Ever feel a pang of envy?
It happened to me recently.
I was reading the book Revelations in Air by Jude Stewart.
As I’m reading, I feel like I’m standing next to her smelling the orange she’s peeling. I notice a whiff of lavender as she dabs the scented oil on her wrist. Oh, and the smell of freshly-cut grass!
How can she describe smells so fabulously?
I quickly let go of my envy and begin to study her writing: What makes Stewart’s descriptions so evocative? What can I learn from her?
Describing aromas may seem like a niche writing technique but the lessons apply to almost any writing, fiction or non-fiction.
Shall we look at some examples first?
Example 1: The aromas of peanut butter
Here’s how Stewart describes peanut butter:
It’s rich, smoky, surprisingly deep. The scent stacks in clear layers: at the top floats a note of honeyed sweetness. A heavy swirl of oil forms the grounding base note. In the fat middle, it’s all sticky, particulate peanuts: a smell that matches the taste with uncanny fidelity.
When I read this description, I think: Yes, I know the fat middle with the peanutty smell. I also know the oily base note. But the sweetness? I’m not sure.
I grab a pot of peanut butter and sniff. At first, I only smell peanuts and oil. Then I let the smell come to my nose more quietly, and there it is: Sweetness.
To describe a smell more accurately, you first have to sniff more attentively. You have to stop and pay attention. That’s how you can detect the different layers of a smell—honeyed sweetness, oily base, and sticky peanuts.
Example 2: The smell of petrichor
Petrichor is the smell of rain after a long period of dry weather. Stewart starts her description like this:
Petrichor, the smell of parched earth after rain, is immersive, roomy enough to move around in. Its bright mineral tang is edged with vegetal green. There’s a hint of sourness, haloed by fresh water droplets. Petrichor lifts the ground, with all its smells, closer to the nose. It’s as if the earth has exhaled. Because this smell emanates from millions of pinpoints at once, petrichor has a stereoscopic quality. Inside the smell, each moment seems to dilate and slow. It fills the air with relief.
Describing a smell can be tricky. In his book An Immense World, Ed Yong suggests the English language has only 3 dedicated words for smells: “stinky, fragrant, and musty.” So, we borrow words from other senses, use metaphors, or name the source of a smell (e.g., rose). In the above description of petrichor, the phrases mineral tang and sourness describe tastes as much as (or probably more than) smell.
Stewart turns her description of petrichor into a 3-dimensional experience: It’s immersive and roomy enough to move around in. It’s as if the earth has exhaled (such a lovely example of personification!). The air is filled with relief.
Isn’t that lovely?
Example 3: The scent of roses
How would you describe the scent of roses?
Perhaps: Flowery, a tad sweet. The roses in our garden are still in bud, so no chance to sniff their scent for a more accurate description. I’m inclined to suggest that roses smell like … eh … roses, yeah?
Here’s how Stewart starts her description of the scent of roses:
At first the smell of roses fills the nose in a giddy rush, sweet and headlong. The burst of luxury feels total. But that rush rapidly settles down and shades into a regal stillness. You become aware of joining a vast throng of admirers in a shared contemplation. The scent’s wildness doesn’t stay wild for long in the nose; inevitably, one recalls one’s grandmother in her church best. Yet behind its rounded, classical quality, the scent still emanates some heat, prickly and pollen-like. It evokes late summer, lazily crawling insects, the finery of silken petals rotting under a bush, the sprawl of untidy nature. Inside the smell of roses one senses the momentary quality of life, how rapidly loveliness blossoms and fades, the nearness of beauty to rot.
Stewart relates how she experiences the scent in two stages: The giddy rush that settles down into a regal stillness. Next, she describes the memories the scents evoke: Grandmother, late summer, crawling insects. And lastly, there’s a philosophical note on the fading of beauty and the momentary quality of life.
Smells can ground you into the present. Forget all your worries. Forget all your stress. Instead savor the smells in the air around you, here and now. I love this when I’m cooking. I love how the smells evolve and intermingle. It’s a full-body experience. As Stewart writes, olfactory receptors not only “line our noses but also our skin, skeletal muscles, and major organs.” We smell with our entire bodies.
But aromas aren’t just about the present. They can also evoke strong memories and transport us back to the past. As Stewart suggests, smell is a form of “emotional time travel:”
(…) important memories in your life are nearly always emotional. When an important episodic memory forms, we’re feeling all the feels, registering all the details clearly. If we happen to smell something distinctive during that experience, the amygdala, hippocampus, and olfactory bulbs fuse feelings, memory, and smell together effortlessly.
To describe a smell, you can choose to stay in the present or you can go back in time. Like music, aromas can evoke strong memories.
