Author: Janet Gershen-Siegel

So, is your book running hot or cold?

Hot or Cold and Other Touch Cues

Touch is a somewhat complex sense because it can evoke temperature, pressure, and our experience of surfaces—often at the same time.

Your readers are already feeling your book in their hands or on their Kindle or phone, or feeling their computer thrum if they’re reading on a laptop or a desktop.

But how do you get them to feel what your characters are truly feeling?

Let’s start by breaking down tactile cues into a few separate categories.

Hot or Cold is Only the Beginning When it Comes to Touch

No doubt I will miss something or other. But let’s look at what I’ve got, okay? And if I think of something else, I can always update this post.

Touch can also be referred to as haptic feedback or kinesthetics.

Temperature

So, this is probably the easiest area to talk about because we all understand it intuitively. Every person has been hot or cold at some time in their life. Even if you live in the tropics, you may feel cold at night—and cold is a relative feeling (as is heat).

That is, you ever notice how, at the end of winter, 50 degrees Fahrenheit or so feels warm? But at the end of the summer, that same temperature can make you shiver. It’s just a relative feeling. You get used to feeling one way or the other.

In my work, the character who easily feels the coldest is Peri Martin. But no wonder, as she ends up on Sedna! The folks in Mettle also feel a lot of cold.

Ceilidh tends to feel more heat, but that’s because it’s the Victorian era and she constantly has to wear all these layers, no matter the weather. The heat even makes her faint.

Pressure

While it’s not as varied or parsed as temperature, there are different types of pressures we feel. Consider the obvious one of holding weight. But there’s also sinus pressure. And, technically, there’s also the pressure of deadlines or the like. We can often get a rather visceral reaction to stress.

Who has the most pressure on them in my works? Probably Marnie Shapiro, who has to conduct a First Contact mission while the Earth government collapses into tyranny back home.

Pain, Itching, and Other Medical Feelings

Ouch! There’s the sting of a slap, labor, touching a hot stove, phantom limb pain, and more. And good lord, don’t get me started on mosquitoes, the singular most dangerous animal to humans on the planet. Yep, they even beat out hippos. Nasty little buggers!

Nausea and acid reflux are certainly medical feelings although nausea can often be associated with smell or taste (er, sorry!) as well.

My character with the most sickness (particularly nausea) is Josie James, hands down. She gets it so often that she’s even fetishized the cleanup.

Skin, Sex, Friction, Fondling, Kisses, and Kink

Ooh la la! Well, I am not going to go into too much excruciating detail here. But keep in mind that sensual touch can take many forms. There are sweaty palms during hand holding and the thrill or fear of almost being caught during various stages of the act. And of course there’s kink, whether it’s wearing leather or the like or inflicting pain or humiliating someone.

Marnie and Lex, and Dave and Peri all have rollicking sex lives. Tathrelle and Ixalla are also very touching and affectionate with one another.  But there’s a certain point where explicit can get too explicit, and I’ve tried not to cross it. Even harder core stuff should have some sort of a limit, I feel.

Surfaces

There’s something about walking in wet grass in the summertime. But there’s also the feeling of running your hand along a wooden surface—and getting a splinter.

Probably the most surface feeling happens in Mettle, where elements change and transmute whatever they are made of.

Hot or Cold Takeaways

Tactile sensations such as hot or cold can almost become a species of character if they are vital to the plot. A pebble in your shoe can sideline you in a way that a gunshot wound does not. Too much cold means characters have to address the matter, whether it’s to wear more clothes, get inside, or build a fire.

Just… try to stay away from weather reports unless you really need them to drive the action.

How does your prose feel to the touch?

Want More of Using Hot or Cold or Other Tactile Cues and Other Background to Evoke the Senses in Writing?

If the idea of leveraging hot or cold or other tactile cues in your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.

Sense Cues:

• Senses
• Scene Setting
• Set Dressing—Visual Cues in Writing
• Hairstyles and Costumes—Visual Cues in Writing
• Aroma vs Odor or Stench—Olfactory Cues in Writing
• Mixing a Score in Words and Music—Sound Cues in Writing
• Disgusting vs Delicious—Taste Cues in Writing
• Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth, Hard or Soft—Tactile Cues in Writing

Next article

Are the tastes in your prose disgusting or delicious? It does matter, you know.

Tastes: Disgusting vs Delicious or In Between?

As writers, we may sometimes forget to add any sense cues beyond vision and sound. But there’s more to life than just those two. How much of the tastes of things do you put into your prose?

So, let’s look at adding tastes to your prose.

Food, Glorious Food!

