I’ve offered this bit of fiction writing help to friends in the discord server of the writers here, but I wanted to formalize it as a post for folks to refer back upon. One of those archived posts of mine that to make link copying easier. (It’s getting eerie how often I have to google my own site to find citations, etc.)

Anyways, here’s the list of 19 Types of Sensory Details. I compiled them first for the body horror panel I did, but also because it’s something I’m perennially bad at in my fiction. If you’d prefer it as an actual workable checklist, click here for the download:

Superficial sensation is concerned with:

• touch
• pain
• temperature
• two-point discrimination.

Deep sensation includes

• muscle position sense
• joint position sense (proprioception)
• deep muscle pain
• vibration sense

Visceral sensations are relayed by autonomic afferent fibers and include

• hunger
• nausea
• visceral pain

The special senses

• smell
• vision
• hearing
• taste
• equilibrium

nociceptive sensation or pain-signaling serves to warn the organism when there is contact with

• noxious or potentially
• damaging elements in the environment, or when
• tissue is damaged.

What are the strongest things you’ve ever felt? Or is there other fiction writing help that you’ve benefitted from?

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Photo by Ilya Shishikhin on Unsplash