Creating an immersive reader experience means engaging all the senses in your characters and descriptions. Of course, it’s natural to focus on what your characters see and hear. We generally need that to convey the story. But we often forget the other senses: taste, smell, and importantly, touch.
In a post on Writers in the Storm, Ellen Buikema offers advice for using touch in writing. “Touch is a basic human need,” Buikema writes. “It’s the first sense we develop and our first social interaction at birth.”
When writing about the sense of touch, Buikema reminds us that there are two components: factual – such as location, movement, and pressure – and emotional. To practice sensory writing, she suggests that you close your eyes and pick up an object. Contemplate its features, weight, texture, size, density, and any other elements that come to mind. Write down what you experienced.
Touch can be especially important to horror stories, as we want to feel the blood on a killer’s hands or mildewy dampness of a basement prison. And of course, touch is crucial to romance writing. “When writing a physical scene in a romance novel, don’t forget that touch is a two-way street,” Buikema says. “They are both feeling something.”