It’s pretty much a cliché, but the bottom line is, if you’re struggling to meet word count during NaNoWriMo, one of the easiest ways you can do that is to sit your characters down for some food.

Disgusting vs Delicious Main Courses

I know that I have Ceilidh do a lot of cooking, and some of that was, yes, to meet word count. But it’s also because it’s a large part of her job. She originally gets a job at the Edwards House because she washes dishes and doesn’t break anything. But to get a job at the Lowell House, she makes the master of the house an omelet.

And the truth is, that’s kind of an odd thing to make for anything other than breakfast in the 1870s. However, I know I will need to edit out a lot of her cookery.

In The Enigman Cave, the crew eat from farms on board, including goats, fish, and chicken. But the Enigmans on the surface eat fern fronds. A big part of first contact is sharing food.

On the other hand, not everyone is such a good cook. In the Time Addicts prequel, the kids joke that their mother has burned soup. This is taken from real life—my mother actually left a pot of soup on the stove for too long, the water evaporated and, long story short, she burned the soup.

But there are also foods which we may find disgusting.

In Mettle, the food becomes hit or miss very quickly. Characters are eventually grateful to share a meal of squirrel. But before that, as a part of the foreshadowing, every character wastes food in some way or another.

If the story had gone on any longer, the characters would have ended up dining on rats.

Sides, Appetizers, and Snacks

Josie eats nearly nothing for breakfast, and her suppers are almost as parsimonious. But her lunches are huge, and they include everything from soup to salad to whatever appetizer works, like Crab Rangoon or jalapeño poppers. She likes to eat—she just doesn’t like being sick.

Dessert!

Whether it’s stale candy bars pilfered from Kitty’s locker, or a cake for Marnie‘s birthday, or tangerines smuggled to Peri, characters have sweet tooths. But then again, so do I.

Protein Pills and Other Oddities

The Cabossians in Untrustworthy don’t eat the same kinds of foods that we do. They subsist off manufactured nutritional supplements and wild herbs which grow along the banks of the Central River.

For spaceships like the Valentina Tereshkova or the Orlando, the last thing I wanted was to have them eating weird cubes or getting injections instead of meals. Eating is, after all, one of the great pleasures of life. It would be a shame for us, as a species, to realize we never wanted to eat normally again.

Diets and Religious Restrictions

Because Josie’s sister Hayley is modern Orthodox, she keeps a strictly kosher home. This means she won’t always eat at her siblings’ homes. It also means she’s a lot less likely to go out for a meal unless she knows for certain that a restaurant keeps kosher properly.

In The Enigman Cave, Jazzie puts Marnie on a diet—and Marnie hates it.

Drink

It’s a big part of Untrustworthy for characters to go to taverns. But they don’t drink what we drink. Rather, their drink of choice is fermented Aromossian oil. No, I don’t know what it tastes like, either. Yet tellingly, it’s not the vagrants getting drunk—it’s the so-called ‘respectable Cabossians’.

As the events of Mettle go on, characters take to drinking a lot of tea to try to stay warm. But this is not before a vat of coffee is made outdoors, in an enormous pot, with no filter for the grounds… and the occasional leaf.

During the Time Addicts prequel, Drusilla and Kent share a bottle of wine, but that happens off-camera, as it were.

And in the first Obolonk trilogy, Peri and Dave go to a number of swanky restaurants, and that often means wine or even Champagne with their meals.

Legal and Illegal Drugs

While Josie is sick, she isn’t on any sorts of medications. But in Mettle, Dez is a pot dealer—and he’s not above taking the medical marijuana that belongs to Mink’s Aunt Doreen. Marnie is treated for knee problems, but those are injections and not swallowed.

Disgusting vs Delicious Takeaways

Not all of your characters have to eat. In fact, you can go through an entire NaNo-sized novel without feeding any of them.

But eating scenes are relatable and easy to put together. And, if you’re pressed to meet word count, they are life savers!

How good does your prose taste?

Want More of Using Disgusting vs Delicious Tastes and Other Background to Evoke the Senses in Writing?

If the idea of leveraging disgusting vs delicious tastes in your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.

Sense Cues:

• Senses
• Scene Setting
• Set Dressing—Visual Cues in Writing
• Hairstyles and Costumes—Visual Cues in Writing
• Aroma vs Odor or Stench—Olfactory Cues in Writing
• Mixing a Score in Words and Music—Sound Cues in Writing
• Disgusting vs Delicious—Taste Cues in Writing
• Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth, Hard or Soft—Tactile Cues in Writing

Next article

Let’s consider words and music in writing.

Sound and Fury, Full of Words and Music, Signifying, Well, What, Exactly?

