A while back I did a blog titled How does your hero smell? It was a light-hearted, but serious-intended piece about using your sense of smell as writer. Today, the tables are being metaphorically turned onto your heroine. So, for lack of a better title, How does your heroine smell?
Girls are supposed to smell, well, like girls. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a female character referred to as smelling “manly” in a book…not in any I’ve read, anyway. But aside from describing to your reader how your protagonist smells like the inside of an exotic flowering hothouse, or dousing her in buckets of eau d’parfume, what sensory motivators can you use?
We’ve all heard the line sugar and spice and everything nice; that’s what little girls are made of. Well, what about big girls? I kind of think the same thing applies.
Let me ‘splain it you, Lucy.
What does sugar really smell like? Well, we know it tastes sweet, so that colors what our sense of smell tells us it’s like. What, aside from sugar, is sweet? A few things come to mind for me: chocolate, vanilla, cherries, apples. You get the idea. Maybe your heroine smells like warm vanilla pudding, or caramels melting over ripe apples. She sounds good enough to eat, right? And if she does to us, she does to the hero, too (don’t even go there! This is a G-rated blog).
So what spices come to mind when you hear the above saying? When I think of spices I think of tangy, potent ones like cinnamon and nutmeg, citrus and lemongrass. Stuff that I recognize when it hits my tastebuds. Spicy can also be hot, like peppers – although I’d rather name a character Pepper than describe her as smelling like one. Maybe it’s just me, but if I read a character described as smelling like a chili pepper, I’d first think she worked in a Mexican restaurant and I’d have an immediate vision of her that might not be anything like the author wanted. Although now that I think that through….hummmmm.
Back to smells.
The end of the saying tells us girls smell like everything nice. Well, what smells nice to you may not smell nice to me. For instance, I love the smell of coffee brewing, but wouldn’t want to go around smelling like an urn all day. There’s a commercial out right now for – I think, Honey Bunches of Oats – where the line worker goes shopping after working all day at the cereal plant and she says people around her sniff and say they smell cookies. She tells them, “nah, that’s me. I just came from work. You’re just smelling Honey Bunches of Oats.” Now, I don’t think I want to smell like cereal, but you certainly remember the commercial, and therefore the product, so somebody wrote something good there! What smells nice to you? Cotton sheets that have been line-dried smell nice; lemonaid smells nice. Lots of things do.
The lesson learned here is that men and women smell very differently and when we write sensory descriptions, we really need to keep sex ( read: Gender) in mind. I wouldn’t want to write my hero as smelling like a full blooming hothouse jasmine flower laced with sin, but I would describe my heroine that way. Only better, because that line is a little cheesy… and very poorly written. But you get the idea.
So, how do your heroines smell? Let’s discuss…
My heroines are always down to earth, so they smell like “sunshine” or “rain.” In one of my current WIPs, my heroine smells like cookies. Because she’s a baker. The cop (hero) who pulls her over for speeding smells cookies, and wonders why the inside of her car smells like cookies. I do use the sense of smell when I describe characters, but usually in saucy moments or emotional moments, when it matters. 🙂
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Terrific blog. I like your playing with “sugar and spice” to get ideas on a heroine’s aroma. Thank you!
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i write Regency so I could use a historical scent like lavender or jasmine. I do prefer to use citrusy scents that could be used for soaps and rinsing one’s hair. .
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My current heroine, a helicopter pilot, smells of “fresh air, fuel, and engines, a smell like coming home” to the hero, a racing driver .Later she hopes “she got the heavy tang of hydraulic fluid” out of her hair, and he catches “a subtle hint of perfume.” I took into account her job and what would appeal to him.
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Nikki – s I read them I can actually “smell” all those things! Fabulous.
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Wonderful blog, Peggy. Our sense of smell is powerful and influences many of our reactions, but it often is subliminal or even completely disconnected from our thinking brain. We need to be more alert to it, both in writing and real life.
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Thanks, Nikki!
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Reblogged this on The Serious Series Writer and commented:
Nice post. Smell is such a part of our lives, we should use it in our writing. Author has a blog on hero’s and smells as well.
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great take on this aspect of writing and new ways to come up with smells and scents to use in our writing! Reblogged
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Thanks, Susan
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LOL Great post Peggy! I’m a country girl, as are most of my heroines, so cinnamon, apples, vanilla are used. I toss in lavender and my gramma’s favorite flower, gardenia, for contrast. Sometimes it’s air after a rain or sunshine (though I don’t think I’ve ever actually smelled that last one lol). 🙂 Now I need to chase down what a hero smells like.
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