The art of describing a smell
As we’ve seen there are at least 3 techniques for describing a smell.
First, you can use sensory language to describe the different layers of an aroma, and how it changes over time.
This technique requires us to pay close attention: To sniff, and sniff again, and then to put into words what we’re smelling. This may require patience and practice. Stewart admits that while working on the chapter about the smell of skin, she sniffs her partner’s t-shirt for 20 (!!!) minutes.
Next, you can turn a smell into a multi-sensory or 3-dimensional experience.
You can describe how you experience a smell, how it caresses or prickles your nose or how you can move in it—like the softly sweet smell of honey that greeted me and enveloped me when I cycled towards a field of rapeseed a few weeks ago.
Lastly, you can narrate the memories and associations that a smell evokes.
I have many aroma-infused memories of living in Hong Kong in the late 90s. I remember the excitement and slight trepidation of arriving at the old airport and disembarking into the clammy dampness with the overbearing smells of kerosine and hot tarmac. Oh, how I wish I had paid more attention and made notes!
How to become a better writer
Improving our writing skills is about more than vocabulary, sentence structure, and creative writing techniques.
We also need to practice the art of noticing.
What do you observe when you pay closer attention? How can you describe an interaction, a problem, a solution, a person, or a situation more precisely?
What happens when you experience the world with a childlike wonder? What attracts attention when you follow your curiosity?
In our fast-paced world, it can be hard to stop and pay attention. Our mobile phones, the news, social media are always there to distract us. The standard mantra is to go faster, do more, and be more productive.
Yet, slowing down helps us observe better. It helps us be present, savor life, and experience a moment more deeply.
Plus, it helps us write more accurately and more vividly, so we can invite our readers into a different world.
So, let’s stop to smell the roses.
Happy writing!
PS Thank you to Phil LeMaster for the excellent book recommendation.
Book mentioned in this post:
- Revelations in Air by Jude Stewart (highly recommended)
Recommended reading on writing more evocatively:
The magic of sensory language (+ 75 example phrases)
Imagery examples: How to write more vividly
The art of noticing: 3 practices to make you a better writer
Hi Henneke,
What a great post! Finding it useful as I write about New York’s architecture 🙂
I hope everything is well with you ❤️
Virginia
I have no doubts that your writing about New York’s architecture will be great, infused with your passion. ❤️
Happy writing!
I took an online Memoir Writing Course last year then found several people fron that group to be my accountability partners. All of us “graduates” are now in the facebook group for alumni. May I link to your article there? It’s so wonderful and adds to the first thing we learned — show don’t tell. Trudy
Yes, sure. I’m always grateful when people share my work. 🙂
Writing about the senses will be an important part of my efforts to explore them more deeply. It is always a pleasure to read your blog because it makes me feel positive, loving, and compassionate.
I appreciate your blog very much.
Awww, that’s such lovely feedback. Thank you, Bhupendra. Happy writing!
Smell, infrequently used, but deeply evocative, especially in terms of memories. Thank you for this overview of how to describe smell in creative writing. I’ll be returning to this.
Thank you, Alex. I’ve wondered why we use smell so infrequently. Is describing a smell just too hard?
Hi Henneke,
I am a writer too, and I am always looking for new inspiration and guides that will help me improve. I learned a lot from this article, and I will definitely try to write like this. All these examples were amazing. I think you write beautifully. Thanks a lot for sharing this amazing article and guide. It was very helpful.
I’m glad you found it helpful, John. Happy writing!
Hi Henneke, Sorry I read this post a bit late. I admire you a lot. I started my own blog and your course on blog writing has guided me a lot in becoming a better writer.
There’s no deadline for reading my posts. You can read them at any time 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed my blog writing course, Mary!
We don’t realize how complex our senses are until we try to describe them using words, which is really all we have. Jude’s attempts are beautiful, almost poetic. She masterfully uses words and phrases to ping the faraway places in our minds that smells occupy, evoking memories and emotions.
I can’t wait to read this book.
Thanks, Henneke.
Jude Stewart’s aroma descriptions are amazing, aren’t they? I hope you’ll enjoy her book, too!
Great piece!
Thank you!
Henneke, your post seems to roll off your tongue, or shall I say nose, with ease. This really brought a smile to my face. I look forward to thinking more deeply about senses in all of my writing. Thank you!
I’m so glad you enjoyed this. I felt very much inspired by Jude Stewart’s book and it was such a joy to write this (still did quite some editing, though!).
Be prepared. ( I’m surprised this hasn’t already happened.) But, be prepared for it. You pick up a random note from your desk. You find a file tucked away and forgotten on your computer. You read it. You are impressed. You wonder. Who wrote that… and realize… you did! If it hasn’t happened yet, it will. Enjoy that moment when it does. Grace and peace.
