The
Sensual Writer
Taste vs. Flavor
First, here are the Answers to last month’s quiz on Scent:
Men have a better sense of smell than women.
Answer: False
Proper training can enhance human ability to smell.
Answer: True
Thank you to the brave employees of the Philadelphia Water Department
who had been trained to serve on the Department’s water quality evaluation
panel. The researchers concluded that training is the factor most likely to
enhance performance on smell tests.
Infants can pick out their mothers by scent.
Answer: True
Tests have shown that infants can detect their own mother’s
unwashed breast and show preference the breast milk of their own mother vs. a
substitute breastmilk.
Steel has its own aroma.
Answer: False
To give off a scent, a substance has to be able to dissolve
in order to send molecules through the atmosphere to reach our nostrils. Steel
does not dissolve.
The inability to smell can affect your weight.
Answer: True, as the ability to detect aromas affect our
ability to taste to a great degree, loss of appetite or its opposite, may
affect a person’s weight.
Once you lose your sense of smell, you’ll never regain it.
Answer: False to a large extent, depending on the reason for
the loss.
If a person has a nasal blockage, a curable or even
treatable disease, or a change of medication that affects the sense of smell,
the loss can be reversed.
If you can’t smell a particular food, you can’t taste it
either.
Answer: False
While smell and taste are largely connected, they are not completely
dependent upon each other. A person who has a cold, for example, or a blocked
nose, can still taste; if you burn your tongue so badly that you can hardly
taste anything, barring any other problems, you can still smell. For example,
have you ever smelled something so delicious, then been thoroughly disappointed
at how it tasted?
Teenagers have the greatest sensory reception.
Answer: True-for now.
Tests have shown that by age 8, most children have reached a
peak ability to detect scent; by age 15, the ability is already in decline.
People who cannot smell anything else can usually smell
menthol.
Answer: True
Actually, the pain of the menthol that is received by the
nostrils’ receptors, not the aroma.
Your left nostril processes pleasant smells and your left
nostril, unpleasant odors.
Answer: False—just because: Right hemisphere of the brain
processes pleasant sensation/emotion; left negative emotions, does not mean
each nostril leads to a certain hemisphere of the brain to process the scent
Taste is as important as our other major
senses, yet is often at least as much as, if not more so, overlooked
than that of smell. Can we survive without being able to taste? Certainly, as
much as we can exist without our other senses. Yet we would be the poorer for
our loss.
In a word…chocolate.
Okay, I do know two people who don’t care for
chocolate. They are both male.
Gustation, the sense of taste,
is also a biological function involving chemical introduction to our sensory
organs, commonly known as “taste buds” on our tongues. The olfactory system,
our sense of smell, is located closely juxtaposed, so these senses work
somewhat in conjunction. Can a person taste without smell, and vice versa?
Naturally, although the perceptions of the individual sense are greatly
enhanced by the other senses.
Taste: simply tasting food is a
chemical process; the physical substance comes in contact with the gustatory
calyculi, or taste bud, releasing the chemical signal sent to the brain which
sorts it out and then reminds us of a previous experience, putting a name to
the sensation.
Flavor, however, is the
experience; the layer of pleasure, pain, reminiscence, that makes up the
sensation of physically tasting a substance. As with the other others senses, a
taste can evoke a powerful reaction.
Humans taste with the tongue.
There are four basic recognized flavors: salt, sweet, bitter, sour. There are
others identified in other cultures or even science, such as meaty (Japan), or
metallic. Can those taste experiences stand alone or be justifiably one of the
“four”? Go ahead, state your case! I’d love to hear your discussion.
What does taste or flavor add to a
literary scene? Like the other four, the more a writer naturally
portrays behavior, the more a reader can identify with not only the characters,
but the story. Create a scene of a family meal. Is it a happy scene? A
thought-provoking one? Angry, bitter, normal or dreadful? The food prepared,
served, chosen, eaten can say a lot about your characters. How people react to
a dinner, a breakfast in a diner, a power lunch, create a unique and intimate
insight into an event.
Here’s where the layers of texture, of
temperature of the food, of gourmet or completely outside-the-expected meals or
parts of meals can be a character itself. What do people in your world
eat or drink? What are their individual customs? Is meal time a social
activity, a family event, or an evil necessity that takes away from life? Is
food something your people look forward to? Obsess over? Annoyance? Treat? Are
your characters adventurous, risk-takers, bold? Or shy, reluctant, bound by
known likes and dislikes. Even those with emotional or physical disturbances
can find their identity, their quirkiness, or uniqueness in food choice or food
response. Shopping for food, gardening, hunting/gathering can create a powerful
reader experience.
Other senses that
add to our human nature include “Intuition” which I’ve colored gray in the
excerpt; animals have the ability to sense certain natural experiences than
humans, such as: sensing magnetism, echolocation, sensing infrared, chemicals,
or pitches outside of our human perception, and a few others that may or may
not separate, pure senses. I hope you were encouraged by these posts to add
more sensory layers to your writing.
