Scent journal: Writing a memory from a smell

What’s the difference between smelling, remembering, and imagining?

These three actions can follow one another on the same page. Today, you smell bread. It brings to mind an old kitchen. To make the scene flow more smoothly, you then add an open window, though you’re not sure it was there. The problem isn’t the addition itself; it’s only presenting it as a detail you certainly remembered.

So keep three phrases at hand: “today, I smell…,” “it reminds me of…,” and “to tell this scene, I imagine….” The first describes your experience in the moment. The second signals a personal association. The third makes room for creativity explicitly. You can mix them, as long as you know what you’re doing.

This distinction keeps you from asking too much of your journal. A vivid impression doesn’t mean you have to know every fact about a scene. If you want to tell a family story, you can look up a date separately in a letter or photo. Our page on facts and interpretations in a journal offers another way to keep these columns separate.

What does research say about smells and memories?

In a comparative study published in 2002, Rachel Herz and Jonathan Schooler studied the emotional qualities of memories prompted by olfactory, visual, and verbal cues. In that study, memories associated with smells were described as more emotional. This finding concerns how participants experienced recalling them; it doesn’t show that the memories were more accurate. The distinction matters for your writing: an emotional scene can remain partly uncertain.

The review by Saive, Royet, and Plailly, published in 2014, distinguishes several approaches to olfactory memory: recognizing a smell, associating it with an event, or recalling an autobiographical episode. These tasks aren’t interchangeable. Writing a page at home doesn’t replicate their protocol or an assessment of memory. You can keep in mind the variety of associations without attributing universal power to a scent.

A 2016 review by Rachel Herz also examines research on memories prompted by smells and their possible links to emotions. It discusses individual differences and conditions of use. It does not validate our workshop as a treatment. The goal here remains literary and personal: to find words, build a scene, and choose what you want to do with it.

For a complementary perspective, watch this video from RMIT University.

What starting point can I choose without turning it into a whole experiment?

Start with something already part of your everyday life: preparing food, clean laundry, the wood of a piece of furniture, or a word you came across in a book. You don’t need to buy anything to build a collection. Don’t search for an unfamiliar smell in a cleaning product or an unlabeled bottle. The purpose of the page is to describe, not to deliberately expose yourself to a smell.

You can also write without a smell being present. Write “recalled smell: orange” or “imagined scene: entering a bakery.” This small note is enough to guide the reader. It keeps a mental image from being mistaken for a present-day observation. If you’d rather use another sense, the personal audio journal opens a path through voice and sounds.

Choose one starting point for this page. If several scenes come to mind, write their titles in the margin and return to the first one. You don’t have to decide which one is the most profound. A modest detail, like the sound of a spoon paired with a kitchen smell, often gives you more to write about than a general statement about your entire childhood.

How can I fill out the six prompts in my scent journal?

1. Name the starting point

Write a few words about the situation at hand: “making a drink,” “opening a box,” or “reading the word vanilla.” Indicate whether the smell is present, evoked, or imagined. You don’t need to rate its intensity on a scale. What matters is being able to remember later why this page began.

2. Describe before explaining

Look for two or three words that match your impression. A concrete comparison can help: dry as paper, round like a ripe fruit, smoky like fabric near a fire. These comparisons are personal. They don’t prove what a product contains or what someone else should perceive.

3. Set the scene

Note the place or moment that comes to mind, even if it’s vague. “A hallway, maybe during a vacation” is more faithful than adding a date to fill in the page. You can also write “no place comes to mind.” This answer leaves your writing open; it doesn’t signal a memory failure or a lack of imagination.

4. Find an action

Ask yourself what someone is doing in this scene: setting down a bag, folding a sleeve, turning a page. An action helps you move from the label “pleasant smell” to a story. The guide to write a scene without dialogue offers more pointers for moving a piece of writing forward through actions and objects.

5. Make room for uncertainty

Add a sentence about what you don’t know: the season, someone’s identity, or the color of a room. You can leave this section blank, but it deserves to be there. If you later turn the text into fiction, choose the details you add deliberately. The writing exercise with a constraint can help you explore that other version.

6. Choose an ending

End with what you want to keep: an expression, an object to draw, or a question to leave for later. You don’t have to draw a lesson from the scene. A final descriptive sentence may be enough. To make the format even shorter, you can keep a single sentence in your journal, with the starting point and one chosen detail.

The workshop preserves your wording, including when you’re unsure. It doesn’t try to automatically produce a more dramatic memory. Review the output before copying it to the medium of your choice. You can replace people’s or places’ names if you want to work on a scene without keeping that information in the text.

What words can I use when a smell seems indescribable?

You don’t have to find the technical adjective. Start with a contrast that genuinely helps you: light or dense, near or far, familiar or unexpected. Then replace one of the words with a personal image. “Dense like the kitchen entrance after a meal” already tells a story about a context without claiming to identify molecules.

The following cards are writing prompts. Their associations are neither a ranking of scents nor a mandatory match between a smell and an emotion. The same evocation may feel welcoming to you, neutral to someone else, or bring no scene to mind at all.

If nothing comes to mind, write about the surroundings right now or choose a different starting point. You can keep a page titled “a word I can’t describe yet.” To work directly with the memory rather than its sensory entry point, the guide for writing about a specific memory offers a way to define the boundaries of an event.

How can I reread without correcting who I used to be?

First, reread your text to understand it for yourself. Underline what describes a sensation, then what tells a scene. You can leave any uncertainty as it is. You can add a dated note when you reread it in the future: “today, I’d tell it differently.” The two versions don’t have to cancel each other out.

If you’d like to give the page a visual form, add a color or a small drawing. The creative journal with collage offers another medium for bringing materials and words together. You can photograph an object, but its image doesn’t have to become proof of the whole story. A recipe and memory journal can also hold a scene connected to cooking.

The text is yours. Decide separately whether you want to share it, with whom, and in what form. The guide for protect your journal’s privacy helps you think about the format and access. If a scene becomes distressing, you can close the notebook, switch to a neutral description, or stop. There’s no creative benefit to forcing yourself to continue.

What small action can I choose after writing?

You can simply close the notebook. If you’d like to continue the page, choose a concrete action that’s up to you: write down a question for someone close to you, draw the object, or set aside a page for another version. These are writing possibilities; there’s no obligation to act or to feel a particular emotion.

Miraya can support you in choosing an intention and a small step. The app is not a scent journal and cannot authenticate your memories. This feature highlights existing tools to help you prepare an action you choose after this page, if that feels right for you at the moment.

Sources

• Herz, R. S., and Schooler, J. W. (2002). Comparative study of autobiographical memories evoked by olfactory and visual cues. DOI: 10.2307/1423672.
• Saive, A.-L., Royet, J.-P., and Plailly, J. (2014). Review of the neural bases of episodic memory for odors and the different approaches to studying it. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00240.
• Herz, R. S. (2016). Review of odor-evoked memories, emotions, and their limits in application. DOI: 10.3390/brainsci6030022.
• CNRS. How smell unlocks memory | RMIT University · RMIT University. Audiovisual content distinct from our creative exercise.