Scents, smells and aromas

[longknife]

A major step in my writing has been learning to liven up my prose. That means including emotions, expressions and physical characteristics.
I've even got an archived area with every known color and various shades.
However, I realized that, while I can relate sounds, I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out scents. I mean, when I smell cooking, I can identify what's being cooked. But, what about describing other odors?
There's a unique smell to new mown grass and hay. But, is there is good word to describe that smell?
How about flowers? Each flower has it's own unique scenrt. What's a good way to describe that?

I can do this - the smile on his faces was tinged with sadness. Or - Her perriwinkle blue eyes glistened with tears.

But, how does one describe - he knelt and sniffed the lichen, savoring its xxxxxx aroma.?

Any suggestions?

[Lorelei Armstrong]

Don't overdo it. Include smells, yes, and include colors, but there are some problems with being too exact and lavish in your descriptions of anything. One, you descend into purple prose. Two, you get in your reader's way. When you say your character walks into the kitchen and smells garlic, your reader knows what that's like. If you start saying it's bitter, or pungent, or whatever, well, that's you inserting yourself in the story. Plus, for the moment of time it takes to elaborate the description, the story has stopped. You're hurting the pace. Over-description can really hurt you if you keep describing your characters. Your readers will create a picture in their heads from the first description. Subsequent over-descriptions can get in the way and be confusing. Minor reminders of a distinctive characteristic are fine.

Trust your reader to bring their world experience to the story. Remember Sol Stein's rule that the writer is a magician whose job it is to disappear. So take that list of elaborate colors and those periwinkle eyes and set them aside. Blue is just fine.

[Lunetta22]

Don't overdo it. Include smells, yes, and include colors, but there are some problems with being too exact and lavish in your descriptions of anything. One, you descend into purple prose. Two, you get in your reader's way. When you say your character walks into the kitchen and smells garlic, your reader knows what that's like. If you start saying it's bitter, or pungent, or whatever, well, that's you inserting yourself in the story. Plus, for the moment of time it takes to elaborate the description, the story has stopped. You're hurting the pace. Over-description can really hurt you if you keep describing your characters. Your readers will create a picture in their heads from the first description. Subsequent over-descriptions can get in the way and be confusing. Minor reminders of a distinctive characteristic are fine.

Trust your reader to bring their world experience to the story. Remember Sol Stein's rule that the writer is a magician whose job it is to disappear. So take that list of elaborate colors and those periwinkle eyes and set them aside. Blue is just fine.

Agreed! I have a tendency to write settings, feelings, smells as I would percieve them. I am never going to walk into a room and notice that the periwinkle wallpaper is lined with a thousand fuschia roses entangled with forest green vines....

[Holly]

But, how does one describe - he knelt and sniffed the lichen, savoring its xxxxxx aroma.?

Any suggestions?

I walk my collie every day by lichen covered stones, so I have to answer!

He knelt and sniffed the lichen, savoring its woodsy aroma...

Lichen doesn't have much of a scent. It smells like sunlight and the old logs and stones it covers.

[polymath]

Imagery mainly deals with figurative language that evokes visual sensory experiences. Can scents be called imagery? I'm given to understand it is, same with aural, gustatory, and tactile sensations. I won't say nonvisual imagery isn't imagery, though it's technically not.

Lichen to me smells musty, like forest loam. Lichens are a primitive plant in a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungi species. Mushroom smells are more pronounced because the fungi function as external coverings protecting the algae from dehydrating. In turn, waste sugars produced by the algae feed the fungi.

Saltwater doesn't have a smell, but the decomposing life products and sublimating iodine in it do. Low tide smells like rotten eggs from marshes' anaerobic decomposition outgassing of byproduct hydrogen sulfide.

Blood is often depicted as having a coppery tang, smell and taste. But I'm given to understand a coppery description is kind of overworn. I think spilled blood smells and tastes like rusting iron and iodine.

Fresh mown hay or grass smells like wilting straw, silage fermenting, like the taste of a stale beer left too long in the sun.

One of the more fascinating and well-remarked upon scents I've noted in a story is the smell of a parking lot after a spring shower, the sweetly tangy aroma of ozone.

The smells strongest in my mind are ones I associate with my passions and with pay from working around those smells. Not all are pleasant to everyone. The smells of fishing wharves: creosote tar treatment of the pilings and deck timbers, iodine sublimating from salt spray and fish blood baking under a beating sun, rotten eggs from low tide, and the putrid stench of rotting fish. Ahh! smells likes good monies to me. I've caught a marsh of fiche onced or twiced and them's the smells of the dockside payout.

However, I'm also given to understand that similies like "smells like" should also be used judiciously.

[lac582]

I think the goal of sensory description should not necessarily be to literally put it to words, but rather to evoke the sense-memory of the reader, if that makes sense. So that being the case, sometimes it's enough just to refer to the smell of something with just enough familiarity to trigger the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps from their own experience. Describing it in more detail would delve into purple prose, as the above posters have said.

So for instance, if I write: "She tiptoed over to the window and wrenched it closed, dulling the sounds and stench of the rain," you know what rain smells like, and you picture it for yourself. It's enough to refer to it to pique the reader's imagination since when you think of rain smell isn't the primary sense that comes to mind.

Not saying you should refrain from using adjectives, just be selective. Another technique is to choose alternatives to outright using the words 'smell, scent, aroma' -- like "She came skipping over from the department store counter newly haloed with perfume". This helps establish a mood.

All that said -- were any of you ever fans of Brian Jacques' Redwall series? The detailed descriptions in those feast scenes made me drool every time!

[dios4vida]

The way I do scents is to just give a general category: earthy, musty, dusty, fresh, etc. That way you're letting the reader know the type of rain your MC is smelling (for instance, here in the desert rain smells delicious and rejuvenating, but in Kansas where I went to school rain smelled moldy and earthy) and letting their knowledge of the smell go from there.

One thing I have to keep reminding myself is that utilizing the reader's imagination is the best way to write. If you force every detail into their minds they won't place themselves as fully into the story. If you let them create their own beauty with some gentle guidance from you they'll fall in love with your places much quicker, and the love will endure.

[behindaching]

A major step in my writing has been learning to liven up my prose. That means including emotions, expressions and physical characteristics.
I've even got an archived area with every known color and various shades.
However, I realized that, while I can relate sounds, I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out scents. I mean, when I smell cooking, I can identify what's being cooked. But, what about describing other odors?
There's a unique smell to new mown grass and hay. But, is there is good word to describe that smell?
How about flowers? Each flower has it's own unique scenrt. What's a good way to describe that?

I can do this - the smile on his faces was tinged with sadness. Or - Her perriwinkle blue eyes glistened with tears.

But, how does one describe - he knelt and sniffed the lichen, savoring its xxxxxx aroma.?

Any suggestions?

Try using comparisons, emotions, or metaphors: “He knelt and sniffed the lichen, savoring its earthy, rain-soaked aroma” or “...its mossy scent, like old stone kissed by morning dew.” Scents are best described by what they evoke — memory, mood, or familiar smells.