells are virtually impossible to describe even if you can smell them. You wind up saying things like "sort of burnt-musty like" or 'sickly-solvent sort of". You can refer to a smell that would be a common denominator like a rose but going for a unique one leaves you fumbling in awkward analogies.:blue:



Link them to emotion and memory. Smells are only tricky when you're trying to force them into the text. There will be scenarios that lend themselves to the inclusion of smell. You have to go for it. Don't write about the smell so much as what it's evoking in your character.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> No, no, the smell of chanel number 9 is like a bad sponsor's logo in the middle of a movie. The girl who enters the room in a white dress, the breeze that accompanies her through the open door, and the sweetness of passing summer that is a summons to all your nostalgic blood. That is a scent.



You described a girl, her dress, a breeze, a door, the "sweetness" of summer, and supposedly that "summons to" all my nostalgic blood.

None of that was a scent. The sweetness of summer, could be argued, but in literal terms summer does not smell "sweet", and really it's quite dependent on the climate of the area your characters are in.

Perfume, on the other hand, is perfume. Chanel, a name drop that has relevance to the majority of audiences, adds a level of authenticity. It's literal, short, and gets an immediate image in the reader's head about the character's preferences, class, scent, and likely that it's attached to a female. It grounds the timeline of the narrative, letting the reader know instantly (if they didn't before) that it's set after 1907, when Chanel was created. It means they're on Earth, and also lets us know this character probably has money, or at least is trying to look that way.

Name drops also add authenticity. If you don't agree, that's fine--but Tom Clancy name dropped a lot of useless things that added deep layers of authenticity to his novels, and while they're obviously not for everyone, people do enjoy them. The reader will not think you're trying to sell perfume, trust me.

What you gave us was a metaphor trying to inject emotion. What I gave speaks to the character, tells us all of the above about the setting, and it does so in 3 words. If someone took three lines to describe a scent, I'd put the book down. Then again, I tend to idolize dense, concise writers, generally literal ones. Hemingway, Conrad... those are my heroes, who wasted no words, and looked damn good doing it.

The other issue is that your passage is trying to instruct a person who cannot smell that they should play on the nostalgia of a scent and describe it in detail. That's impossible. He has no frame of reference to any "sweet" scent of summer. Also, he's not missing much, because summer to me is less "sweet" and more "sweat". 9 times out of 10, a reader will not look twice at a scent in a narration. That's just the reality of it. How many scents do you remember from Harry Potter? It's flowery prose added for the sake of entertaining in the narrative--and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's incredibly difficult for someone with anosmia to replicate in text. Better he just say "they smelled blood" than go into detail about the scent, its memories, whether or not there's a girl in a dress somewhere within the smell.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with your narrative, it's a dangerous road to go down. It can alienate readers simply because of its length. In my eyes, it sounds like someone trying to be the proverbial Shakespeare, and in the end just sounds confused and condescending.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> You described a girl, her dress, a breeze, a door, the "sweetness" of summer, and supposedly that "summons to" all my nostalgic blood.
> 
> None of that was a scent. The sweetness of summer, could be argued, but in literal terms summer does not smell "sweet", and really it's quite dependent on the climate of the area your characters are in.
> 
> ...



Hemingway wasn't a genius. He was a very plodding writer in comparison to Shakespeare and Joyce. It's not a question of style; it's a question of intellectual depth and artistic beauty. Chanel number 9 hitting the nostrils doesn't evoke anything, which is fine if you want to write prose that lies dead on the page. What I did in my example was link several unconnected ideas together in one description that evokes more emotion than a whole page of Hemingwayesque sentences. That's the definition of density.

I know it sounds arrogant, but it's the truth.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Hemingway wasn't a genius.



There's a large number of scholars who disagree with you. Personally, I hesitate to call anyone a genius, because I know something that I think you might have missed: Literature, like any art form, is _subjective_.



Patrick said:


> I know it sounds arrogant, but it's the truth.



Then I will just go ahead and let you keep believing so. In the words of Danny McBride: You quest the way you'd like, I'll quest the way I'd like. Your passage evoked no emotion in me, so we can say that it failed on at least one level.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> There's a large number of scholars who disagree with you. Personally, I hesitate to call anyone a genius, because I know something that I think you might have missed: Literature, like any art form, is _subjective_.
> 
> Then I will just go ahead and let you keep believing so. In the words of Danny McBride: You quest the way you'd like, I'll quest the way I'd like. Your passage evoked no emotion in me, so we can say that it failed on at least one level.



I don't require permission to believe it. I do believe it. Ranting is the first resort of one who feels singed by a painful truth; it is not the response of reason. My comment was not a criticism of your entire style (your rant tried to put mine down, and name dropped Shakespeare to do it - a comparison I did not make). When I then gave you my opinion that Hemingway wasn't a genius, you responded that art is subjective. You and I disagree, and the fact you think my description didn't speak to character or emotion shows our positions are not reconcilable. So I won't try to convince you why one description is better, on multiple levels, than the other.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> I don't require permission to believe it.