Don't forget to visit the other sense posts:
The final excerpt from my upcoming mystery, Meow Mayhem, follows here. It is color-coded for
sensual imagery; something you may want to practice with scenes in your own
work to see where you’re using scenes and where you might want to adjust. When
I did this exercise, I noted that I had nothing of taste in this scene. Of
course every scene doesn’t need all five senses, but I still wondered if taste
would add anything. Check my solution. What would you do?
Original excerpt:
Yellow – sight
Green – touch
Aqua – hear
Red - smell
Olive - taste
Gray - intuition
“Ivy!” Martha Robbins called
to me from her stoop next door. I stopped at the end of the driveway.
“Do you know what’s going on?” We could see the orange glow in the sky. Her kids were huddled with her in a blanket.
“Dale was called to the station, but he didn’t say where the fire was.”
“At True’s store,” I ground out. “I have to go.”
“Oh, Ivy. I’m so…” Her
voice faded as I started to jog. Two blocks later I realized that loafers were a poor choice of
footwear and I slowed to a very fast walk. The evening was still plenty warm
and I was...glowing. Soon I slowed as I met up with throngs of people who gathered to watch and
wait for news.
I headed toward the alley behind True’s place only to find the entrance
taped off. A squad car, lights stabbing the night, sat empty, close by, as Officer Larken spoke to people
a few feet away. I moved in their direction, dodging sightseers. I held my nose against the acrid odor
of burnt tar paper and wiring. A spray of water arced high over the building, which
stood sooty but intact, billowing black smoke from broken windows and vents.
At least any flames appeared to be out.
“Officer! Officer Larken! Where’s True?”
“Miss Preston. Good eve—”
“It is not!” I snapped.
“I need to know what’s happening. How bad is it? Where’s Mr. Thompson?”
True’s voice called from our left. “Here, Ivy. I’m here!”
“Oh, thank you, Lord, thank you!” I rushed to him. “I was so worried. I
just ran. Are you all right?” I cupped his face in my hands. “How bad is it?”
“The fire burned mostly upstairs, my apartment. The firefighters did a
good job. Lots of smoke damage, and of course, water damage. I don’t know about
the store stock, but I wouldn’t be surprised if—” He had to stop to catch his
breath. The front of his shirt wiggled.
“Isis. Oh, baby.” I had
not even felt her when I had grabbed True so roughly. He opened the edges of
his vest so I could see her. I reached my hand out to stroke between her ears.
“She’s safe, oh, she’s safe.” Isis had no intention of letting True go. She
even nipped at me, which I
would have done too, under similar circumstances, but I did back off.
“She was already outside,” True said. “She wouldn’t let anyone grab her,
but came to me when she saw me.”
“I wonder how she got out?” The prickly sensation at the back of my neck, when I had last been
in the basement of Mea Cuppa, returned.
I was exhausted, as if I
had been fighting the fire myself. Smoke hung heavy everywhere, blotting out some figures
and creating other images that wafted, ethereal. My eyes stung and I blinked back tears. Due to the smoke.
More than one person coughed and Officer Larken got on the microphone. “Go home, now. We
don’t want anyone developing breathing problems.”
The auxiliary ladies
had arrived with hastily assembled ham sandwiches and paper cups of coffee. I
was surprised to discover that I could still detect the aroma of coffee under all
the smoke. I accepted a cup and took a grateful sip, noticing and smiling at
True’s familiar Mea Cuppa logo.
“Why don’t you stay with my wife and me?” Hanley offered True. “Our son’s
gone for the weekend, a camp outing, so you can use his room. In the morning,
we’ll figure out what to do.”
Cal Stewart dashed up. Just in time to save the day, I thought sourly.
The third musketeer in this strange little web. Stop it, Ivy! You’re just
tired.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Stewart asked.
Apparently the quality
of the conversation, like the smoky air, was not about to improve any time
soon.
“Thompson’s coming home with me tonight,” Hanley told him. “Why don’t you
stop in for a while, too?”
“Uh, okay. Sure.” Stewart said, his attitude eerily similar to Hanley. They were plotting
something. I could tell.
“Can I drop you off at home, Ivy?” Hanley asked. True looked at me intently, as if willing me to do
something. But what?
“No thanks. I walked here. I’ll just walk back. Clear my head. Good
exercise.” True nodded
ever so faintly, so I had guessed the right answer. Goody for me.
“Can you take Isis for me?” True asked. “She knows you and you have her
special food and
supplies.”
“Sure. Fine.” I had laid
in a stock of her favorite salmon treats, but I hadn’t told him that. True
came close, transferring the uncooperative feline from inside of his vest to
me. She settled under my chin,
dug her claws in enough to make me wince and growled low, just to make sure we
knew she was upset.
“Don’t believe everything you see,” True whispered while
he kissed me on the cheek, his touch lingering in my hair.
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