Over Two Dozen Distinct Smells in Just the First Half of the Book

The other day Cronin Detzz provided a guest post on how to Turbo-Boost Your Writing (see here). In the introduction she states: Really get your character into his surroundings.  Immerse yourself in the scene – what do you see?  Smell?  Hear?  Remember?"

Smell.

If one aspect of turbo-boosted writing is smell, then Nick Cutter who wrote The Troop (which I'm currently reading . . . see here and here) has hit the nitrous oxide on his writing and is speeding by all the competition.

Here is a sampling of the different smells his characters experience in just the first half of the novel.

All boys gave off a scent, Tim found— although it wasn’t solely an olfactory signature; in Tim’s mind it was a powerful emanation that enveloped his every sense. For instance, Bully-scent: acidic and adrenal, the sharp whiff you’d get off a pile of old green-fuzzed batteries. Or Jock-scent: groomed grass, crushed chalk, and the locker room funk wafting off a stack of exercise mats. Kent Jenks pumped out Jock-scent in waves. Other boys, like Max and Ephraim, were harder to define— Ephraim often gave off a live-wire smell, a power transformer exploding in a rainstorm. 

Shelley . . . Tim considered between sips of scotch and realized the boy gave off no smell at all— if anything the vaporous, untraceable scent of a sterilized room in a house long vacant of human life. 

Newton, though, stunk to high heaven of Nerd: an astringent and unmistakable aroma, a mingling of airless basements and dank library corners and tree forts built for solitary habitation, of dust smoldering inside personal computers, the licorice tang of asthma puffer mist and the vaguely narcotic smell of model glue— the ineffable scent of isolation and lonely forbearance. Over time a boy’s body changed, too: his shoulders stooped to make their owner less visible, the way defenseless animals alter their appearance to avoid predators, while their eyes took on a flinching, hunted cast.

The Troop (p. 12)

The man’s stink hit Tim flush in the nose. A high fruity reek with an ammoniac undernote. Ketosis. The man’s body was breaking down its fatty acids in a last-ditch effort to keep its vital organs functioning. When burnt, ketones released a sickly sweet smell— the desperate reek of a body consuming itself. The stench coming out of the man’s mouth was like a basket of peaches rotting in the sun.

The Troop (p. 23)

Max put a square in his hand. Tim dabbed away the warm ichor. The smell was horrible, like rancid grease. 

The Troop (p. 83)

Max saw brown grime slotted between his teeth. When he blew up the balloon, Max got a good whiff of him: rank sweat and something odder, scarier— a hint of shaved iron.

The Troop (p. 86)

The smell hit him like a ball-peen hammer. Sweetly fruity top notes, rancid decay lurking underneath.

The Troop (p. 102)

A wave of dizziness rocked the Scoutmaster. Gnatlike specks crowded his vision. His sinuses burnt with ozone: the same eye-watering sensation as if he’d jumped off the dock into the bay and salt water rocketed up his nose.

The Troop (p. 105)

It ended in this: Tim locked in a closet, alone with his thoughts. And his hunger. And the sick sweet stink of his body.

The Troop (p. 119)

Part of him— a shockingly large part— was okay being in here. Perhaps he was unfit for command. Fact: he was paralyzed with hunger. He kept catching whiffs of cotton candy from someplace.

The Troop (p. 121)

“You know what, Kent?” Shelley said. “Your breath stinks like shit. Like cotton candy that someone took a big piss on. Can’t you smell it?”

 The Troop (p. 139)

Ephraim barreled through into the cabin. The sickening sweetness hammered him in the face— the air inside a decayed beehive could smell much the same.

The Troop (p. 143)

This is just a few of the ones I've found and I'm only halfway through the story. I wonder if Nick Cutter is part bloodhound cause his olefactory senses must be off the charts compared to mine. Or for each scene he thought "What's it look like? What's the light like? What's the smell? What's it sound like? etc."

The best by far is the first one, about how all boys give off different scents. And Newton gave off a distinct nerd scent. As a reader it really helped me not just relate to the characters but also to differentiate between all of them.  

If you want to know what the entire island of Falstaff Island smells like, go read The Troop. By the same token if you want to read a very Stephen King-esque horror novel that will keep you guessing, entertained and feeling queasy, then again, this would be your book. Terrific recommendation.