You're at about an 11, and I need you at about a 5, my friend. My response was less a rant and more an attempt to show other writers here that there's more than one school of thought and those that believe otherwise are, to use your word, arrogant. Apologies if it offended you, that was not my intent. Also, anyone would be wise to question my advice; I'm the first to admit I'm not a great writer. I advise they do the same with all advice given to them.


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## Sam (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Hemingway wasn't a genius. He was a very plodding writer in comparison to Shakespeare and Joyce.



Joyce was a pompous blowhard.  

If Joyce was a genius, Hemingway was a savant.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> You're at about an 11, and I need you at about a 5, my friend. My response was less a rant and more an attempt to show other writers here that there's more than one school of thought and those that believe otherwise are, to use your word, arrogant. Apologies if it offended you, that was not my intent. Also, anyone would be wise to question my advice; I'm the first to admit I'm not a great writer. I advise they do the same with all advice given to them.



Your response tried to explain why the smell of chanel number 9 hitting the nostrils is an effective way to use scent in prose. You just took seven paragraphs to do it; I am still recovering from the juxtaposition of that with the references to concision and Hemingway. My description, though ad libbed and far from the edited version that I would consider the finished product in any manuscript I produced, was just more evocative. Using smell to disguise exposition (which is all your response needed to say, by the way) isn't very good at evoking the sense that your character is in fact alive. Simply put, it isn't what real life is like at all. Real life is full of the wallowing around in emotion at a moment's instigation that I gave as an example.



Sam said:


> Joyce was a pompous blowhard.
> 
> If Joyce was a genius, Hemingway was a savant.



We're going to fall out and hit every branch on the way down, I am afraid.


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## Sam (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> We're going to fall out and hit every branch on the way down, I am afraid.



Aw, you haven't even heard what I have to say about Shakespeare yet.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Your response tried to explain why the smell of chanel number 9 hitting the nostrils is an effective way to use scent in prose.



It is, to many of us. To you? Obviously not. We get it.



Patrick said:


> You just took seven paragraphs to do it; I am still recovering from the juxtaposition of that and the references to concision and Hemingway.



Still _recovering_..? I see why you prefer overly dramatic descriptions.



Patrick said:


> My description, though ad libbed and far from the edited version that I would consider the finished product in any manuscript I produced, was just more evocative.



To you. It evoked nothing to me. And I think it doesn't need to be said that any example given in these types of posts is not a final, working draft.



Patrick said:


> Using smell to disguise exposition (which is all your response needed to say, by the way) isn't very good at evoking the sense that your character is in fact alive. Simply put, it isn't what real life is like at all. Real life is full of the wallowing around in emotion at a moment's instigation that I gave as an example.



Perhaps for you, but I rarely have emotional outbursts of that type. In fact, I've met people who do, who don't, and everything in between. Some people have a very small emotional pulse. I've written characters in both categories, and in between, just as I've seen, met, spoke with, worked with the same spectrum. Which is why I re-quote the scholar McBride: You quest the way you'd like, I'll quest the way I'd like. This is why some people like The Scarlet Letter, and others despise the idea of reading three pages describing a door.

What I dislike is people who say "my way of questing is the only way" or "my way of questing is the correct way" or even "my way of questing is better".


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Sam said:


> Aw, you haven't even heard what I have to say about Shakespeare yet.



:evil: You didn't just go there.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> It is, to many of us. To you? Obviously not. We get it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Look, perhaps if it worked as exposition, I would concede the point. My reactions are playful. I am not really still recovering. Perhaps a little. It was quite the thing. And it was worthy of a reaction.

Saying that the date chanel was invented in (1907) sets the scene is plainly wrong. It only leaves us with 109 years to guess from, no idea of the immediate setting, and no idea of the currency that would even be used to purchase chanel at whatever time and place all this is going on.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Saying that the date chanel was invented in (1907) sets the scene is plainly wrong. It only leaves us with 109 years to guess from, no idea of the immediate setting, and no idea of the currency that would even be used to purchase chanel at whatever time and place all this is going on.



109 years is a very, very short amount of time within the scope of the whole of fiction settings that have been written; especially to sci-fi writers such as myself. Also, narrowing it down to 109 years is still more specificity than afforded in emotional states (on average, anyway... I suppose feeling a swell of emotion at a Skynard concert has a narrower window of time). My point was simply that the brand of the product tells us something about both the world our characters are in, as well as the character itself. Is that better than your way? I think so, but I also know that there's an equal number of people that disagree with me to those that do. That's why some readers prefer HG Wells and some prefer Ayn Rand. Some readers like JK Rowling and some like Elie Wiesel. Methods of writing, methods of description, methods of anything vary from person to person, as much as the audience for those pieces does.

