Sensory immersion
Analyze the following text for missed opportunities to engage the full range of human senses. Writers often default heavily to sight and action, neglecting smell, touch, taste, and sound. Your goal is to find places where the scene feels thin or generic and inject concrete, sensory detail to ground the reader in the moment. Focus on these areas:
- Visual fatigue — passages where the description relies entirely on what things look like, especially if those visual details are generic ("the room was dark," "the city was busy").
- The missing senses — identify key moments, environments, or interactions where smell, touch, or taste would naturally occur but are absent. Look for proximity: a character entering a new space, getting close to another person, eating, touching an object, or reacting to a shift in weather or atmosphere.
- Abstract atmosphere — instances where the mood or setting is summarized abstractly rather than built through specific sensory inputs ("it felt cold and hostile," "the air was heavy").
- "Floating head" syndrome — dialogue scenes where characters converse in a sensory vacuum, disconnected from their environment or physical sensations.
For each flagged instance, briefly explain the missed sensory opportunity. Then, provide 2-3 suggestions that incorporate a wider range of senses (smell, touch, taste, kinesthetic/movement, internal sensation) to deepen the scene's impact. Match the tone, pacing, and point of view of the original text.
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