I’ve spoken in the past of how important it is when I write to always keep in mind each of the senses we have at our disposal but a story doesn’t need them all to be successful.
Writing a description of a location or an object comes to life when you add the different perspectives of the different senses we have. Understanding that an object is smooth or pitted, sharply cold or searingly hot, if a location smelled of flowers or vomit, if there’d been a noise of any kind means we are drawn deeper and deeper into what’s happening so we can truly be immersed into the action.
But things can be just as engaging in a story if a particular sense is removed.
The loss of a sense means you’d have to lean more on the others.
There’s been a few films over the last few years which have relied on the idea that certain senses become actively dangerous to the protagonists. The Quiet Place takes away the ability for people to make a sound so vocal speech is taken off the table. So how to communicate? Sign language is the easy option in terms of story telling but beyond that, it’s any noise that becomes a problem, not just speech. Just consider our daily existence today and imagine that you can’t make any sound or you could very well die. I type quite ‘heavy’ so I’d have to amend that. You’d need to make changes to how repairs were done at home, you couldn’t use a hammer. Driving goes out the window, washing clothes will need to change, even where and how you walk. The film looks at these issues to show how sound is baked into what we all do but there’s a great example used in there which also shows just how disciplined we’d all have to be every second of every day. Don’t hurt yourself, stub your toe, catch your finger in a door, you scream in pain and that’s you stuffed.
By taking away a sense, it changes the scope that character has to experience the world. It’s not a question of pointing at someone who’s hearing or sight impaired for example and saying that they won’t be able to exist or how sad it is, rather it’s important for all of us to imagine putting ourselves into a place where the things we all take for granted are taken away.
Could you adapt to life without your sight?
If you lost both legs?
But that which is no longer available doesn’t have to be anything of this kind to be able to cause a massive re-evaluation of how we do things. Look at your life and imagine changes to your day to day.
Would you be able to live the same way if you no longer had the luxury of a car?
You now can’t ever use a mobile phone?
You have to live in a house that doesn’t have any heating?
You have to live on such low income that you have to choose between food or warmth?
Just imagine a world like that?
Our senses are how we interact with the world around us and process what we discover and a story which removes the faculty of one of them can create struggles as the characters have to work to adapt to what they can and can’t do but far far beyond just being an idea of recognising that specific hurdle, it, as all stories should, makes the reader have to consider the life they have and how they would potentially face such a time as something important was lost.
If we can all do that little bit of thinking along the way, maybe there’d be a bit more understanding.
I can just sense it.
Stay safe all.
Owen Elgie 