What works for some, won't work for others. Thereby, there's no wrong answer. Because readers will respond one way or the other and there's nothing we can do about it, except write the way we want our story to be told and let them judge it for themsevles.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> 109 years is a very, very short amount of time within the scope of the whole of fiction settings that have been written; especially to sci-fi writers such as myself. Also, narrowing it down to 109 years is still more specificity than afforded in emotional states (on average, anyway... I suppose feeling a swell of emotion at a Skynard concert has a narrower window of time). My point was simply that the brand of the product tells us something about both the world our characters are in, as well as the character itself. Is that better than your way? I think so, but I also know that there's an equal number of people that disagree with me to those that do. That's why some readers prefer HG Wells and some prefer Ayn Rand. Some readers like JK Rowling and some like Elie Wiesel. Methods of writing, methods of description, methods of anything vary from person to person, as much as the audience for those pieces does.
> 
> What works for some, won't work for others. Thereby, there's no wrong answer. Because readers will respond one way or the other and there's nothing we can do about it, except write the way we want our story to be told and let them judge it for themsevles.



You'll find I like a surprising variety of authors, but the reason this doesn't work as disguised exposition is because you're going to have to be specific at some point. 109 years leaves a reader with an enormous number of possible cultures; it also doesn't tell us anything about the character. What if she was gifted the perfume? What if she stole it? What if it's the first time she's tried it and she hates it? So on and so on. This is not expository writing, and no amount of wriggling can change that. yes different people like different things, but the poor use of a technique is still the poor use of a technique.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> You'll find I like a surprising variety of authors, but the reason this doesn't work as disguised exposition is because you're going to have to be specific at some point. 109 years leaves a reader with an enormous number of possible cultures; it also doesn't tell us anything about the character. What if she was gifted the perfume? What if she stole it? What if it's the first time she's tried it and she hates it? So on and so on. This is not expository writing, and no amount of wriggling can change that. yes different people like different things, but the poor use of a technique is still the poor use of a technique.



Let's just say, at the absolute minimum it tells us one thing: she's wearing the damn perfume. If nothing else, that fact is the one we get across. That, likely, is the only fact that's necessary, but the conjecture adds value to the story to a reader; especially in something like mystery writing, where these details are key. I was trying to illustrate the potential scope of it, but if you're prefer, we'll keep it narrow as can be. And that, honestly, is what I prefer in my own writing. Narrow, to the point descriptions that tell the reader what they need to know. Because it doesn't matter otherwise, the other details would likely not serve the story and would only be the proverbial fluff.

But let's say I'm wrong.

Where is the _correct _technique written? Who said it's correct? Why is their word greater than my word, or Sam's word, or Hemingway's? The simple fact is, it's not. It's like saying snow tires are better than racing tires. They cannot be compared in terms of quality (ie, poor/not poor) because they serve _entirely different_ purposes. So if nothing else, I'm poorly using a descriptive technique... according to you.


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## The Green Shield (Jan 5, 2016)

Holy crap, I walk out of here for a few moments and it looks like a duel is erupting here. D: I could *smell* the burning embers and *hear* the dramatic Latin choir from where I was standing.

I just focus on whether or not it's important that scent be included in a scene, and if it does, whether to show or tell. For example, you're not going to wax lyrical about the perfume on your sister, but you'll probably do that to your lover, would you not?

Here a few sentences I want to try out:

_Jennifer wore that damned perfume again..._

_Jennifer smelled fancy, she must've been going out tonight._

_Jennifer's perfume smelled of rich honey._

_Jennifer smelled hot._

_Jennifer's stench was putrid._

_Jennifer's scent commanded attention._
_
Anger burnt from Jennifer. Even to my non-human nose, I knew a pissed off human when I smelled one.

Good God! Was she rolling around in a pig pen?! My eyes watered as I covered my mouth and nose.


_


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Let's just say, at the absolute minimum it tells us one thing: she's wearing the damn perfume. If nothing else, that fact is the one we get across. That, likely, is the only fact that's necessary, but the conjecture adds value to the story to a reader; especially in something like mystery writing, where these details are key. I was trying to illustrate the potential scope of it, but if you're prefer, we'll keep it narrow as can be. And that, honestly, is what I prefer in my own writing. Narrow, to the point descriptions that tell the reader what they need to know. Because it doesn't matter otherwise, the other details would likely not serve the story and would only be the proverbial fluff.
> 
> But let's say I'm wrong.
> 
> Where is the _correct _technique written? Who said it's correct? Why is their word greater than my word, or Sam's word, or Hemingway's? The simple fact is, it's not. It's like saying snow tires are better than racing tires. They cannot be compared in terms of quality (ie, poor/not poor) because they serve _entirely different_ purposes. So if nothing else, I'm poorly using a descriptive technique... according to you.



