Last week on our travel tour, we visited Rome, Italy. Today, we’re going farther south along the Mediterranean Sea to Sorrento, located in the Bay of Naples amongst the backdrop of Mount Vesuvius.
What an ideal setting for a food tour. Incredible cuisine from the sea and rich volcanic soil along with Italy’s culinary excellence, you’ve got the best ingredients for a memorable experience.
Oh, don’t forget the scenic backdrop. Marigold-yellow lemon orchards, crystal turquoise Sea, and majestic mountainous cliffs.
Smell the aromas from the pizzeria? Hear the restaurant’s host luring potential patrons to experience their savory cuisine? Touch the accordion-shaped, flaky sfogliatella pastry as it melts in your mouth?
Yet, I haven’t mentioned what I tasted, but you can envision the tour.
Why?
I appealed to all your senses except taste. Of course, taste was the prima donna of the tour, but it wasn’t about just eating, but having an encounter with the Italian cuisine. Our guide, Tamara, a stylish, blond American, who had fallen in love with the Italian culture and cuisine along with an Italian man, made sure to appeal to all the senses. And it helped that unlike the Italian tour guides who spoke English, I could understand everything Tamara said, enhancing the interactive experience.
This made for a memorable tour and one of the main highlights of my trip.
We visited a lemon farm where they grow lemons, oranges, and walnuts. This place is owned by a third-generation family whose business specializes in limoncello. Their limoncello was the best I had in Italy.
Here, we watched the ladies peel the skins off the lemons. Felt a lemon peel and the oil that is emitted. We sampled limoncello, limoncello cream, and lemon sherbert.
We visited other spots such as a popular deli and watched as the chef rolled out dough for pizza and panini’s. We saw their huge wood-burning oven. We sat at farmhouse tables eating panini’s and staring at year-old hams hanging from the ceiling.
Although the tour was three hours of sampling food and learning about the local cuisine, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the information. Much of what I learned was experienced, not just heard.
That’s why your writing-both fiction and non-needs to appeal to the five senses. By using creative language and concrete images, your readers can better experience and retain what you’re sharing in your book.
For a memoir, use all five senses so your readers can feel as though they’re on the life journey with you. For an instructional book, they’ll better understand and retain the concepts better. Or at least, continue turning the pages.
For a novel, your readers will become immersed in the story, they forget this is fiction. And chances are, they’ll better relate to the characters as though they’re their friends or enemies.
Taste, smell, feel, hear, and see.
By utilizing the five senses, your book becomes interactive as you bring readers into your world or connect them to something in their own world.
But Sarah, I’m writing a devotional, how do I appeal to their taste? How about writing entries using food as an example? Or using other options that aren’t food related such as blood, sweat, vomit. (Strong connotations, right? But you probably curled your nose or squinted your eyes in revulsion.)
Feel? Really? Ever felt terrified as a child when your parents turned off the bedroom light and closed the door? It was pitch dark in your room. You wondered if a three-eyed monster was hiding in your closet or under the bed? Use emotion if you’re wanting to conjure up but not able to explain the actual sensory skill.
Use your imagination while you write to appeal to these senses.
Activation:
Get out a piece of paper or access your word processing software. Set the timer for fifteen minutes. Go!
- Explain a time in your life when you had a memory you couldn’t forget. Something poignant, powerful, or purely joyful.
- Write what you tasted. What you felt with your fingers or toes. Or what emotions you felt. What you heard. What you could smell. And what you saw.
- Then see if you can use this memory in your book.
Feel free to share your entry in Comments. Thank you.