Of course, our books are full of words! Otherwise, they would be picture books. And not very good picture books, to boot! Because even picture books for the newest reader will have some sort of verbiage in them.

Words and What They Do In Your Writing

I have blogged a lot about writing, including descriptive prose, etc. But I haven’t really gotten into word choice and other aspects of the very instrument we use to create books—the words themselves.

Words and Culture

How do your characters talk? Not so much what they say. But how do they say it?

Josie comes from a big Jewish family. Her sister Hayley is the most Orthodox of her siblings. So, she might lapse into Yiddish at times. Or Hebrew, because Hayley lives in what was once Tel Aviv.

Ceilidh is Irish through and through. So, when she meets Barry Marsh, he talks to her a bit in Gaelic.

In The Enigman Cave, Trixie is from London, Kentucky, whereas Jazminder is from Leeds, England. They have different expressions, different slang, and different ways of expressing everything from fear to disgust to taking a stand.

In Mettle, all the characters have potty mouths. It’s practically a requirement. In fact (by design), the first word anyone utters is an f-bomb.

The characters in Untrustworthy don’t really use contractions. As a result, reviewers have said their speech seems stilted. But that’s by design.

In the Obolonk universe, certain terms change over time. Peri might say dollars to doughnuts, whereas Josie would say mercs to doughnuts, because dollars no longer exist, and the Solar System’s unit of currency is the mercury. The phrase loses its alliteration. So, maybe I’ll change to something like mercs to muffins, so it can get its alliteration back.

In all of my works, intelligent people tend to use longer words and discuss more complex concepts.

Political Correctness or Its Lack

Not all of the talking is words of affection or pleasantries. Sometimes, there’s a sting in there.

Peri and her pal Greg trade witticisms and ironic pet names, including mook, which basically means an idiot.

In Mettle, Elise refers to Noah as a genius most of the time, and it’s often to put him in his place and remind him that he’s not the only smart person in the room. Kitty in particular is mean and definitely not PC in her insults, often using the R-word and her one use of the N-word is cut off mid-syllable.

Sweet Music in Your Works

Characters might hum or belt out show tunes. Music is important to a lot of people. For youth, it’s often a means of expression. Don’t leave it out of your storylines!

Soundtracks to Your Prose AKA YouTube is Your Friend

You will need to keep copyright in mind. Lyrics are subject to copyright. But common turns of phrase aren’t. In Respect, when Aretha Franklin sings about giving her her ‘propers’ when she gets home, there is nothing that her estate can copyright in that one word or even in that short phrase. It would be a lot like trying to copyright the letter B.

But too much wholesale copying will get you into hot water. So, if you’re thinking of starting each chapter with a stanza from a pop song, think again.

But don’t despair. There is nothing wrong with creating a playlist (like a soundtrack) for your prose. I have, and I highly recommend it. Not just to help your readers get into the storyline, but for you to get into it. During Novembers in particular, I tend to listen to at least one applicable playlist song before I start to write for the day. It gets me going!

Without further ado, here are my playlists.

Untrustworthy

The truth is that this story really just has one song. It was everywhere when I was writing the book, and parallels a lot of the action. How much was I influenced? How much of this was by design? Even I don’t know anymore.

The song? It’s Bastille’s Pompeii. It’s the only soundtrack for the prequel as well.

The Enigman Cave

I didn’t put a lot into this playlist, but I wanted to give some tunes over to Marnie’s conflicted feelings and problems. I probably won’t create a separate one for the prequel.

The Obolonk Universe

The playlist for the first Obolonks trilogy is loaded with songs either connecting to Boston or about machines or the like. I even have a playlist for its prequel, which is dominated by songs about breaking up and making up.

Time Addicts

For this story about the abuse of time travel, all the songs in the playlist are about time or are about units of time (days, etc.).

Since I wrote the prequels for both Time Addicts and Real Hub for the same NaNo, they ended up on the same playlist. The dividing line is, of course, Black 47’s Funky Ceili.

Words and Music in the Third Obolonk Trilogy

This trilogy is still in a very amorphous state (which is why I’m writing prequels these days—I need to work out the plot better), and so is the playlist.

The Real Hub of the Universe

To evoke Ceilidh’s roots, the playlist for this trilogy is dominated by Irish songs.

Words and Music in Mettle

The playlist for Mettle is all songs by groups related in some way to Boston or at least Massachusetts. A lot of these songs are directly related to chapters (although I may end up rearranging some of them). The prequel works with the same playlist.

