Sensory Channels

What It Does

Tracks usage of the five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) in each scene. Flags scenes with very low sensory engagement — typically those that rely on sight alone.

Why It Matters

Readers build mental models through sensory detail. A scene described only through what characters see feels flat, like watching a silent film through a window. Adding even one non-visual sense — the scrape of a chair, the smell of coffee, the roughness of a brick wall — dramatically increases immersion.

What Gets Flagged

Low Sensory Engagement

Severity: Hint

Example (flagged):

He saw the room. It looked big. He saw a chair. It was red. He looked at the window. He saw the sky.

Why: Only sight is engaged. The scene reads like a visual inventory.

Suggested revision:

The room echoed when he stepped inside — vast, tile-floored, smelling faintly of bleach. A red chair sat under the window, its vinyl cracked and warm from the sun.

Sense Breakdown

The analyzer tracks these five channels:

Sense	Example keywords
Sight	saw, looked, bright, dark, shadow, glowing
Sound	heard, silence, loud, echo, whisper, crash
Touch	felt, rough, smooth, cold, hot, sharp, wet
Taste	sweet, sour, bitter, metallic, chewed
Smell	scent, odor, fragrant, musty, reek

Scenes using ≤1 sense (with more than 3 paragraphs) are flagged.

Configuration

No configuration options.

Technical Details

• Source: prose-craft
• Scope: Scene-level
• Minimum text: Scenes must have more than 3 paragraphs to be analyzed
• Method: Regex matching against five category-specific word lists