Hooray – it’s Bank Holiday weekend, the sun is shining and the aroma of barbeques and Pimms is in the air.

The smell of open-air cooking is something I always associate with good times – happy memories equally from childhood and adulthood – of relaxing and kicking off our shoes and eating al fresco.  Smell is one of the most powerful of our senses in evoking memories, both good and bad, and for todays exercise I want to look at both.  So straight to it:

1. Try to think of a smell which makes you feel afraid/uncomfortable/helpless.  For my daughter, it’s the smell of new plastic – ten years on, it still reminds her of the anaesthetic mask used in an operation she had when she was just two.
2. Concentrate hard on describing the smell – not the fear – just the pure smell itself.  Write continuously for five minutes.
3. Now try to put into words the way that smell makes you feel – what do you see in your mind’s eye?  Who does it bring to mind?  What place is this smell associated with and so on – again, write continuously for five minutes.  Remember, no-one else need ever see this if you don’t want them to.
4. Think of a character, who is not you.  Put them in a setting where they might experience something frightening or troublesome – and use your description of the scent to help build the atmosphere of the piece.  For example, ‘Jenny knew something was wrong.  As the unseen footsteps grew closer, so did the overwhelming fragrance of pear drops . . .’  Continue writing and see where the description goes.
5. Now repeat the exercise, but this time with a good smell.

“Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.” Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov

===============================================================================

To buy Glasshopper, click here.

To view Glasshopper Book Club & Reading Group Discussion Questions, click here.