Finally, the post you have all been waiting for (drum rolls please). . . . The 5th and FINAL post of the Description series I have been doing. (Go here for the 1st post, and here for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.) We have gone through the senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch. And now we have come to that which (for me) is the hardest and most complicated. . . taste.
Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark whistled its shrill cry, as it swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak. A gust of wind swept over Patience, gently caressing a lock of hair over her cheek. An especially long piece of grass tickled her ear before springing nimbly back into place as the wind slowed. The smell of on coming rain taunted her nose, and she turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head with a rumbling growl that shook the air and disarmed it of all quiet.
Taste. It is easy to add taste into your stories when your characters are eating. For instance, practically everyone knows what cheese tastes like, so you can just mention that the food had a cheesy flavor, and immediately the reader's mind transfers the memory to their tongue (remember what we had said about the memory of feel? It's the same thing with taste). Even with things that you may not have eaten (such as a new food you create, or insects–ew!) you can make things up, or find something similar to the taste you want (or in the case of bugs, you could always give one a try–definitely not recommended!).
But there's much more to taste than food: when you wake up in the morning before you've quite had enough sleep, you tend to have a sour taste in your mouth; if you are thinking about something that makes you queasy you may get the taste of bile; or if you're sick then you often have a funny taste in your mouth. Those are just a few examples. I would love to sometime research all the different times you get tastes, such as when you're feeling something, and see why it happens. If any of you have any ideas why, please share! :)
Taste is probably the least used of all descriptions. But that doesn't mean that you can't use it! In fact, I encourage you to! When I was reading Eragon I was amazed to note how many times Christopher Paolini mentioned taste in his writing. I was also amazed at how much it added to the story! I suggest practice. . . . When you're out and about, or just hanging out at home, take note of the tastes you have in your mouth and when they happened, even why they might have come about. Then, when you sit down to write keep taste in the back of your mind to see if any opportunities open up to add it into your story.
Sadly in our paragraph I can find no place to add taste in without making it jerky and boring. But this is a good example, because you can't always add every sense into your sentences, in fact, if you did that (I apologize to anyone who may write this way) then you'd have a pretty boring book. So add description in only as much as is needed to paint a picture for your readers. And feel out what the perfect amount is for your style of writing–some people like to add more then others, which is absolutely fine. The only thing I'd say is use less during the action scenes, such as when someone is being chased through the woods. It's never fun for the reader when its all "ahhh! He's going to get me!" And then there's a description of every feather on an owl on a tree branch. Mentioning the owl would be perfectly fine, actually, I think it would add to the whole sense of the scene, just take in to mind that at that point the reader wants to know what's going to happen, and how things are going to turn out and not whether the owl is grey, or grey with brown spots.
And that brings our series to an end. :) I hope that you have enjoyed it, and that it has been of help to you. I love to hear from you. And I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on writing, and description!
Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.
~ElizabethMarieKauffman~
