So yesterday I saw Dune in Bolingbrook. I had to drive through Darien to get home. As I did so I caught a whiff of something I haven't smelled in a long time: burning leaves. And it filled me with a warm and comfortable feeling.
Yeah, I know. Burning leaves is bad for the environment, which is why I don't do that and I'm not going to start. But it fills me with a nostalgic feeling because I remember when my dad lived in Winfield, he would do that every fall. This scent took me back to my childhood for a moment, and I kind of liked that.
It also reminded me that people used to burn most of their garbage, but that's a story for another day.
(Seriously. When you're in a town where sidewalks are scarce, you're probably seeing ditches in front of houses with drains at the end. That's where leaves and garbage were burned.)
I thought about all the other smells that bring me back. Old Spice will bring my grandfather back from the dead for me. The smell of gasoline will always remind me of when I was a kid and loved inhaling those fumes. My grandma would always tell me not to do that because I was killing brain cells. Keep in mind that's the same kid who wanted to go swimming in trash.
Certain perfumes or shampoo will bring back the memoires of women who have been kind enough to sleep with me. Well, I could go on forever.
The thing I think of mostly is how a lot of authors ignore the sense of smell in favor of sight and hearing. Why do that? Use all five senses when describing things. It enhances the experience for your readers. If you're writing a horror story about a guy in a pit of corpses, are you going to focus on the gross visuals and the squelching sound as the character sinks in? Sure, and that's fine, but if you're leaving out the stink? You're missing a step. Wouldn't you also like to describe the feeling of rotten flesh slipping off the bone? Or what if the character accidentally gets corpse goo in their mouth? Wouldn't you want to describe that taste?
I didn't mean this to become a writing tip type thing. It was just something I was thinking about since Sunday, and I'm high right now. Goodnight.
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