Sensory Description
Help for Describing the Five Senses: sights, sounds, smell, touches, and tastes.
Have you noticed how few words there are for describing taste and smells? I've prepared a list of sorts and a few exercises to help you practice. You'll be ready the next time you need to show some sense. 
The sense of Smell
Describing odors can be a real challenge to your writing skill. The stock of words allocated to this sense is meager indeed. Besides smell, only about ten commonly used nouns name this sensation: odor, scent, vapor, aroma, fragrance, perfume, bouquet, stench, stink. Few verbs describe receiving or sending odors-smell, sniff, waft-but a fair number of detailing adjectives are available: redolent, pungent, aromatic, perfumed, stinking, musty, rancid, putrid, rank foul, acrid, sweet, and cloying.
In this passage, Conroy uses comparing in addition to naming and detailing. Notice how he describes the effect the odor has on him:
The perfume of the flowers rushed into my brain. A lush aroma, thick with sweetness, thick as blood, and spiced with the clear acid of tropical greenery. My heart pounded like a drowning swimmer's as the perfume took me over, pouring into my lungs like ambrosial soup.
(Frank Conroy, Stop-Time)
In describing smells, naming the objects from which they come can also be very suggestive.
the sour smell of the oil they rubbed the desks with; the classroom smell of chalk dust and old pulled-down maps; the smell of fuller's earth scattered in wide arcs along the corridors, ahead of the push brooms that formed fat kittens out of the dirt tracked daily in by 300 pairs of feet; the smell that would periodically drift through the school late in the morning to tell us that we were going to have corned beef and cabbage for lunch; the chlorinated smell of the indoor pool; the smell of the gym, which was a mixture of winter-green oil and sneakers.
(Stephen Birmingham, "New England Prep School")
Exercise
Go someplace with noticeable, distinctive smells where you can stay for fifteen minutes or so. (cafeteria, donut shop, café) A place where something is being manufactured (a saw mill, a bakery, pizza parlor), or any place that has distinctive odors (fishing dock, a garden, a locker room) Take notes on what you smell, and then write a para describing the place through its smells. Know the impression you're trying to show through this writing. Would it be sufficient in a story?
The Sense of Taste
If the available words for sense of smell is meager, those available for taste are absolutely stingy-almost non-existent in fact. Your creative skill can really get a work-out here. Which is probably why we might tend to write around this one if we can get away with only naming the source.
Other than taste, savor, and flavor, few words name the gustatory sensations directly. Certain words do distinguish among the four types of taste-sweet (saccharine, sugary, cloying); sour (acidic, tart); bitter (acrid, biting); salty (briny, brackish), while several other words describe specific tastes (piquant, spicy, pungent, savory, and toothsome).
In addition to these words, {B]the names of objects tasted and other details my indicate the intensity and quality of a taste. Notice Hemingway's descriptive technique in this selection.
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crispy taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Exercise
Describe the taste of a particular food or meal as Hemingway does. What is the dominant impression you were trying to create with this description?
Sense of Hearing
This noble fall has far the richest, as well as the most powerful, voice of all the falls of the valley, its tones varying from the sharp hiss and rustle of the wind in the glossy leaves of the live oaks and the soft, sifting, hushing tones of the pines, to the loudest rush and roar of storm winds and thunder among the crags of the summit peaks. The low bass, booming, reverberating tones, heard under favorable circumstances five or six miles away, are formed by the dashing and exploding of heavy masses mixed with air upon two projecting ledges on the face of the cliff, the one on which we are standing and another about 200 feet above it. The torrent of massive comets is continuous at time of high water, while the explosive, booming notes are wildly intermittent, because, unless influenced by the wind, most of the heavier masses shoot out from the face of the precipice, and pass the ledges upon which at other times they are exploded. Sound of Yosemite Falls (John Muir, the story of my boyhood and youth
A List of Sound
I took these words from the essay. There are of course, many more.
HISS- verb
a sharp sibilant sound as of the letter S, often as a sign of disapproval or derision.
Whisper in an urgent or angry way.
RUSTLE- verb
soft crackling sound caused by movement of dry leaves or paper. Moving with such a sound.
ROAR- noun
a full, deep, prolonged sound as made by a lion, natural force, or engine. 2 a loud, deep sound uttered by a person, especially as an expression of pain, anger, or great amusement.
verb - make or utter a roar. 2 laugh loudly.
THUNDER -
thunder - noun 1 a loud rumbling or crashing noise heard after a lightning flash due to the expansion of rapidly heated air. 2 a resounding loud deep noise. >verb 1 - (it thunders, it is thundering, etc.) thunder sounds. 2 move heavily and forcefully. 3 speak loudly, angrily, and forcefully.
BOOMING -
boom - noun - a loud, deep, resonant sound. verb- make this sound.
REVERBERATING-verb
(of a loud noise) be repeated as an echo.
SHARP -adjective
of a food, taste, or smell) acidic and intense.
Of a sound) sudden and penetrating
In writing auditory impression, writers seldom name the objects from which the sounds come without also naming the sounds themselves: the murmur of a voice, the rustle of the wind, the squeak of a hinge. Sometimes they make up words like plink, chirr, sweesh-crack-boom to imitate sounds they wish to describe. Qualitative words like powerful and rich as well as relative terms like loud and low often specify sounds further.
Exercise
Find a noisy spot-a restaurant, a ball game, a nursery school, a laundry room-where you can perch for a half hour or so. Listen attentively to the sounds of the place and make notes about what you hear. Then, write a paragraph describing the place through its sounds.
When you are done, read the description and identify the dominate impression. Which words contribute most to creating this impression which detract from it?
The Sense of Touch
Writers describing the sense of touch tend not to name the sensation directly or even to report the act of feeling. Probably because only a few nouns and verbs name tactile sensation besides words like: touch, feel, tickle, brush, scratch, sting, itch, tingle. Still, there is a large stock of words that describe temperature (hot, warm, mild, tepid, cold, arctic), moisture content (wet, dry, sticky, oily, greasy, moist, crisp), texture (gritty, silky, smooth, crinkled, coarse, soft, leather), and weight (heavy, light, ponderous, buoyant, feathery). Read these passages with an eye for description of touch.
The midmorning sun was deceitfully mild and the wind had no weight on my skin. Arkansas summer mornings have a feathering effect on stone reality.
(Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name)
It was an ordeal for me to walk the hills in the dead of summer for then they were parched and dry and offered no shade from the hot sun and no springs or creeks where thirst could be quenched. (William O. Douglas, Go East, Young Man)
Exercise
Describe the feel of a cold shower, a wool sweater, an autumn breeze, bare feet on hot sand, or any other tactile sensation you might think of. What is the dominant impression you were trying to create ?
I hope this list helps you to be more creative when describing the five senses to your readers. In addition to reading and hearing writing advice and tips, it's very important that you actually practice by 'doing'--by writing and practicing. You can't learn a skill by reading about it only.
Source: "The St. Martin's Guide to Writing" Axelrod and Cooper
Thanks for reading,
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Noticing Newbies: February 10, 2010 Issue [#3531]
