The Good, the Bad and the Smelly (or the Aromatic)

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

The good

-My mom’s spaghetti sauce

-Honeysuckle

-Pine needles in the woods

-Salt air at the ocean in September

These are pleasant smells to me.

Have you noticed how powerful our sense of smell is? One whiff of an aroma can birth numerous memories.  When I smell recently-cooked bacon, for example, I immediately become a fifth grader on a school bus stopping to pick up kids at a corner. I don’t know why that bus stop smelled like bacon to me. Was it the area of town, the kids themselves or their clothing? I don’t know, but I remember the smell vividly.

The bad

I grew up in Jacksonville, and I remember the industrial, unnatural smell of paper mills. Do you? Thankfully, under Mayor Hazouri’s administration, the City of Jacksonville ridded itself of that aroma. 

We can probably all relate to the smell of old garbage. Egg shells, meat scraps, used coffee grounds, last night’s plate scrapings…you know what I mean.

The smelly (or the aromatic)

Whether you write memoirs, fiction, drama or poetry, the sense of smell is a potent addition. Including aromas in your writing helps you ‘show’ more and ‘tell’ less. In my opinion, writers who succeed at showing more and telling less remove themselves (as much as they can) from their work and allow their readers to experience what’s on the page. 

Eudora Welty is one of my favorite authors. In one of her famous short stories, “A Worn Path,” she tells of poor, elderly Phoenix Jackson, who walks a worn path from her home into a nearby town to get medicine for her sick grandson. 

Welty is a master of showing and not simply telling in her writing. For example, Welty writes, “She paused quietly on the sidewalk, where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red, green, and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.” I can smell those red roses in the heat. Can you?

Here’s another example from the same story. “She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps.” 

Welty weaves the sense of smell into her writing along with sight and sound to put her readers into her stories. 

What do you think?

Do you include the sense of smell in your writing? If so, please share some examples in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.

As a reader, do you feel more into a piece when the author includes the sense of smell? Why or why not?

Up for a challenge?

Here’s a fun writing exercise. List 10-15 smells (good ones and bad ones). Then, write a piece in which you include at least three of the smells. Ask someone to read your piece and ask for his or her feedback. Did the smells keep your reader interested? Did using the sense of smell help you show more and tell less?

Happy writing!

~Nancy