Detailing the Place Without Scent

As mentioned in my last post, I’m just back from three exquisite days in Coronado, California, the setting for my next novel, Bridging Two Hearts. I went with a purpose: to pick up local color, talk to natives and make note of details–particularly scents and sounds.

While some like to say the devil is in the details, the facts that make a good story rich, also are found in the details.

Sensory details add an experience to a good read. I wasn’t too concerned about the feel of the ocean, or sand underfoot or even the heaviness of the air when fog rolls in. I grew up in a port town and know those things instinctively. Fog can carry a salty scent and somehow air feels even colder when you can’t see through the mist.

And everyone knows the tang of salty air at the beach, right?

I didn’t smell any of it last week in Coronado.

I’m married to a sailor and as we walked up the soft sand and breathed the ocean breeze, I asked him why it didn’t smell salty. Was I just used to it?

“It’s a clear day and there’s not much mist in the air. You aren’t going to smell the salt.”

Who would have guessed that?

From my childhood at the beach, I knew about rubbery seaweed and sour decomposing items on the beach. But none of those were apparent on the sandy strand before the Hotel del Coronado, much less further down the Silver Strand toward the beach where the SEALs work out. It was clean–both to the nose and to the eye.

That’s in front of a pristine hotel–and a bucket truck pulling two telephone poles to smooth the sand could have been part of the reason.

But no scent really turned my head except the Sweet William growing in the flower beds at the Hotel Del.

It reminded me of something Barbara Kingsolver wrote about in her book The Poisonwood Bible. Her heroine had just returned from Africa through the Atlanta airport, and recognized she was back in America because there was no smell.

The concept intrigued me and ever since, I’ll pause and ask myself, “what am I smelling?”

Often, the answer is nothing.

Indeed, I’ve wondered more than once if I just have a problem with my nose–maybe I can’t smell anything?

But an infant grandchild sitting on my lap can disprove that concern.

Old wood, paint, barnacles, the scent of fear?

None of that was evident at the beach last week. Nothing turned up our noses.

Does that mean I have no sensory details for my book?

Well–it’s fiction. If I can’t describe the expected, I guess I’ll just have to make something up.

Oh, the tangy salt spray from the sea mixing with the baking white sands against the cry of the gull  . . .

you get the picture.  🙂