Synesthesia Script
Synesthesia Script
I smelled a good book the other day. Does that count?
I smelled a good book the other day. Does that count?
You live in a world where sound has color, time has texture, and emotions have taste. Maybe you always have. Maybe you’re just realizing it now.
Your task is to write a script, narrative, or poem where the senses blur together—where colors hum, where music is something you can hold, where touch is more than pressure but also a sound, a feeling, a shape. This is synesthesia—a neurological phenomenon where one sense triggers another. Some people naturally see letters in color. Some taste words. Some hear light.
In this piece, you will create a world where synesthesia is not just a sensory experience but a storytelling technique. Maybe your protagonist literally experiences the world this way. Maybe reality itself bends, rewriting the rules of perception. Maybe time feels like silk, or lies taste like metal. However you approach it, the senses must collide in ways that challenge how we normally experience the world.
Blur the Boundaries – Do colors make sounds? Do emotions have weight? Does language taste different when spoken aloud?
Anchor it in Narrative – This is not just an experiment in language—there should be meaning behind the way senses mix.
Let the Reader Feel It – The descriptions should be so vivid, the audience should start to feel as if their own senses are shifting.
Experiment with Form – Maybe the text itself changes—colors, boldness, formatting—to reflect the way perception is altered.
If a character sees sound, what does a voice look like?
If time has texture, what does regret feel like?
If emotions have taste, what does joy taste like? What does fear?
If words have shape, what does it mean to say something sharp, something soft, something broken?
The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Film) – A surreal film that translates poetry into visual and sensory experiences.
Bluets (Maggie Nelson) – A book that fixates on one color but spins outward into feeling, memory, and sensation.
e.e. cummings’ Poetry – Language that bends perception, making sound and structure as important as meaning.
The Synaesthesia Dictionary (Actual Research) – Real accounts from synesthetes describing how their senses blend in unique ways.
The classroom is too cold, the kind of air-conditioned chill that settles into skin, creeping under sleeves and against the backs of hands. She pulls her hoodie tighter around her arms as she moves toward her seat.
The other students are drifting in, moving without urgency, slinging backpacks onto chairs, scraping sneakers against linoleum. Darren wears his usual basketball hoodie, the sleeves bunched around his elbows, earbuds tucked into the collar. His laugh is already in the air, warm, loose, the color of melted amber—golden, easy, loud in the way that makes people turn toward it.
Jordan and Brianna sit close, too close, their heads tilted together. They are wrapped in something thick, something electric, something that hums with static and orange light. Brianna flicks at Darren’s sleeve, a small movement, a reflex. Her nails click against his skin, acrylic against fabric.
His voice spills across the space between them, filling the air like syrup, pooling at the edges of the desks, thick, sticky, too slow to evaporate. She can hear it, feel it, taste it—something warm, something golden, something too sweet.
Brianna laughs.
It cracks.
The sound is blue.
She flinches, though she isn’t sure why.
Darren leans back in his chair, stretching, spreading himself wider, his arms lazy over the desk, the space around him. He is always so comfortable. He says something low, something just for Brianna, and she swats at him again, a reflex, a play, a dance.
The room tilts, slightly.
She is looking at Darren’s hands now.
They are large. Tanned. Scarred in small places—a faded white line along his knuckle, a pinkish scratch near the wrist. Hands made for grip, for movement, for possession. Hands that take up space.
The air smells green.
Darren laughs again, and the sound presses against her ribs, not sharp, not violent, but heavy, a weight settling onto her sternum.
Something is shifting. The classroom was whole, it was full, it was busy, it was alive—but now something is peeling away.
Jordan says something, another joke, and Brianna lets her head fall against his shoulder, laughing, warm, golden, golden, golden.
Darren laughs, and the sound splits the air.
The color of melting ice.
Her fingers curl against the edge of her desk.
She thought she could do this.
She thinks she still can.
Mr. Ellis claps his hands together, a sharp sound that cuts through the air, silver and thin. The words on the board are already bleeding into each other, smudging at the edges.
“Alright, everyone. Let’s settle.”
A shuffle of notebooks opening. A chair pushed an inch too far. The scent of ink, blue, too blue, pressed too deep into the page.
“We’re going to start with a group project.”
The room moves, just slightly, the colors folding into one another. Gold and static. Blue and weight. Green and thick, thick, thick.
She looked at Darren, a momentary flicker of insanity.
His eyes, dark, embalmed in a memory unlike hers, find hers.
He winks.
Oh no.
I didn’t mean to.
The floor is gone. The chair, the desk, the classroom—all of it dissolves, swallowed whole by the space behind my ribs, the space I have kept hollow, the space I have kept safe.
The air is wet. Thick, humid, breathing. The smell is sour metal, sweat curling at the edges of chlorine and synthetic rubber.
The locker room.
I am not there. I am here.
I am here.
But I hear it. The slow drip of water from a faucet that doesn’t turn off, the sharp snap of a towel flicked against the air, the shuffle of sneakers against tile.
I am not there.
But I smell it. The iron of old pipes, the musk of skin, the warmth of something still alive, something too close. The cold. The cold of metal against the curve of my back.
I am not there.
But I taste it. The sound of laughter that wasn’t mine. The sound of a lock clicking into place. The sound of silence, stretching, breaking.
I wasn’t there.
I was.
I blink.
The classroom returns. The lights hum. The students shuffle. The desk beneath my fingers is solid, but my body is not.
Darren stretches again, easy, lazy, comfortable in a way I will never be again.
He is golden, smooth, syrup-thick in the air, settling between the desks, between my teeth, between the spaces I thought I had locked away.
I taste blue.
I smell green.
I hear the sound of my own breath, too loud, too slow, slipping out between my lips as if I am trying to hold something in that refuses to stay.
She exhales.
I inhale.
The lines between the two grow thin.
I cannot look at him I must not look at him I fix my eyes to the page I anchor myself in ink and letters in the solidity of words because words are real they are structured they are still they do not change
but the page is breathing
the ink is no longer words no longer letters no longer safe the lines have melted their edges curling into one another cells multiplying dividing shifting forming a shape that is not mine not his but somehow both my fingers tighten against the desk the wood is warm it should not be warm why is it warm the words are running they are too fast too slow they are spilling into each other breaking at the edges sentences colliding into a single endless strand presentpastfuturemeneverhimnotme
the sounds bleed into each other the taste of air is thick it is thick it is thick thickthickthick
no one notices
the teacher is still talking the students are still laughing and stretching and breathing as if the world has not broken beneath my hands as if the floor has not dropped away from beneath my feet as if I am still here
I was here
I am here
I will not be here
I cannot be here
My name is on the board it is not
my name it is
my name it does not belong to
me but it is
mine
Darren moves
I do not see him but I feel him
his presence gold and glass and syrup his movement ripples through the air I do not look but I feel the weight of his shadow pressing against the edges of my vision the paper is no longer paper it is a mouth a hollow a shape forming itself around me forming itself into me forming words that I cannot speak
I am sinking
I am breaking
I am—