Day 13, #NaNoWriMo: Line by Line Listening, Sniffing, Licking, Touching
By: Kim Purcell
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Fiction, Short Story

That title sounds progressively more sexual, but I think I’ll keep it, because good writing makes you want to do all of these things, no, it makes you feel like you are doing these things. When writing falls flat, sometimes it’s because, as readers, we’re not getting into the sensual experience of the character. So, on rough days, I just go through the senses and think, okay, do we have a visual picture here . . . how about smell, taste, touch, hearing?

The first, most basic question is: can my readers see through my character’s eyes? Sometimes they can’t. Sometimes the character is sharing a bunch of thoughts and the readers are hovering in the air, blind, waiting to see. Like right now. You can’t see through my eyes. But how about this. . .

I’m sitting in Starbucks on a beige plether bench. My phone is on one side of my laptop and my tall soy decaf latte is on the other side. I didn’t tell the barista my name was Merry Christmas. I said it was Kim. So that’s what he wrote. If I look up from my table, I see a ridiculous map of The Coffee Belt, all the world’s coffee growing regions. They don’t mark the areas where they are using slave labor for their coffee beans, and now that I think of this, I feel guilty about my coffee. I miss the local art they used to have on the walls. Two twenty-something guys sit next to me, both of them hunched over, with their phones on their laps, under the table, like they’re hiding their phones from one another. Maybe they’re texting the same girl. One of them gave me this creepy, stoned look when I sat down. He has shaggy brown hair and I almost didn’t sit here, but there were no other free tables. Okay, you have a visual? Go to the next sense.

What does your character hear? Dialogue is easy. But what about the ambient noise? Street noise? Irritating noise? In my case, I can hear the satisfying tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, and I’m trying to ignore the weird music, a little more interesting than muzak, but still slightly irritating. It’s muzak with drumming and chanting. Usually this Starbucks has good music. If you come at 5:30 in the morning, they blast R & B or heavy metal. Which I find inspiring. Now a girl just sat down next to me and she’s speaking loudly on her cell phone, while she squeezes a disgusting wadded-up piece of toilet paper in one hand. If I were writing fiction, not every one of these sounds might be relevant, but I’d choose one or two of them, based on my character’s perceptions.

Now ask yourself about smells. I’ve got an overwhelming coffee smell going on, of course, but someone just opened the door, and a blast of cold air hit my bare legs, and carried with it the smell of cigarette smoke outside. My husband just sat down opposite me. We’re going out for dinner now at a Korean restaurant. When I kissed him just now, I smelled his face. Is that weird? Maybe it’s weird. I always smell him. I smell my kids too. If I knew you well enough and I gave you a hug, I’d probably smell you too, maybe enjoy the smell of your freshly washed hair. (Though you wouldn’t know I smelled you. Because that would be creepy.)

Don’t forget to make your characters eat. I gulp down the last of my coffee, soy milk with what people say is burned coffee beans. I like the taste of it. I know that makes me very every-American, not cosmopolitan, but I like Starbucks. The people who work here are friendly. They don’t act like I’m lucky they’re making me a coffee and not throwing it in my face and I like nice people, or at least, I like people who are good at pretending to be nice. And now I’ll go eat some spicy bibimbop. Maybe your character isn’t eating anything. Maybe her mouth is sticky and filled with morning breath. You might not write it down, but you should know it.

Think about what your character is touching. Give textures. Hot or cold. Clothing. The feeling of the hard wood chair under the character’s butt or the cold sand under his feet. Get into your character’s body. Right now, my butt is super hot. This cushion is warm. The person who sits down here after me is in for a hot butt treat. It’s time for me to head to the restaurant. I’m about to stand up. A tall man with a beak nose is looking around for a seat. I guess I’ll tell him he can sit here and I warmed the seat up for him. Is that weird? Maybe it is. But that too is part of being a novelist. Allowing yourself to be weird, so that your characters, too, can break out of the ordinary.