Takeaways for Your Choices of Words and Music in Your Books

Words and music can give your stories window dressing. They can set a mood and they can subtly indicate class, education, intellect, status, and more. Now go add a few earworms to your works!

Which sounds are ringing through your prose? What’s the soundtrack to your story?

Want More of Using Words and Music and Other Background to Evoke the Senses in Writing?

If the idea of leveraging words and music in your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.

Sense Cues:

• Senses
• Scene Setting
• Set Dressing—Visual Cues in Writing
• Hairstyles and Costumes—Visual Cues in Writing
• Aroma vs Odor or Stench—Olfactory Cues in Writing
• Mixing a Score in Words and Music—Sound Cues in Writing
• Disgusting vs Delicious—Taste Cues in Writing
• Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth, Hard or Soft—Tactile Cues in Writing

Next article

Well, which one is it, when you’re considering aroma vs odor or stench in your writing?

How Choosing Aroma vs Odor or Stench Affects Your Writing

I can’t recall where I read this (and it may have just been in a Facebook group on writing), but using three or more senses can really get your readers into the story. It’s a lot more intimate than just sketching.

For many of us, the visuals and the sound are kinda, sorta a no-brainer. At least, we realize that we should do them. But what about smells?

Perhaps the most vital part of this is knowing that we have a few different words for smells. It’s not just aroma vs odor or stench. Don’t forget there are also bouquet, smell, scent, stink, trace, perfume, and redolence.

Even the verb form can run the gamut of a delicate whiff to an animals’ sniff to a snort. So, let’s pull your readers in, by using smells.

You know, just like bakeries and their freshly-made cakes and cookies can bring in customers.

Why and How Aroma vs Odor or Stench Can Change Readers’ Perceptions

Your readers want to get into the storyline. But they might not be ‘getting it’. So, if you add some smells, they can, potentially, become more immersed.

The Pleasant Stuff: Aromas

In the prequel to The Real Hub of the Universe, Ceilidh sees roses for the first time, in the Barnes House in Ballyvaughan. For a life spent in poverty, roses are an exceptional luxury. It’s a testament to how wealthy the Barnes family is. At the same time, the aroma is a far cry from the working people of the village (I’ll get to them in a moment).

In The Obolonk Murders, Peri jokes with Dave that he has more personal grooming products than she does. During a particularly (ahem) intimate sex act, she smells one of his products, which is redolent of the tropics.

And in Mettle, when Mink returns, she uses very expensive shampoo and conditioner, left behind by the previous tenants.

There’s also, of course, the aromas of cooking in most of my work. The chef on Marnie’s ship makes chicken soup with matzoh balls—even though the chef is an Irish Catholic.

The Middle-of-the-Road Stuff: Smells

One of my favorite conceits in the Obolonk universe is that terraforming operations give off an odor that people want to mask. As a result, the orbs have their own signature smells. Venus, for example, smells like pineapple. These aren’t always the greatest smells (there’s an orb that smells like a fireplace). But, for the most part, it’s a pleasant experience.

It’s also an easy way to tell which orb you’re on.

The Icky Stuff: Stenches

In Ceilidh’s world, people quite simply don’t bathe as often as we do these days. And, when they do, her fellow villagers bathe in the deepest part of the Ballyvaughan creek. But in between occasions to go to the creek, the people work hard and they wear wool or flax for the most part.

In short, they’ve probably got a lot of body odor. This doesn’t get any better when she gets on a ship. There’s rotting fish, and of course it reeks.

And for Josie, a lot of the smells of cooking can make her gag, particularly in the morning. So, we might not be bothered by the smell of slightly burned meats. For her, it’s probably going to mean a trip to the head.

No Smells at All!

And finally, the aliens in Untrustworthy don’t have much in the way of noses. So, it’s not a big deal one way or the other how things smell.

Takeaways

You can truly elevate your writing by tackling multiple senses. It can be subtle like perfume, or overpowering, like a carcass.

Our sense of smell is fleeting. And, compared to dogs, it’s weak. But it can still evoke memory, and it can add another dimension to any scene.

Which aromas are wafting through your prose?

Want More of Using Aroma vs Odor or Stench and Other Background to Evoke the Senses in Writing?

If the idea of leveraging aroma vs odor or stench in your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.

Sense Cues:

• Senses
• Scene Setting
• Set Dressing—Visual Cues in Writing
• Hairstyles and Costumes—Visual Cues in Writing
• Aroma vs Odor or Stench—Olfactory Cues in Writing
• Mixing a Score in Words and Music—Sound Cues in Writing
• Disgusting vs Delicious—Taste Cues in Writing
• Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth, Hard or Soft—Tactile Cues in Writing

Next article