When you want to describe smells in writing, it’s easy to feel lost for words. You can skip over it by saying something smelled good or bad, but shortcuts like that won’t connect with readers.
Imagine describing arriving rain after a period of drought. It’s a delicate, sweet, earthy scent. Fortunately, there’s a word for it. Petrichor is a relatively new term, coined in 1964 by scientists Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas. It’s a word that can capture mood, memory, or emotion.
However, vocabulary like this is limited, and that’s why smell is one of the most difficult senses to put into words. Relying on common adjectives often sounds repetitive and unoriginal.
When you use smell in a story or scene, you want to help your readers connect with it and sense it. Or rather, smell it.
Why smells are hard to describe in writing
Why is it more challenging to describe smells than sights, sounds, tastes, or textures? It’s because smell works in a totally different way than the other four senses.
The biological explanation is that smell connects directly to your brain’s limbic system. It’s the part of your brain that processes memories and emotions.
The other senses go through your thalamus, which is a relay station to the cerebral cortex.
In simple terms, smell goes straight to the part of the brain that makes you feel.
That’s why a scent can bring back sudden memories. Perhaps a certain perfume might suddenly take you back to your first teenage sweetheart. The smell of a puppy could trigger childhood memories.
It’s true that sight, sound, and taste can also trigger memories, but they are usually a conscious reaction. Smell, on the other hand, bypasses thought and goes straight to an emotional reaction.
There’s also another biological aspect. Pheromones are chemical signals carried in scent, which can influence attraction, bonding, or mood. But they have no perceivable smell or odour.
All this makes our sense of smell incredibly powerful, but so difficult to describe in words. Unlike describing a night or the sea, relying on simple adjectives alone won’t make much impact.
The emotional effect of a scent rarely lies in a word.
That’s why describing smell often needs imagination and crafting. You don’t want to say what a smell is; you need to say what it does.
Using smells to tap into emotion and memory
I’m sure you’ve experienced a scent or smell instantly bringing back a memory. That’s what you want to do in your writing.
Marcel Proust used this to great effect, and from it, we now call it the madeleine effect.
In his novel, In Search of Lost Time, tasting and smelling a small cake (a madeleine) dipped in tea released a burst of childhood memories for his narrator.
When you want to describe smells in your writing, you need to delve into a character’s emotions and past experiences. Or your own, if it helps you.
We know that smell is closely related to memory because of the way our brains process it.
A shower of rain on dry earth, the scent when opening an old book, or the salty tang of the sea can all revive an emotion, experience, or memory.
Your readers may not have experienced the exact same smell, but you can help them sense it by an association you create.
You could use smell to reveal a character’s backstory without resorting to heavy narration.
A character responding to a particular aftershave or cologne might recall a long-forgotten love. Another, catching the pungent smell of pipe smoke, could remind them of their grandfather.
Smell can also quickly affect mood. Think of a scene where a pleasant scent contrasts with negativity or sadness, such as fresh-cut flowers and the memory of a recent funeral.
Pheromones are another tool you can use. A character may not consciously register a scent, but it can influence attraction, trust, desire, or anxiety.
When you need to describe a smell, concentrate on what it does to the character. Don’t just go for sweet or foul descriptions. It’s much better to show the effect on thoughts, feelings, or reactions.
Exploiting smells in a scene can help create an immediate emotional experience. Perhaps an old house, a damp forest track, or a city backstreet.
When you can include smell as part of your storytelling, it is a great shortcut into emotion and memory.
Compare smells using similes
When you try to describe smells, adjectives often don’t do enough. You want your readers to almost smell it, not just identify it.
Similes are useful because they can help connect the unusual with something familiar.
Instead of saying a candy store smelled sweet, you could say it smelled like hot, dripping caramel or like a cherry orchard in bloom.
Comparisons don’t have to be literal, though. Sometimes the abstract can make the most impression. An old, dank attic could smell like long-forgotten dark secrets.
You can draft comparisons to touch on sensory experience. Ocean spray might carry salt and kelp, like a briny kiss from the depths.
It depends on your character when crafting similes. What reminds them of contentment, insecurity, or regret? A simple scent can help you reveal their personality.
One tip is to avoid tired clichés whenever possible. Saying something smells like roses or like fresh bread is fine in small doses, but adding a unique twist is what will make your descriptions stand out.
When you practice using similes for smells, it can turn ordinary scenes into true storytelling.
Examples of smells in literature
It’s always easier to grasp a writing point or technique when you can see it in use.
Here are seven extracts from literature to give you some inspiration.
1. Vladimir Nabokov – Mary
…memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
2. Patrick Süskind – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates… not that of a May rain or a frosty wind… it was the freshness of a new-born child, of a first kiss, of a first love.
3. Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
The lime-kiln was burning with a sluggish stifling smell, and had a great heap of coal by it, and a great pile of broken-up stones. No workmen were visible.
4. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
There was a faint yellow odour like mustard from a jar. There was a smell like carnations from the yard next door…. He put down his hand and felt a weed rise up like a child brushing him. His fingers smelled of liquorice.
5. Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore
It has a hypnotic, menacing smell, just like the forest.
6. Toni Morrison – Beloved
The clothes will thaw slowly to a dampness perfect for the pressing iron, which will make them smell like hot rain.
7. J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Amortentia smells different to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and—
These quick examples demonstrate how authors use smell to approach memory, emotion, or create an atmosphere.
Summary
When describing smells, the error many writers make is focusing on a name label rather than the impact.
In other words, don’t settle for telling your readers what a smell is; tell them what it does.
A simple scent can move a character to a memory, an emotion, or hints of danger, peacefulness, or desire.
You can use it to shape the mood of a scene, reveal personality, or even foreshadow events.
Because you can’t see, touch, taste, or feel a smell, it is really an abstract sense. And as with any abstract, it is never easy to describe in words.
That’s why the best way to write about smell is to describe what it does to your characters.
Related Reading: 25 Ways To Start A Sentence For Extra Variety
