Using the Five Senses
As you noticed from the previous example, evoking the power of the five senses can bring a scene to life in the reader's mind. After all, romance readers, more so than the readers of any other genre, want to experience the novel as though it were happening to them. They want to pretend they are the characters you've written about on the pages of the book. They want to live your story.
To make this happen, always ask yourself the following five questions when writing a scene:
What can my POV character hear?
What can my POV character see?
What can my POV character smell?
What can my POV character taste?
What can my POV character touch?
While it's important to know the answers to these questions when you write your scene, you don't have to include an example from each of the five senses. Just choose the most vivid ones that best describe the scene you're writing.
When you're visiting a location that you're researching for a novel, keep a notebook handy. In addition to making a note of the various sights you see, along with the facts associated with them, make a list of your sensory experiences. What can you hear? What can you smell? Often, the answers to those questions are more important for the success of a scene than a litany of dry facts.
Remember, also, that the setting should reflect the tone of the scene you're writing, so choose descriptions of your characters' sensory experiences that reflect the mood you're trying to create in the scene.
In other words, if your purpose is to instill a sense of fear, for example, you should focus on the five senses that fuel that particular sensation. Your heroine might think she sees a shadow move in a darkened hallway or hear the echoing of footsteps as she walks down an empty hallway. She might smell the acrid scent of a cigar in an empty room and suspect that the killer — a man known for his love of cigars — is nearby.
As your heroine becomes frightened, so should your reader. More than simply mentioning the various sensory observations, however, you must use the descriptions to propel the story forward. After all, word choice can help evoke emotions in a reader, so choose your setting descriptors wisely, just as you would the wording in the rest of your novel. (For more information about making the right word choices, refer to Chapter 7.)
