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Thursday, June 05, 2025

Writing with Your Five Senses

Writing lessons can be found in surprising places. Like a Kindergarten classroom. Or more specifically, the bulletin board touting the five senses.

Sight. Hearing. Touch. Smell. Taste.


For years I’ve been told to use all five senses in my writing so the reader can feel more fully immersed in the reality of the world I’ve created. But, to be truthful, I’ve been leaning toward sight with the others occasionally making it into the rotation. But after writing an essay for a journal with the theme Noise, I’m rediscovering all the senses. So let’s talk adding senses to your writing.


Sight


Most of us will agree that this is the easiest one. Describe what you’re seeing in your mind’s eye when you imagine the scene. Because it’s so easy to write, I often use sight to give readers subtle clues. The brief glance between characters, a seemingly random object on the bookshelf that becomes important later, a gesture or habit that gives us a hint about a character’s personality. These more subtle uses of sight don’t often appear in the first draft. They have to be planned and added in subsequent drafts.


Hearing


Sound is something I often ignore as I bustle about my day. So, if I want to go beyond the vague crash, bang, slam in my writing, I really have to slow down and think about noises. Does my dishwasher hum or whirr or thump? What are the noises a house makes at night? Can I add modifiers to give a sound more meaning? Was the train whistle haunting or spirited? Can a recurring sound forewarn my reader that something important is about to happen?


Touch


Too often I think of touch as my fingers examining something. But our whole body is touching things constantly. Clothes, furniture, the ground, the wind, the sun, other people. It isn’t just what character’s feel but how they react to it. Does the borrowed flannel shirt feel awkward and stiff or cozy and warm? Does the gun feel like a familiar friend in their hand or do they recoil from the cold metal? Even a casual touch between characters can reveal something. It’s a great way to hint at emotions they are trying to hide. The tensed muscles of fear? The tight grip of anger?


Smell


Like hearing, smell is something I don’t often take time to label in my daily life. So when I want to add it to my writing it takes time and thought. What does the air before a thunderstorm smell like? Or a wet dog? (I’m thinking a weird mix of Fritos and rotten potatoes.) Also, I try to avoid the easy choices “flowery perfume” or “acrid smell of the burnt out house” that often make their way into first drafts. I try to choose original or unexpected smells to make a scene or character memorable.


Taste


If you have a food scene, hurray for you. Two characters sharing sweet watermelon suggests romance much more than bitter coffee dregs from the bottom of the pot. Of course, I guess it depends on your characters. Taste isn’t just about food. Characters can taste something in the wind or a kiss. For me, taste is the toughest sense to add to a scene. In fact, if anyone has suggestions I welcome them.


Do you have a favorite sense to use in your writing? Or would you like to share a sentence or two using rich descriptive language including several senses? Try using the photo above as a prompt.

Jodi M. Webb writes from her home in the Pennsylvania mountains about everything from DIY projects to tea to butterflies.  She's also a blog tour manager for WOW-Women on Writing and a writing tutor at her local university. Get to know her @jodiwebbwritesFacebook and blogging at Words by Webb. 

Tuesday, June 03, 2025

Unearthing True Crimes From the Archives

When I started my true crime podcast, Missing in the Carolinas, five years ago, I thought I would be focusing solely on missing persons cases in South Carolina. My creative muse had other ideas. Little did my muse know that scanning old newspaper archives would lead me to intriguing crimes from the past (many with no digital footprints) and inspire me to broaden the context of my storytelling. 



I could give many examples of how this has happened, and by reading e-mails and reviews from listeners I know they appreciate the historical crimes and stories of missing people just as much as I do. 

Most recently, I was researching a missing persons case from the 1980s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the story of Mary Kathryn Ennis, when I learned that her disappearance was solved when two prison inmates contacted the police with information. This was strange enough, but in one of the newspaper articles reporting the discovery of her body, I learned an enterprising young college student in the area had been murdered when he tried to enter the home of a family he didn’t know in the middle of the night. Of course, then I had to follow that rabbit hole to its conclusion. These were crimes I had never heard about, so I’ve documented them for my listeners in Episode 140: The Kidnapping and Murder of Mary Kathryn Ennis and the Death of William McMichael in North Carolina. 

A few months ago, I decided to research serial killers in South Carolina, as I’ve already produced an episode on North Carolina serial killers and it received more downloads than my usual content on missing people. That’s when I discovered a man named Lee Roy Martin had terrorized a small community by kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and strangling young women in Gaffney, S.C. in 1968, and the media eventually dubbed him “The Gaffney Strangler.” 

Martin called a local newspaper editor and anonymously confessed to his crimes before he was caught, and he even shared that he had murdered a woman whose husband was convicted of the crime and was sent to prison. This case was even more fascinating because two concerned citizens, driving around to search for one of the missing teenage girls, spotted Lee Roy trying to hide the body of one of his victims. If they hadn’t followed him and taken down his license plate, police might have had a harder time finding the killer. This story has been featured on numerous true crime documentaries, including “A Crime to Remember.” 

Writing about true crime was never something I imagined myself doing, but I find myself drawn more and more to these old cases. I think I appreciate the challenge of finding the long-forgotten primary sources and making sense of them in a new timeline. 

One of my listeners commented the following on a social media post about a 1972 crime: 

I love that you report on so many crimes I’ve never even heard of! Than you for giving a voice to these victims. 

When I first created my podcast, I never knew I’d had have the opportunity to share these stories in such great depth and even provide closure for family members who never knew the full details of these crimes. 

Renee Roberson is an award-winning writer and host/creator of the true crime podcast, Missing in the Carolinas.