How do you write smell? - Imagine the smell

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When you're near a rotting body, especially one that's been in a enclosed space, it's hard to describe how strong it smells. It's so thick the smell clings to you and your clothes. It goes right through your nose and onto your tongue. That's right. You taste that putridity. And that taste is sweet. The most unpleasant sweet you will ever taste.

I think the science of it has to do with the esthers or whatever given off by the decaying body. Anyways, pro-tip: if you think you're going to be going into a space with what may be a dead body, Vicks Vapo-Rub under your nose helps some. Some.
 
"sickly sweet" is an annoying cliche. "cloying" comes to mind, too. I don't know what it's supposed to be like, it's word tax, fuck this.

If something normal and knowable smells, I just write that it smells, or more often don't, if it's in sight and unimportant. If lilacs are visibly in bloom, I write that they're blooming. If there's a secret garden out of sight behind a nondescript wall, with lilac bushes in it, I write that there's suddently a smell of lilacs in the air.
If something unusual/unknowable to the character smells, I write what it smells like (if at all). Almost no adjectives.

Examples of important smells:
  • One of my stories starts with the smell of a rotten corpse (of an animal). I just write "the smell of rotting flesh", no details, no adjectives. It's actually important and a plot point that none of the three supposedly innocent peaceful Ghibliesque travelers present at the scene is particularly alarmed or disgusted by it (thus no adjectives, for them rotting flesh is a day ending in 日 (it's weebshit)).
  • In one story, the point-of-view character hates incense, because he was raised in a HAES house where it was used to (fail to) mask more disgusting odors. When he's in despair (happens once) or anticipates an evil threat (happens fairly often), he imagines he smells incense. It's up to the reader to realize the smell is imaginary.
  • A few shady characters pop up in a variety of situations, a different character each time but all smelling like something extremely pleasant to the pov character of the respective scene. They are in fact one character, the side villain, and the smell is also imaginary, she's drugging and mind controlling people, and they imagine she smells niiiiiiiiiice (as a side effect) when she succeeds.
  • One character is described by the protagonist as smelling "like poverty". A while later it's clarified that poverty smells like pest control fumigation in tenements, and later still it's mentioned offhand that burnt sulfur is used for pest control. He's not actually poor, he's a chemist making weapons. This chain of associations is not how he gets found out, it's a reread bonus.
 
The Silo series repeatedly used the "Metallic" taste/smell of blood. Often without actually writing 'the smell' or whatever. Simply hinting at metal or metallic attributes. The kind of scent you only know if you've experienced it, though not as edgy and cool as having seen death in Harry Potter and thus being able to see those skeleton horses. I think most people have had blood in their mouth.
 
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