# Describing things?



## Burst (May 20, 2012)

Is there anyways to get better at describing things? Because I am having a hard time describing things in the story that I am writing and I was wondering if anyone had any tips to help me out here? I'm good at dialogue...just not this stuff...


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## Ophiucha (May 20, 2012)

Describing what, in particular?

Generally speaking, practice makes perfect. When you have ten minutes, pick an object or person at random. Describe it in your notebook. Reread. Look for repetition and redundancies, and remove them. Try to keep in mind the (technically inaccurate) five senses. Work at it until you're happy with it.

In the story sense: pick out why you're describing something. What makes them worth describing. What about them is worth describing. Important characters get more description than minor characters. Sometimes, minor characters are missing a leg. That's worth describing! The fact that they have brown eyes, though, probably isn't.

How to write descriptions just at all? Vary up sentence structure. Not every sentence should be "Jane is a redhead. Jane is tall. Jane is thin." Change it up and describe the more interesting things in more detail. "Jane had red hair and brown eyes that matched her freckles. Her body was elfish, tall and lean, and even her ears seemed a little more pointed than the average girl's." That's a little flowery, but you get the idea.


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## ThinkerX (May 20, 2012)

Get a Thesaurus.  Write your initial description.  Take note of repeated words, especially the descriptive ones.  Then consult the Thesaurus for alternatives to those words.  Try to keep the descriptions short, yet clear.


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## morfiction (May 20, 2012)

I'm good at describing stuff in detail but my dialogue suffers from wordiness. Too much Shakespeare reading I guess.


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## Aidan of the tavern (May 22, 2012)

Indeed, a thesaurus is invaluable, preferably in book form rather than online.  If there's something you're not happy with just check up various phrases that mean the same thing and pick the most appropriate ones.  Eventually you'll store up a range of descriptive words in your head for a rainy day.


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## ArielFingolfin (May 23, 2012)

Make sure you can see it clearly in your head first. Then write your description without worrying about how it sounds, just make it as detailed and wordy as you want. Then once you've got it you can clean it up and start to pare it down. When I write descriptions, I like to make them very short; I call them 'flash images', but that' my style. Once you have your description on a seperate paper, you can weave it into your story. It's like having a picture to go off of.


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## Penpilot (May 23, 2012)

Description flows out of your POV character. What gets "camera focus" and how it is described depends on the POV character. Two different characters put in the same scene will see, notice, and describe things differently.  

Imagine a character describing a nobleman they happen to see on a street.

A Thief will probably notice how large the nobleman's coin purse is or if he's carrying a sword. Maybe he'll notice if he looks like a fighter or if he has any guards.

A Soldier may notice his too soft hands, or his weak chin, or weak stride, or his fancy sword that has no signs of wear. 

Word choices will come from character too. A thief may call the noble a mark or easy pray. A soldier may call the noble a fancy man or a useless tick suckling on the teet of the common man, or his royal nobleness. 

Make sense?


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## Flemming Hansen (Jun 25, 2012)

Perhaps you already know this, but the 'Show' not 'Tell' technique is quite good for adding detail and flow to whatever you want to describe.
Michael Sullivan has made a good blog post on this: Author Michael J. Sullivan's Official Website: Writing Advice 5 – Show and Tell


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## Robert Donnell (Jun 25, 2012)

The gizmo was all squares and circles not to complement each other but apparently because the designers were in a hurry.  The material was an uninteresting shade of semi-gloss black because the injection molding subcontractor had run out of beige.  The screen was at an awkward height as a cost cutting measure. As a final insult to the poor bugger who had the great misfortune on being forced to use the accursed thing, it was incorrectly installed so that if you attempted to adjust the screen in any fashion whatsoever  it would unplug itself from the wall.  That is all I care to say about it.  If you attempt to make light of my working conditions again I will bite your ear off.


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## Bear (Jun 25, 2012)

I love describing things. Sometimes I go overboard and get to purply and flowery but I can't help it. That's something I'm working on. In my first book I described water flowing down a window over the course of a long paragraph. I get out of control sometimes. The only thing I worry about is that I try to stray too far away from the heavy description and end up with something sterile instead of filled with life and jump. It's a fine line you have to walk.

A thesaurus helps a great deal and having a bit of patience so that you spend the time on the descriptive parts without skipping to the action.


