Creative Prompts to Engage the Senses and Make Your Writing Soar

How to use the five senses keep your readers enthralled until your very last word.

Do you wish you could write more engaging and layered posts? Do you want to draw your readers in from the first breath and hold them captive through to the end of your written works?

What if you wrote in a way that spoke not only to the emotions and the mind but also spoke to the tongue, eyes, ears, fingertips, and nose of each of your readers?

Using the five senses, you can pull your readers into an experience that sparks their memories, emotions, and senses all at once. If you’re writing about your morning coffee, we want to taste it in your words.

My favorite experience I ever had in a creative writing class was when we were given an assignment on the senses. The professor told us to find a spot, close our eyes, and pick out all the sensations surrounding us, then write a scene based on that.

I sat parked in my car in the rain noticing for the first time how the seatbelt cut into my shoulder, how the raindrops rhythmically tap danced across the roof, and how the cold air chilled my nose and tasted crisp in my lungs.

This experience inspired me to take this approach more often in my writing.

Below you’ll find some writing prompts to help spark your imagination and get you started evoking the magic of our senses. With just a little practice and inspiration, you will draw your readers effortlessly into the enthralling pieces you create.

I encourage you to close your eyes and experience each moment before you write it. I promise you it will make your writing live and breathe in a way you never thought possible.

Sense #1: Taste

Write about the taste of:

• coffee when it’s made perfectly, or write about the moment you take a sip and realize you’ve forgotten to put sugar in
• your least favorite food made by your new mother-in-law who is watching you eat with an eagle eye
• the first sip of strong alcohol you ever tried

Sense #2: Sight

Write about the sight of:

• your image reflected in water, a dark window, or a shattered mirror
• your neighbor’s Christmas tree that you can see through their open blinds
• your partner when they don’t know you’re watching them

Sense #3: Sound

Write about the sound:

• of your upstairs neighbors arguing, stomping around over your head
• of your pet or loved one sleeping
• of a loud family dinner where you can’t quite make out the conversations, but you hear the tone and volume of the varied voices

Sense #4: Touch

Write about the feel of:

• sitting on a picnic blanket barefoot in the sun
• a snowball landing smack dab into your face
• mixing cookie dough with your hands

Sense #5: Smell

Write about the scent of:

• walking through a county fair
• cinnamon, citrus, or freshly ground coffee
• a walk through the forest during a heavy rainfall

Most of these prompts can use multiple senses to truly paint a fully engrossing poetic picture, so I encourage you to try to engage more than one sense at a time.

Focus on the emotions you want to pull from your readers. If you find Thanksgiving Dinners stressful, maybe you focus on the painful volume of noise, the arguments, the food that is never quite salted enough, or the mushy overcooked vegetables.

If you love picnicking and want your readers to feel that same joy, your descriptions could envoke positive feelings through the senses. Whereas, if you hate picnics, maybe you could focus on the flies that never leave you alone, the ants crawling over your feet, the grass poking up sharply through your too-thin blanket.

Have fun creating and making these prompts your own. I’d love to read what you come up with. Please leave links to your posts inspired by these prompts in the comments so we can all enjoy the varied styles and unique points of view we all bring to our written works.

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Chelsea Marie is a writer by night and graphic designer by day. She is a West-Coast Canadian with a bad case of wanderlust and a dream to travel the world with her severely airplane phobic partner. Why do the easy way when a complicated route makes a much more interesting story? She’s on Instagram @c.the.storyteller writing and posting poetry in her spare time.