One of the things that has come up several times lately was a note that many writers raised on visual mediums are consistently writing the movie-in-head… and by doing so, they are leaning heavily into visual and audio references (which are necessarily a book’s weak points, not being an audiovisual medium), and missing out on all the smell, taste, touch, and sensations of emotion that a book can convey in so many ways a movie cannot.
Smell is a great thing to put in, because scent and memory are very closely tied in human brains, and therefore scent and emotion are intricately linked.
If your viewpoint character walks in the door of someone’s house and smells baking bread, cinnamon, and apples cooking down, this is going to make the place seem warm, cozy, and safe.
If they walk in the door and smell the funk of dirty laundry, spilled beer, and the stale greasy odour of old chinese takeout, it’s going to seem downmarket, or a bachelor pad.
If they walk in the door and are immediately hit with the heavy copper and shit scent of spilled blood, punctured guts, and raw meat, it’s probably a very ugly murder scene.
…but you don’t even have to explicitly point out the smell. Metaphors can do a lot of work for you.
Siobhan was a ray of sunshine, from her fresh innocent face topped with hair the colour of summer-baked straw to the ruffles on her lemon dress set off by the sky-blue belt to match her clear, bright eyes.
We conjure scent without actually mentioning one by using the metaphor “summer-baked straw”, and conjure scent and smell as well as sight by calling her dress “lemon.”
Do you prefer to do explicit observations over metaphor, or revel in both?
Mad Genius Club 
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