The sensorium

Sensation occurs when our sensory receptors come into contact with external stimuli and our nerve cells convey relevant information to the brain. But we also have the ability to imagine sensations, to experience them cerebrally, without any external stimuli. And that’s one reason why humans read: to step into an augmented reality where we can feel things that are not really there.

Good writers know how to activate the reader’s senses. They conjure up sights and sounds, and immerse readers in a world of touch and taste. It’s a technique that applies to academic writing as much as it does to science fiction, music journalism, or food criticism.

Here’s an example. It’s a passage from an article about tower cranes, published in Organization Studies:

A tower crane is an engine on stilts. To make one, you need a lot of steel, as well as bolts, washers, gaskets, welding gear, presses, wiring, bearings, anti-corrosion paint, hydraulic rams, tubing, steel cables, glass, printed circuit boards, concrete counter weights and so on. Imagine placing your hand on the base of a crane and feel the cold materiality of metal and the vibration of motors making the structure shiver slightly, and creak as it responds to wind and stress. The contemporary language of cranes is not the language of the romantic sublime, but of the technologies of the material. The operator hoist, pipe grabs, manriding cage, automatic hook, Ultraview cab, Manitowoc Crane Control System. They are made by companies with names that might be familiar from illuminated signs hanging over cities – Potain, Linden Comansa, Wolffkran, Liebherr, Terex, XCMG – but could be global corporations that do pretty much anything. There is an older language buried there too, one that echoes its nautical origins. Cranes have spreader beams, spars, jibs, slings, shackles, booms, and rigging. They slew and luff, and their ropes reeve, they have outriggers and ballast, and they sometimes oversail properties. (Parker, 2017: 991-992)

We begin with a striking visual image (an engine on stilts), followed by a list of concrete nouns (bolts, washers, tubing, paint, glass, cables). It’s as if the author is assembling a tower crane, piece by piece, in front of our eyes. But that’s not enough. The author doesn’t just want us to see the tower crane; he wants us to feel it, too. The author addresses the reader directly (Imagine placing your hand...) and brings us into contact with the crane’s temperature, movement, and sound. A tower crane looms over the landscape, a giant on metal legs, but we’re invited to experience it on a human scale, to feel it quiver and groan beneath the palm of our hand.

The most interesting stuff happens in the last two sentences of the paragraph. Here, the author showers us with esoteric nouns (spar, jib, boom) and strange-sounding verbs (slew, luff, reeve). The point isn’t to confuse us. The point is to estrange us from the quotidian so we see the world – and its engineering feats – afresh. Cranes are a common sight in towns and cities, but their roots lie in seafaring, a context with its own special lore and language. The author unearths this half-hidden history and, in a puff of smoke, transforms the tower crane into a full-rigged ship.

The best writers activate our senses with strong nouns and verbs, stripped of unnecessary modifiers like adverbs and adjectives. A simple description (a tower crane) creates a clear picture in the reader’s mind, conjuring up height and heft. Extend the description (a tall, heavy tower crane) and the image loses its sharpness, like a photograph that’s slightly out of focus. The same goes for verbs. A tower crane that creaks and shivers is better than a tower crane that creaks noisily or shivers menacingly. It’s a paradoxical lesson, but an important one: the less the writer describes, the more the reader sees. Skilled writers leave room for the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. They let nouns and verbs do the heavy lifting in their prose, not adjective and adverbs.

C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, offers this advice to writers:

It’s no use telling us that something was ‘mysterious’ or ‘loathsome’ or ‘awe-inspiring’ or ‘voluptuous’. By direct description, by metaphor and similie, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim ‘how mysterious!’ or ‘loathsome’ or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you’ll have no need to tell me how I should react. (cited in Hale, 2013: 91; emphasis in original)

Lewis is talking about fantasy literature, but even academic writing should offer the right stimuli to the reader’s nerves – whether it’s visual, tactile, or (why not?) gustatory. So be a good host and serve up a feast for the senses.