sensory detail
What you perceive
Sensory detail refers to descriptive elements that appeal to the five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
Writers use sensory details to make scenes vivid and immersive: The floorboards creaked under her weight, and the room smelled of old books and dust.
The term appears mainly in writing instruction and literary analysis.
- aromaPleasant distinctive smell
- flavorCharacteristic taste quality
- colorVisual hue property
- textureSurface tactile quality
- imageryVivid descriptive language
vivid description · echo · sound · ambient noise · pressure · sweetness · visceral · brightness · aftertaste · fragrance · roughness · shadow · smoothness · synesthesia · softness · pitch · temperature · bitterness
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- descriptiondescription, descriptive prose, vivid imagery, particulars, specifics
- literary devicesmetaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, alliteration
- poetry termspoetry, rhyme, verse, rhythm, meter
- descriptive languagedescriptive writing, vivid language, description, imagery, visual imagery
- imageryvisual imagery, metaphor, symbolism, allegory, nature imagery
concreteness of description
sensory detailabstraction
Distilling to essential qualities
generalization · generality · broad strokes · summary · vagueness