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146 Part III: Painting the Picture with Description
Feeling Your Way with Touch and Texture
The sense of touch is often neglected in fiction, perhaps because it’s the
hardest to describe. Yet touch and texture can quickly evoke a strong sensation
in the reader.
Think of the pleasure to be found in the sensation of stroking a cat’s fur,
kneading fresh dough, running your hands over smooth silk and turning the
crisp pages of a well-loved book. Think of the disgust caused by picking up
a slimy slug in the garden, the discomfort of scraping your hand over rough
concrete, the frisson caused by the tickling of a spider running up your arm
or the pain of tight shoes pinching your feet.
It’s the unexpected nature of some sensations that causes them to have
such power – picking up something you think will be light that turns out to
be extremely heavy, treading on a snail or a pin in the dark, biting into an
olive when you thought it was a grape! With other sensations, the opposite is
true – the expectation of a dentist’s drill is often worse than the reality (especially
if you’ve had a local anaesthetic!).
Your character goes into a dark room she’s never entered before. Describe her
feeling her way around, and the sensations she experiences as she touches the
various objects in it.