Nature Writing Tip #1: Use All Your Senses!

I get frequent questions about the “how” of nature and outdoors writing, so I hope to include at least one nature writing tip in each of my email newsletters. I’ll also repost them here in the blog for easier access/sharing.

This is a reprint of the nature writing tip from my latest newsletter — I started with what I think might just be the most important tip of them all. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Today’s nature writing tip: Observe, then write, with all your senses

Take a look at the picture above, which comes from what I consider one of the most underrated hikes in Southcentral Alaska: Summit Creek. I think most of us default to writing about we see in a scene like that, which is very understandable and certainly a useful tool.

But your writing takes on an extra dimension when you remember to really absorb an experience through all of your senses — then invoke those senses in the retelling of the experience.

What does the experience feel, smell, sound, and even taste like?

Yes, anybody looking at that picture can tell you what the trail to Summit Creek looks like. But this nature writing tip is a reminder that if you were there and truly paying attention to all of your senses, you could also write about how refreshingly cold the water of the stream crossings was, or how the water burbled and rushed between the stones you hopped across instead of wading; the smell of sun-warmed tundra all around you; the feel of wildflower petals under your fingers and hard-packed dirt trail under your feet; the movement and sound of the tall grass you worked through along a particularly overgrown section of trail… and so on.

Remember to pick and choose what you relay to the reader

Would you put all of that into every story? No. A totally unfiltered stream of consciousness from any one sense is too much for the reader to take in, and an unfiltered stream of consciousness from all five senses is way too much. This nature writing tip isn’t my way of saying to throw everything at them at once:

Instead, think of all that sensory input as a range of “spices” you can sprinkle throughout your article, giving the reader a more enthralling mental/sensory picture of what any given place or experience is like. Just like actual cooking in the kitchen, knowing which of those sensory spices to use, and when, gets easier with practice.

TL;DR version

Want to make your readers feel like they’re really there with you on an adventure? Give them a clean, tight version of the full sensory experience — not just a story about what it looked like.

Featured image by Raphaël Jeanneret from Pixabay; Summit Creek image by me.