This month is all about encouraging you to engage with the setting of your story by using your senses. Last week I asked you to use sounds in your descriptions; the week before that we explored the close association between smell, memory, and emotion.
This week your story is going to explore taste.
The Prompt
At a key point in your story, your main character is given momentous news, over dinner.
Tips
- Taste is closely related to smell, and is almost as closely tied to memory.
- Certain tastes are ones that evoke memories. Other tastes are new, but are still sorted by our brains into one of several slots: delicious (safe), disgusting (dangerous); sweet, salty, sour, bitter, savory, unami (that satisfying meaty taste).
- We experience tastes differently depending on how hot and cold they are, on how much fat is in the dish.
- Taste doesn’t simply relate to food. Medicine can literally leave a bad taste in your mouth. Certain chemicals can enter your system through your skin and you’ll find yourself trying to get the taste out of your mouth. The air tastes different in-land and at the ocean. Adrenaline and fear change your body chemistry.
- Going back to my example of a summer storm from last week, I could describe the air before a storm as “all metal-and-cut-grass”.
- You can use metaphors and similes. Someone’s hug could be hot chocolate on a snow day. A laugh could be bubbly like champagne (dry or sweet? You decide, and you decide what that signifies!)
If you share you story somewhere (and here’s why you might not want to) post a link here so we can come and read it.
Leave a comment to let us know what you wrote about today, and how it went!
Discussion: How many different ways did you find to use tastes this week? What did it do for your story?