The power of smell

Jerry Bellune

Nov 2, 2022

You undoubtedly know that using the five senses will make your writing more compelling.

Smell is one of the most powerful senses, says writing coach Amanda Patterson.

It can send us back in time.

Our sense of smell is more closely linked with memory than any other sense.

Smell evokes emotions.

It is one of the reasons people are attracted to each other.

It is important to survival.

Bad smells like smoke or rotten food warn us of danger.

Here is an example from an article on crime and the courts by Henry Allen of The Washington Post.

He sets up the opening scene with a sense of smell.

The Superior Court cafeteria, where a lot of criminal law gets practiced in the District of Columbia, has a warm, used smell like a pay phone that somebody just hung up, somebody with a cough — a smell like a wet bathing suit you left in the car, a compost smell, a smell like the inside of an old Halloween pumpkin with sanitary overtones provided by the wall-mounted deodorizers pumping out a smell like a space station where they have replaced the air with something that is supposed to be as good as air except it isn’t.

Allen’s editor calls him the “Karl Wallenda of writers. He takes his readers on a literary tight rope.”

Think about how can you use a sense of smell in your own writing.

Next: Is it good enough?

To make your own writing more compelling, order writing coach Jerry Bellune’s The Art of Compelling Writing, available for $9.99 at Amazon.com

Jerry Bellune is a writing coach and author of “The Art of Compelling Writing, Volume 1.” For a personally autographed copy, send your check to him at PO Box 1500, Lexington SC 29071-1500.