I use these senses - touch, sight, feel and smell - as triggers that invite readers or propel them into the scene. The trick is not to make it obvious. I've written an entire chapter about this in my book, 'The Successful Novelist.' I've lectured about it extensively, but have yet to see many people pick up on it.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.

Soul, soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.

There are six senses: hear, smell, taste, touch, and see; the one forgotten is intuition.