When I Notebook, I often describe smells.  Not because I’m particularly aroma obsessed but because I’m lazy.  I’m lazy and describing a smell in the right way is an incredibly efficient way to set a mood or to paint a word picture or even to subvert expectations.

The reason this works as well as it does is because a sense of smell is, for the most part, a universal experience.  This causes most of us to have our entire lifetimes to accrue experience smelling things.  When someone reads about an aroma they can often place it in their consciousness.  For example, petrichor (the smell after it rains).  When we think of the smell after it rains we can immediately recall that smell in our memories but that’s not all.  More than that, we have memories attached to it.  Remember, for a moment, being a child waiting for the rain to end to play tag and the sense of anticipation petrichor can evoke.  Perhaps we, as Notebookers, could associate the smell of rain with spring and that could evoke a sense of renewal and optimism or of chilly days filled with warming lunches of hearty soup.  We could even use petrichor to subvert expectations, while people often associate rain with sadness I have had many a day off where I should have mowed the lawn but rain made it impossible so I went to the movies!  A very happy rain indeed!

Now you might be thinking, “Well, people have been writing about the smell of petrichor forever, of course there’s a lot to say about it!  Sure, you’re right; but not because lots of people have written about it but because lots of people have smelled it!

Luckily, the list of things that a lot of people have smelled is limited to basically everything!  Every aroma you can write about has been sniffed before by countless others.  Fragrances have a power because of their universality.  Whether you’re writing about the smell of whiskey, Play-doh, or pine trees; writing about the smell of anything can take your writing where ever you want to go.

That’s not to say that there aren’t pitfalls along the way.  It’s remarkably easy to go too far into purple prose or worse.

Here’s a few guidelines to bear in mind when writing about aromas:

1. Don’t be too esoteric  While both are very evocative, the smell of bacon cooking and the smell of your grandmother’s coat tree have VERY different numbers of people who can identify with it.
2. Two simple paths  There’s 2 basic ways to describe a fragrance.  First being adjectives and a noun.  For instance, “A hot and dusty used bookstore.”  Now, that’s pretty good.  It’s pretty universal.  Not too esoteric.  It gets the job done.  The other way is to use a descriptive sentence such as, “Smells the way sunlight bakes a dusty room.”  That works well too.  This second method is especially useful when you teeter towards esoteric so bear rule #1 in mind.  As an example, “The stale aroma of microwave popcorn made a week ago.”  Here we’ve gone quite specific but since microwave popcorn is a pretty common thing I think we’re safe.
3. Be Authentic  Writers fail this simple thing so often it’s hard to pick an example.  Fear, desperation, defeat, etc. don’t have smells.  Only write about real smells.  To do otherwise is bad writing.  Consider:  “She smelled of morning” vs. “She smelled of dew on grass and blueberry muffins.”  If you find yourself describing smells that don’t exist just know, you can easily do better.
4. Weird can be fun  Now, just for fun, let’s turn the last rule around.  Just because you can’t describe a smell that doesn’t exist doesn’t mean you can’t describe something other than aroma with a smell.  Sound confusing?  Here’s an example, “His thoughts were like the acrid smell of an electrical fire.”  Now, this is VERY evocative but it is also quite meaningless.  That said, while meaningless, it depicts a very specific sort of jarring panicked emotion.  If that’s what you’re after then have at it.  Otherwise, this is best avoided because it is basically purple prose.
5. Don’t overdo it  One of the worst things you can do is describe how everything smells!  Much like salt when you cook, too much or too little are problems.  When in doubt, try to limit yourself to 1-2 per Notebooking entry.

Even if you’re not as lazy a Notebooker as me, we hope you found this helpful..  It’s not only efficient to write about aromas, it’s fun!