How much does a crime/mystery writer depend on the five
traditional senses?
As I am a few decades into my dotage you would assume that
at least some of the five traditional senses are waning or gone. Touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing are
the five areas of perception or senses.
Born with a lazy eye,
I have worn glasses since I was two. Everything, from the National Health pink
plastic frames with wires that wrapped around your ears to cat’s eye shape,
square and nerdy and granny glasses. Then bi-focal and tri focal, transitions
and everything in between. After the cataract surgery I loved to inform
everyone about my new ‘implants’.
Hear: "auditory" or "aural”
The women on my mother’s side of the family, namely my mother,
sisters and I have hereditary nerve deafness that only manifests itself when we
became older. In my case my thirties and so hearing aids came to the rescue.
With the new digital aids and personal microphones we all manage quite well. At
least we were spared carrying around a trumpet that granny used.
Touch: Somatosensory system
Touch is the most necessary of the five senses. The desire
for touch is stronger than any other desire. Think of a new born baby and how
it bonds with mother skin to skin when it comes out of the womb. I asked an
elderly lady what she missed most about getting older and her answer was, ‘The
feel of another’s skin next to mine’. So make sure you hug an elderly person
today or give a hand or foot massage. How else would we feel pain, heat, cold or
love than by touch. No wonder massage therapy is on the rise.
Taste: gustation
My favourite taste is a few squares of the best dark
chocolate, about 80% cocoa. Yum. Oh, and many more. Sweet, bitter, sour, salty,
and Umami (Meaty or savoury). My personal preference is sweet or savoury.
Further sensations we detect with our tongues and receptors
in the throat are calcium, coolness, dryness, fattiness (yuck), numbness, temperature
and spiciness.
Smell: Olfaction
Smell to me goes
hand in hand with taste as any cook will tell you. According to Wikipedia (where I gained my knowledge
on the senses) women have a stronger sense of smell than men. I could have told
you that! My mother lost her sense of
smell after my younger brother was born and with her hearing loss we had many a
burned meal. Try it for yourself. Plug your ears and nose and do a big fry up. We
depend on both those senses when making dinner.
What has this exercise to do with crime writing or
any kind of writing? Everything.
Quoted from a favourite book. ‘Out of Africa’ -Isak
Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
When in Africa in March the long rains began after four
months of hot, dry weather, the richness of growth and the freshness and
fragrance everywhere are overwhelming. Smell
But the farmer holds back his heart and dares not trust
the generosity of nature: he listens, dreading to hear a decrease in the roar of the falling rain. The water that the
earth is now drinking in must bring the farm, with all the vegetable, animal,
and human life on it, through four rainless months to come.
The old women of the farm were all good friends of mine.
I saw less of them than of the small restless totos, who were ever about my
house, but they had agreed to assume the existence of a particular
understanding and intimacy between them and me, as if they were all aunties of
mine. Sight.
After the grasshoppers have passed and have gone toward
the horizon like a long stream of thinning smoke, the feeling of disgust at
your own face and hands, which have been crawled upon by grasshoppers, stays
with you for a long time. Touch
Well you get the
idea.
Using all the senses becomes paramount in crime fiction.
Descriptions of what you hear and see help the reader get involved in the
story. The smell of the dark dungeon like room that the captive is incarcerated
reeks of body sweat and fear. The pain inflicted by his tormentor made him bite
his lip until he could taste the blood.
Liz and I have started plotting our next book and building character sketches. Next Saturday we plan to meet for a celebratory breakfast and writing session.
Don't forget next tuesday May 1st until the 31st is Crime writers month on Canada Writes.
Talk soon,
Slainte,
Pam
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