Building a Better World for Our Human Senses
/What are the ingredients for building a world where readers want to spend their time? Readers want to feel like they are part of the experience, and this immersive quality requires connecting with our five human senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These senses are how people gather information about the world around them, regardless of their social status or background, so connecting with this common currency of basic human perception is fundamental to building effective worlds which draw readers in and compel them to enter a story and its characters.
Sights might include colours, textures, backgrounds, plants, or animals. What would readers see if they were transported to a place and experiencing the world from a first-person point of view? Which elements would stand-out and capture readers’ attention? Movement is a crucial aspect of visual perception because movement implies transformation, and attention moves towards transformation and change.
Hearing might include sounds, music, language, words, and tone. These are all crucial elements of how readers understand the worlds and stories they choose to immerse themselves in. Sound can be at the forefront good storytelling when dialogue is propelling a story forward, creating conflict or covenants between characters, but sound can also be in the background, adding to the visual element and creating atmosphere.
Smell, according to neuroscience research, is a sense which connects directly to the emotional part of our brain, bypassing the executive control centre. Smells come in many different forms and can influence human decision-making by triggering aversion or desire. In world building, smells add to the emotional resonance of readers’ perspective and a feeling of being there with all their sensory awareness.
Taste transports readers to the pleasures of a hearty meal or the bitterness of something foul. Taste is an internal sense which only the taster can experience, so adding to the sights, sounds, and smells of our created environment, flavors pull readers even more deeply into our world and its denizens.
Touch is the realm of sensual pleasure and physical pain, two of the most powerful forces shaping life. Desire and aversion are engines which move stories forward, creating conflict, tension, or love between the denizens of our created worlds. Adding touch to our already rich array of sensory descriptions is adding something personal for our readers, like readers could reach out their arms and feel what it’s like to be in a story, touching a soft piece of moss, or another person.
Sensory awareness is at the heart of what Martin Heidegger called thrownness, the experience of each individual human being thrown into the world. Heidegger’s view fits with modern research in cognitive science (see Donald Hoffman, David Chalmers) which posits consciousness as the true starting point for a theory of everything. It’s hard to argue with this perspective when one stops to consider its origin. The scientific method is built on making observations, and sensory awareness is what allows humans to observe the world around them. All human knowledge begins with our five senses.
The same goes for world building when it focusses on pulling readers into our creations and keeping them engaged. Just like real life experiences which engage our five senses, pulling us more deeply into awareness of the present moment, successful world building means engaging with our readers’ senses by describing what it would be like to be part of our world, using all the sights, sounds, smells, flavors, and tactile experiences of that reality. Our goal, as writers, is building worlds which readers want to inhabit.
Ryan is a writer who spends much of his free time reading; he especially enjoys philosophy and understanding the link between technology, mind, and culture. He teaches yoga and enjoys being physically active. Ryan has a degree in psychology and is working towards a diploma in professional writing. Ryan recently became a father for the first time.
