Comics are a visual medium, and that can be an advantage over prose when it comes to storytelling. The motion and force in Wonder Woman’s punch, the adorkable grin on Ms. Marvel’s face, that gorgeous two-page spread of Gotham City: these are images that can be harder to get across in writing. But don’t get discouraged, novel writers. Prose has its own advantages, and one of those is that it can be much more immersive than comics through the use of Sensory Details.

Touch, Smell, hearing, taste: use them right, and it can deepen your reader’s experience, making them feel like they’re right there with your characters. This isn’t central to your story. A solid plot and well-rounded characters always come first, but when you’re revising your second or third (or tenth) draft, look for places where you can enrich your description with Sensory details like the examples below:

Touch

• Your heroine is wearing some kick-ass leather boots. Are her feet sweaty and gross inside them?
• The wind on that tall building your hero is perched atop of is probably cold and biting against his face.
• Does your villain wear gloves? The sense of everything he touches is going to be dulled by their fabric.

Smell

• What’s the evil corporate executive cologne like? Is it way too much?
• Your superhero team’s base is on a space station. That’s cool, but the recycled air probably smells stale and awful.
• A mugger is in an alley. Does the alley smell like old beer? Vomit? A dumpster full of rotting food from the Italian restaurant next door?

Hearing

• Does the femme fatale’s husky voice make your hero (or heroine) shiver?
• Has your villain been punched in the head so hard that it sounds like his ears are stuffed with cotton balls?
• Your mad scientist is in her laboratory. The humming of computers, hissing of Bunsen burners, or squeaking of lab rats could make up the background noise.

Taste

• The coppery taste of blood might be your heroine’s first clue that the last punch left her with a nosebleed.
• The villain’s minion has just been knocked face-first into the dirt. Did some get into his mouth?
• Your hero has been captured and bound, and the ball gag tastes rubbery.

Small details like these can make the world of your novel feel more real to the reader—which is important when that world is populated by mutants, aliens, and men and women in colorful tights. Sensory details alone won’t make a good story, but they can add another layer to already good writing.

BM adds: Kristen Brand just wrote the superhero novel Hero Status.