The Touch of Your Hand…

Continuing with a writer’s musings about the senses…

Touch is another tricky sense to portray in a book. In my current wip, the hero works with stone in his day job and wood as his hobby, so I need to be able to describe the feel of his work as he is doing it and also the finished product. The heroine, for instance, runs her hand along the banister of the staircase in his home and marvels at the smoothness of the wood finish.

You might need to depict the texture of a fabric like velvet or wool, the feel of raindrops on your neck, snow on your tongue, the texture of sand beneath your toes on a beach and that moment when you step into the surf and the sea is cold.

As I write romance, a certain amount of sensual content is a must and this is the area where the sense of touch comes into its own. Lips meet and the hero feels the warmth and smoothness of the heroine’s skin. She feels the rasp of stubble against her cheek and the kiss provokes a myriad of sensations and resultant emotions.

The sense of touch is of course subjective. People have their own preferences as to surfaces and materials they like to touch and also those that repel them. This leads me to think about negative touch – violent contact, phobias, pet hates. For example, I hate touching felt and toes (unless they belong to babies).

If you don’t want someone to touch you, the contact of their skin will produce very different sensations and emotions.

Things to consider when writing about touch:-

Nice or nasty.

Rough or smooth.

Temperature – warmth or cold, scorching and icy.

Emotions evoked by the touch sensation.

Pain or pleasure.

Reactions evoked – sink into the velvet throw, jump away from the spiky fence.

The effect of negative or positive memories relating to touch.

What do you like and or hate touching?