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## Zophos (Jun 25, 2012)

ArielFingolfin said:


> Make sure you can see it clearly in your head first. Then write your description without worrying about how it sounds, just make it as detailed and wordy as you want. Then once you've got it you can clean it up and start to pare it down. When I write descriptions, I like to make them very short; I call them 'flash images', but that' my style. Once you have your description on a seperate paper, you can weave it into your story. It's like having a picture to go off of.



^This.

I recommend watching "The Prestige" and treating Michael Cain's description of a magic trick as "the book" on  how to describe something.  That whole story hinges on disclosing details slowly and with purpose.  Cain names the acts of the trick the Pledge, the Turn, and of course, the Prestige.

You can't just blather out every detail about a person, place, pickle or penchant all at once. Doing so tends to make your descriptions quite vanilla and lifeless.  Initially, you have to provide just enough superficial or critically important detail to get by. Why's it important, what is obvious, what makes it distinct, what makes it ordinary, ...?

Once you've done that, if your "thing" sticks around and becomes significant enough, you wander your way down the trail of revealing still more important facts, and more importantly surprises, about your "thing". You do that  throughout the narrative and when it makes sense or becomes useful to do so.

The Prestige should be reserved for your protagaonist and only the most important of agents active in your work.  With them, you slip in the twist on the turn, the change, the evolution, the culmination.  It's important you reserve this level for them because they are the focus.

...or if you're not into all that flowery speech about pickles, you just follow Mr. Hansen's very apt advice to show vice tell.


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## Codey Amprim (Jun 25, 2012)

Try checking this thread out: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/950-when-its-too-much-too-little-descriptions.html

I had a similar question a while back, this might help you. I didn't know what was the limit of too much description or too little when writing, and I received a lot of good feedback. 

As for my two cents, I would just practice at it. I'm not the best at describing things, but I let the more important items sit and stir in my head for awhile as I analyze how best to describe how I see it. And nothing is set in stone, you can always come back to the descriptions later on! Try reading some other works and pay attention to how they describe everything, from the smallest action, to the most paramount of things.

Good luck!


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## Steerpike (Jun 25, 2012)

Bear said:


> I love describing things. Sometimes I go overboard and get to purply and flowery but I can't help it. That's something I'm working on. In my first book I described water flowing down a window over the course of a long paragraph. I get out of control sometimes. The only thing I worry about is that I try to stray too far away from the heavy description and end up with something sterile instead of filled with life and jump. It's a fine line you have to walk.



There is nothing inherently wrong with being very descriptive, it is just harder to pull of than it is to write a novel that is more lean. For a good example of highly descriptive Fantasy, see Mervyn Peake's _Gormenghast_ books. The writing is brilliant, and the lush, artful descriptions are part of what make the books great.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 26, 2012)

A good way to improve is to find examples of it done well in other books. Examine them, break them down, identify the various details and how they're conveyed.


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## ArielFingolfin (Jun 27, 2012)

Zophos said:


> ^This.
> 
> I recommend watching "The Prestige" and treating Michael Cain's description of a magic trick as "the book" on  how to describe something.  That whole story hinges on disclosing details slowly and with purpose.  Cain names the acts of the trick the Pledge, the Turn, and of course, the Prestige.



I love that movie, but I never thought of applying it to writing. Pretty cool


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## Zophos (Jun 29, 2012)

ArielFingolfin said:


> I love that movie, but I never thought of applying it to writing. Pretty cool



Yeah, I felt compelled to put it on while I was dithering around on the computer today because of this very thread. I hadn't ever really thought of putting the two together, either, but it popped in my head when I was reading your reply.


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## studentofrhythm (Jun 30, 2012)

Kerouac wrote: "don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better."  I've read that the biggest challenge to drawing, too, isn't so much technique as clearly seeing what you're going to draw.  I often close my eyes and imagine myself in a place, seeing, hearing, smelling, doing whatever, then aim at calling up that perception in the reader.  My faith has been that such an approach will free the right words.


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## Ireth (Jul 7, 2012)

I'm noticing more and more lately that I'm really not great at describing landscapes. There's almost no description of the Faerie forest in either book of my duology, and I think that really needs to change. In the second book, my characters are going to be spending three weeks travelling through the woods, so I really should put more words into showing what the woods look like. Any advice on this?


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## Devor (Jul 7, 2012)

Ireth said:


> Any advice on this?



Sure, two things.  If you can wrap your brain around how the magic works and affects the forest, the specific changes will be easy.  The second thing, come up with a baseline - pull up, ohh I don't know, an essay on the wildlife of Sherwood forest - and start with that as a base.

