Writing the Senses: Smell

In this five-part column, Hannah Howard explores the senses from a craft perspective.

One of the first clues that I was pregnant was that everything smelled extra. The subway always had a pee/trash/bleach scent, but it suddenly hit my nervous system powerfully as I descended the stairs underground, turning my stomach, actually stopping me on my way to the 1 Train.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about smell, especially while I worked at a cheese-and-wine bar where some of my coworkers were deep in the process of studying for their sommelier-certification tests. They had to identify wine varietals and regions blindly, only by their scents. One way they’d practice was to hang out at grocery stores, sniffing their way through the produce and spice sections. Could they discern the difference between lemon and lemongrass? Peppermint and spearmint? Cumin and coriander? Could I?

Perfumers talk about five main perfume families: floral (rose or iris), fresh (citrusy), ambery (vanilla or cinnamon), woody (cedar or sandalwood), and fougère (like “fern,” and describing scents such as lavender or bergamot). A small writing exercise: Describe your scene like a perfumer or a chef or a sommelier would. How do things smell when we distill them to their essence?

I am now in my third trimester of pregnancy, and the aroma of autumn outside is a wonderful balm, fresh and bracing. There is a note of campfire in the air on some days. The grocery store entrance is overwhelmingly perfumed with sweet synthetic pumpkin spice. My daughter’s soft skin smells of baby soap and fresh air.

A study in Neuropsychologia found that our sense of smell is more strongly tied to the brain’s hippocampus (a complex brain structure embedded deep into the temporal lobe with a major role in learning and memory) than sight, sound, taste, or touch. Our sense of smell is especially profoundly connected to memory; studies show that aroma is a more powerful trigger than any other sensory cue for remembering meaningful memories.

Maybe it’s that brain-memory connection that makes smell such a great tool for writers.

Smell is said to be the oldest mammalian sense; it’s how a primitive woman might sense danger lurking somewhere unsuspecting. The way our brains are structured makes us extra alert to unfamiliar sensory information, especially smells. A weird or off smell means something bigger is weird or off. There could be a predator lurking, or a storm, or a bomb. (Or the 1 Train.)

Smell also connects us to the breath—it has a physical dimension, an element of active participation. From colds to Covid-19, sickness can impinge on our sense of smell, which we immediately realize also impacts our sense of taste and our greater sense of being part of life, experiencing the world through morning-coffee aromas and garage fumes and hugs with your friend who apparently just washed her hair with very lovely shampoo.

How do things smell when we distill them to their essence?

My mom remembers her milk letting down in the baby aisle of the grocery store when she was still breastfeeding me—that’s how powerfully visceral smell can be. It can alter us physically and emotionally. The talcum powder smell of baby products told her body it was time to release milk. Like writing about any sense, details about smell ground readers on the page or transport them instantly and completely. They can make characters and settings feel visceral and real: grandfathers who smell of toothpaste and tobacco; homes perfumed with pie crust and ocean salt.

As writers, we are like sommeliers or perfumers with our words, choosing the aromas that are going to deliver a specific experience like wine professionals select the perfect bottle to pair with a dish.

Here’s another mini writing exercise to send you off: Choose a single smell from your past—perhaps the hallways of your middle school or your mom’s oatmeal-raisin cookies that you always found sort of sickly sweet. Write about the smell itself, the components of the dirty oven and the browning butter, but also about how those scents make you feel. Try to evoke the emotion through the smell, the way the house full of those cookies’ unmistakable fragrance meant your mom felt exuberant or guilty or exhausted. Write about the way one deep inhale of cookie air could change your brain chemistry, your day. As readers, it can change us too.