I understand that we have very different approaches to writing. I am a synthesist; I want to bring in as much as possible. When I write, I write a new genre. I am not looking to imitate hemingway. I am actually writing partly in reaction to this post post post modern world. So my aims are not the same as yours. That's obvious.

The point I am making is that using smell just to get some piece of back story across, which doesn't actually say anything specific, is hardly an exemplary use of the technique you're trying to use. If you'd given a great example, I would say OK, this is something of merit. because it's not how i'd do it is beside the point. It's not a question of style or a writer's idiosyncrasies; it's a case of a technique failing to do the sort of work it is intended to do, in the same way you think my example fails to evoke any emotion. The difference is, I think I've demonstrated your example breaks down as an expository technique, while the response to my own example is subjective. For some people it might evoke a "yeah, I've been there." For other people, it might evoke a "Oh I can't read this rubbish."

Writing is a risk, so I am not worried about the ones I don't interest; maybe they'll come round in time. I would rather be loathed in the same way I initially loathed Joyce (only to eventually greatly appreciate him) than to be an ordinary risk-free writer.


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## Thaumiel (Jan 5, 2016)

The Green Shield said:


> _
> Anger burnt from Jennifer. Even to my non-human nose, I knew a pissed off human when I smelled one.
> 
> 
> _



I really want to know what creature is smelling Jennifer.


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## Bishop (Jan 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> When I write, I write a new genre.



Everything else aside, I'm an infinitely curious... what 'new' genre do you write?


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

The Green Shield said:


> Holy crap, I walk out of here for a few moments and it looks like a duel is erupting here. D: I could *smell* the burning embers and *hear* the dramatic Latin choir from where I was standing.
> 
> I just focus on whether or not it's important that scent be included in a scene, and if it does, whether to show or tell. For example, you're not going to wax lyrical about the perfume on your sister, but you'll probably do that to your lover, would you not?
> 
> ...



The one in bold is OK. It's authentic while not being particularly impressive. I wear hugo boss which has a leading "apple" flagrance to it. So there's that. I've used tulips before to describe a scent that was very muted, suggesting the fragrance had come more from interaction with somebody wearing a particular perfume rather than having it directly sprayed on. But now that I think about it, there's a reason I cut it. The process is not so much trying example sentences as allowing the opportunities to come through naturally. Don't try to include smell if there's nothing that particularly prompts you to include it. If you overuse it, it will be more obvious that you have no sense of smell.

You might describe the smell from a dustbin as being remarkably similar to the aftertaste of sick. Also, sweat can have a kind of sweetness to it, while really bad bo is more heavy and almost smoggy somehow. You'd have to think of a better adjective.


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## Patrick (Jan 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Everything else aside, I'm an infinitely curious... what 'new' genre do you write?



The novel I am currently writing is an epic fantasy, while being a realist novel, and has a whole mythology built around it. It's a literary fantasy novel, but it crosses all genre boundaries. It's a confusion of things, but it has a very clear narrative. It's because I love the Bible, I love Tolkien's Silmarillion, I love Homer's epics, I love Milton's Paradise Lost, I love writers like Edward St. Aubyn and Joyce, so it reflects all my interests. I have no commitment to any one particular genre. Fantasy is just a vehicle for me to explore the themes, but it's not like any fantasy novels I've read. I love allegory, symbolism, psychological insight, nature writing, so on and so on. As I said, I approach it from the point of view of a synthesist. It's the only way I can be passionate about what I am writing. I am not going to kid anybody; I want to write the novel of the 21st century.


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## Kyle R (Jan 6, 2016)

The Green Shield said:


> _Jennifer smelled fancy, she must've been going out tonight._
> _
> Anger burnt from Jennifer. Even to my non-human nose, I knew a pissed off human when I smelled one._



Of the examples you gave, those two are my favorite. :encouragement:


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## Tettsuo (Jan 6, 2016)

I disagree.  Don't go reading how other people write about smells.  What you'll get is some other writers stylized idea (and ideal) of how a particular thing smells.  It's much better to ask people.  Let non-writers try to describe to you what something smells like.  They won't wordsmith you, they won't give you some cool idea of what a thing smells like.  They'll tell you plain language as best they can.  In fact, what they'll usually do is give you images and ideas of what a smell means to them, how a smell makes them feel.

Plain folks tend to give a base for you launch from while other writers give you the whole shebangabang.


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## Patrick (Jan 6, 2016)

Tettsuo said:


> I disagree.  Don't go reading how other people write about smells.  *What you'll get is some other writers stylized idea (and ideal) of how a particular thing smells.*



That is true.


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