I mean, you don't have to do any of that.  But the more of it you do, the richer it'll get - do it just enough to get what you need for your story (or slightly more, then pare back as you write).


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jul 7, 2012)

I'm the same way Ireth. I can tell you how I tackle this situation. Maybe it will work for you.

My tendency is too describe setting very minimally (if at all) during the first draft. The 2nd draft I usually use to eliminate weak writing (adverb overuse, bad descriptors, etc). 

The 3rd draft focuses on adding characterization through a character's dialogue & actions (the way they speak or repeated mannerism).

In the 4th draft I try to enrich the surroundings by writing in a lot of setting. By this time the story is pretty firm so I feel comfortable placing my characters in permanent settings. The way I work, I've found that too much changes with my characters during the early drafts to spend any meaningful time on anything but them.

Hope that helps.


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## Penpilot (Jul 7, 2012)

Ireth said:


> Any advice on this?



I try to use the feel of our world to describe my worlds in my writing. Try finding an open, but not too open, place, preferably a forest or a park but even a city plaza surrounded by concrete buildings will work, then sit for 15 minutes. Observe your surroundings with your eyes, overlay the world of your fiction onto this world, see what things become. Then close your eyes, listen and feel your surroundings, again pretending it's your fiction world, what do the sounds you hear represent. In a city plaza, the buildings can become trees, the car horns the call of wild creatures, the smells the taste of exhaust into a pungent smell of a bad smelling flower.

I know this sounds all artsy but try to capture the feel of the location, and when you write, try to recall bits of the feelings you felt to use in the description.


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## Androxine Vortex (Jul 7, 2012)

Try to think about everything that is happening about the situation/thing you are describing. For example, you could say:

Alex picked up the sword.

But that sounds kind of boring. You could say:

Alex hesitantly picked up the ancient sword, it's surface gleaming and polished.

That sounds a bit better. Just try to keep what's happening all in consideration. If the character is walking you could say how their footsteps echo in the empty hall, or what the character is thinking, or just anything really. Look at what you want to describe and begin observing it. Think about everything and every detail revolving around it. You don't have to literaly know everything or tell the reader everything but it helps and you get a more organized idea.


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## Kenny_K75 (Jul 8, 2012)

There's another thread with info on this at 
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/4159-descriptive-passages.html
Hope it helps...


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## Ghost (Jul 9, 2012)

Ireth said:


> There's almost no description of the Faerie forest in either book of my duology, and I think that really needs to change. In the second book, my characters are going to be spending three weeks travelling through the woods, so I really should put more words into showing what the woods look like. Any advice on this?



Hm, if you've envisioned the forest it helps to be specific in the description. An alpine forest is very different from a rainforest. The forest has a different feel dependong on the season—spring or fall, wet or dry. Things like scents, sounds, visibility, and the types of trees and creatures that live there can add to the scene. I imagine myself walking there. Is it rocky? Grassy? Full of roots or groundcover? Is the canopy dense, making everything dark? Or are the trees short and sparse? I'm not saying you should go on and on about it, but it's easier to imagine if I know it's scrubby forest in boulder-strewn hills or a forest filled with lakes, wild berries, and pines as far as the eye can see. A good way to use that kind of description is to show how the setting helps or hinders your characters.

Since it's a fae forest, I'd try giving it some personality. Maybe it's beautiful but dangerous, dark and melancholy, or cheerful but somehow false. I usually have a good idea of what the scenery is like, but when I have trouble I infuse aspects of something unrelated. The forest could be like a gothic cathedral, Disneyland, a heavy metal concert, a painting by Andrew Wyeth, or Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. Having a reference point is useful when I don't know where to go, and using something unrelated forces me to think of the scenery in new way.

I also play up what the characters feel. If it's frightening, what's frightening about it? If the character thinks it's lovely, what makes him think so? Being specific about how the setting inspires feelings is better than being vague. Those things can easily be colored by the character's views.

You could describe the most obvious things in the beginning and sprinkle in the tidbits your characters learn as they travel. Sure, they immediately noticed the purple trees, but it might take them longer to realize vines overtook their path until try they double back.

I'd keep in mind what the character is likely to notice, how important it is or what it adds to the setting, and what impact it has when experienced by that particular character.

(I'm not sure how useful any of this would be to Burst, but I think these things can be applied to other settings and to characters.)


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