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