What a lovely suggestion (and a compliment!). Thank you so much, Curtis. When it happens, I’ll think of your words and remember all your encouragement through the years. Grace and peace to you, too.
One word – Lovely. I don’t know how Stewart even managed to create such descriptions.
To me, there are an impossible task (till now), but maybe with time and practice, I might achieve .05% of this writing style.
Yes, smells do drag us back into memory lane. The smell of a hot summer afternoon, the smell of freshly washed clothes, the smell of soap after my Mother had her bath, the smell of my Father’s shirt (it was a mix of Old Spice aftershave and John Players cigarettes) – it was as if a new smell had been given birth with their combination.
I envy Stewart for having the ability to write such exotic descriptions. It is a class apart and will make any content stand out from the rest.
I wish I could write like her…
First, I think you’re underestimating your own ability. You’ll do much better than you think. I can see that you’ve already been inspired to think of smells and memories. I love the smell of line-dried laundry.
Secondly, you and I don’t need to reach the same level of smell descriptions as Jude Stewart. That’s unless you also want to write a guide book on smells! Just thinking about smells and weaving a one-sentence description into your writing now is more than most writers do, and that’ll make your writing already stand out.
Thanks so much for stopping by, Subhankar. Happy writing!
Fantastic insight. Writing is more than vocabulary, sentence structure, and creative writing techniques. I’ve been concentrating solely on those aspects. Now, I see beyond. Thanks for sharing.
I think it’s a logical focus. It’s what most writing books and blog focus on. Me, too!
Thank you for stopping by, Donna. I much appreciate it.
“That night, it felt as if the world was about to be deluged. I could feel moisture on my skin through the air. My stepdad and I closed packs in their covers and he grabbed his raincoat. I didn’t have one. —The smell pouring from the sky was like mushrooms and sky.–It was like everything living, everything possible. Lightning erupted inside dark fields, close enough I could see strokes of a downpour through the night.”-Craig Childs, “Tracing Time; Seasons of Rock Art in the Colorado Plateau.”
I’ll find myself sniffing the sky when the clouds build in the afternoon from now on after reading that and Jude’s “Revelations”
Thanks for the shoutout/link!
But I really need to thank you for the inspiration to notice wonderful things everywhere.
I’m finding myself sniffing a lot more, too. I also found it interesting that our smell receptors regenerate. As Stewart writes: “Olfactory receptors—the receptors in our noses whose proteins bind to smell molecules—regenerate every four to eight weeks and change in response to whatever new smells they encounter. Smelling new scents, articulating what you smell in words, learning to identify similar smells—in short, practicing your sense of smell is brain-building, particularly in older adults.” Such a nice incentive to develop our sense of smell!
Craig Childs’ writing is amazing, really multi-sensory. I’ve look forward to reading “Tracing Time,” too! Thank you for all your inspiration and recommendation, Phil. A good book recommendation is so precious. A few hours well spent. A new world opens.
Yes! Describing smells will take a lot of practice and I will have to be creative! Thanks for the book suggestion, I’ll make a note of that for future reading. I so enjoy reading your newsletters or posts, however you would describe your writing to us. I try to learn from them. I need to sit with this one awhile and get used to being more aware of smells, sniffing more and being more present in the moments I experience ☺️
Reading “Revelations in Air” made me a lot more aware of smells, too. There are interesting exercises in the book, too. Like keeping a smell journal, varying your sniffing technique, and comparing smells of similar items (e.g., try to smell the difference between types of vinegar). It’s really interesting to start paying more attention to smells and try to describe them (it’s hard!).
A lovely and imagination-stirring piece, Henneke. I’ve learned to take my small notebook with me when visiting a park or garden as I know the descriptive sensory words and connections that come to mind are all too fleeting if I don’t capture them in the moment! Will definitely add this book to my reading list.
That’s such a great habit. I should do that, too. I always think that I’ll remember.
So true. Just a little note. On the small notebook idea. Another tactic. You can use your smartphone to voice record your thoughts or write them. Or even make a video. I wonder if we will ever be able to record an aroma.
Wouldn’t that be interesting if we could keep a box with aromas from the past just like a photo album?
My dad taught me a lot about the sense of smell. For example, he said that once you have smelled an aroma, you will never forget it. If you ever smell it again, it will immediately pop up in your memory.
I didn’t know that! So interesting.
Loved ever bit of this article. Keep ’em coming dear Henneke! You’re my writing star!
Thank you so much, Isabel. It was such a joy to write this 🙂