How Do Authors Describe Astral Scans In Urban Fantasy Novels?

I love the quick, punchy way some modern urban fantasies handle astral scans — like unlocking a secret HUD and getting a dump of gossip and danger. When I picture a scan, it’s often a clean visual: energy concentric rings spreading out, little icons bobbing where spirits or secrets hide. I read these scenes on my phone during lunch and they make me grin because they blend street-level grit with a hacker’s gloss.

Authors usually pick one strong sensory mode and stick with it: sound (a chorus of voices), sight (flickering sigils), or texture (sticky memories). For practical writing tips, I try to imagine three things: the limiter (what keeps the scan from being all-powerful), the signature (how a presence looks or sounds), and the cost (fatigue, attraction of predators, or temporary blindness). Short scans feel like detective tools; long ones become voyages. I like it when writers toss in small, human details — a mother’s lullaby echoing in a subway tunnel, or a bar’s neon sign translated into a spirit’s name — because those moments make the supernatural feel part of the city instead of pasted on. If you’re experimenting with scans, play with anchors (objects or smells) and show, don’t tell — let the scan reveal a single, weird detail that changes a character’s next move.

There’s something almost cinematic about how urban fantasy authors describe astral scans — like a slow panning shot that moves from neon storefronts to the bones of a city’s spirit. When I read a scene about someone sweeping the skyline with their consciousness, I lean into the sensory metaphors: authors will make it tactile (a breeze of color across the tongue), visual (streets laid out like veins of light), and occasionally synesthetic (the alley smells like old regrets). I tend to keep a notebook beside me when I read these passages on late trains or in cafés, because I love jotting down the little turns of phrase that make a scan feel lived-in — “static in the back alleys,” “memory-heat over the old cinema,” or “a pulse like a tap on a radiator.” Those images tell you how the writer thinks about the city’s metaphysics.

Mechanics are where authors get playful. Some describe scans as almost clinical, using terms like radius, frequency, and interference — you can picture a practitioner tuning a dial to find a particular scent of presence. Others go poetic: a scan is described as laying a net of intention, or as a chorus of whispers that become a map. I notice three common beats: entry (how you leave the body or slip attention elsewhere), mapping (the sensory lexicon the author chooses — light, color, sound, metallic taste), and consequence (what you find and what it costs). Good writing always anchors those beats in stakes: is this scan dangerous? Does it burn out the seer? Can it reveal lies? That’s what converts a cool image into narrative tension.

I love when writers borrow from other genres — detective noir gives scans an interrogation vibe, cyberpunk leans into UI metaphors (floating icons, cursor-targeted memories), and mythic urban fantasy will contrast the scan against ritual: candles, sigils, ancestral names. Authors also use countermeasures in fun ways — wards making areas appear as static on the scan, emotional noise blurring details, or technology that records but doesn’t interpret. If you’re trying to write a scan, pick a few consistent sensory rules, decide on a cost, and let setting inform the metaphors. For me, the best scans leave a little residue on the page: a tiny, uncanny detail that makes me want to go back and reread the scene with a flashlight.