What do you do to improve your descriptive writing?

[Incanus]

I love, for myself, when a writer can describe something in a new way. Not a visual way, but a way I've never heard before.[/I]

In that case, you might want to give Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books a gander. He pretty well does this kind of thing non-stop, and almost over-the-top, though a visual component is often used. I've never seen anything like it before, or since. It may well be the books' most prominent feature; a rich, sumptuous feast of imagery and ideas, with sentences as twisty and winding as the passages of Gormenghast itself. Light-years from where I'm at.

 

[Chessie]

I love, for myself, when a writer can describe something in a new way. Not a visual way, but a way I've never heard before.

Her love was an oatmeal kind of love. Cold and grey and bland and yet nourishing in its simplicity.

Yea...um...that makes me think her love isn't the kind that I'd want. How can oatmeal be cold and gray (fix'd lol). Oatmeal is warm and nourishing so that example, while it sounds nice, leaves me confused. But I like that this description is straight to the point and makes me think, makes me feel something asap. I'll be the first to admit that purple prose takes me out of the story. After about 4 sentences, I'm done. Eyes glazed. Then I'll skip that passage and read another part of the story. Maybe this is why I do better with cozy mysteries than most fantasies, idk. Although my newfound love for Mercedes Lackey is hotter than hell's fire so...there's that.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think the point of the metaphor is that her love is plain, unexciting & stale, past its prime, & yet you could depend on her being there and doing what was needed.

 

[Heliotrope]

Lol. The point is not really the meaning of the passage, but more about how wonderful it is we have such a vast variety of minds that decide to write.

So many voices. So many styles. So many ways of describing the same thing. So many philosophies.

Some people love deep intricate worlds where each meal is explained in mouth watering detail. Some love the depth of the human element described with such bare language that they are forced to inject their own experiences, while others want something that shakes their soul...

I personally love them all...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Nobel prize winner One Hundred Years of Solitude is amazing:

At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on a bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

But the story is not a caveman story, it is set in the 1800s to 1900s... So what he means is that to the mc it was new. The mc was a toddler and didn't know the names of things and had to point at everything.

I love that stuff.

But I also love Jack Reacher... So, yeah.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

I couldn't disagree more.

In my opinion, you want your reader to be an active participant in your story. Active participation engages the mind. It aids immersion. It can make your story world more real.

For example: If I'm describing a scene with a school bully, I could go into great detail about what the bully looks like (down to the stitching on clothes if I wanted), all the equipment on the playground, the color of brick used to build the schoolhouse, etc. Or, I could give a few specific, but meaningful details, like how the playground smelled like piss the moment that bully roughed up my friend, & allow the reader to fill in the blanks from their own experience.

We've all likely experienced bullying at some point in our lives, first-hand or second. If the reader imbues my story with their real life experiences (what the bully they remember looked like, the shape of the playground slide from their childhood), the scene will come to life for them more than my attempts at detailed description ever could.

The reader's true life experiences are what PenPilot meant by "tinder". My conveying of the scene and its events is the "spark".

Now, if the details of the bully & playground are somehow important & relevant to the story, perhaps the minute details need be told.

That's the choice I've made for my writing. It won't be the same for all. Some use a lot more description than I do to great effect. Some use less. It can be done either way, and done well. You can do anything in writing as long as it's interesting. The issue with overly detailed description rests within details that aren't truly necessary, and therefore, slow the story with little added effect, boring the reader.

I've found the reader's active participation, in adding texture of their own to my scene, my description, helps to keep things interesting.

If the audience has to participate then I haven't done my job, I need to go back and wright another draft. I approach a story as a spectator, the book is lens through I am able to observes the subject, the protagonist or protagonists. Unfortunately that lens has been blacked out and with every line of description the lens is wiped a little cleaner. With each new thing or change to the old the lens is blackened and must be cleansed once more. While I do indeed find poetic descriptions of thing beautiful I also find self-indulgent and grandiloquent on the part of the writer...

"Look,look, see how clever I can be!"

I have no problem with a vast and varied means of self expression, I just used "grandiloquent". However all that beauty most not
get in the way of the point,feeding the audience information so that a clear image will form in their minds of what is transpiring.

So do it!

You have already a great advantage: You have found your purpose as a writer, so pursue it with zealously.

Evidently I had not useful advice for you, for I’m never just a spectator. I’m an active reader/watcher/listener. I engage. I enjoy finding the gaps where my experiences become a link with what I read. I like the puzzles niche in the writing cues of unfilled sentences, so I have no useful words for a writer that is looking to fill every gap, that is trying to solve every puzzle for me.

I can only encourage you to find the way to convey your unique reality, the spectators reality, and to seduce us with this unique voice into forgetting emotions and interactions. Make us spectators of your work.

You are a spectator you just don't realize it , do you follow sports,celebrities, do you watch documentaries, the new stories that pop through your feed of choice. Do those events and the people in the effect you despite the fact that you are most assuredly not right beside the subject or at the point of the event? I'd guess yes to at least one, now why do you feel despite being only a spectator? The answer is empathy, you feel for them despite being you,being a spectator doesn't preclude investments in the events that are unfolding.

I may have very a hard path to walk if the modern literary convention is that incompletion = depth. I'm not talking about being mysterious,or leading the audience to a false conclusion to surprise them later. The Image of the world must be clear and understandable. The audience shouldn't have to read a description three times to find out what something is supposed to be, picking up a thesaurus or dictionary is however acceptable. All that musical description is noise if it doesn't convey what the thing is and what unfolding events are.

The abstraction must create the concrete.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Abstract is the opposite of concrete.

I'm sure you understand that. I'm just making the statement, as a point of reference, because I truly don't understand your position any longer.

Are you able to provide an example where the abstract creates a concrete image, understanding, or concept that would be the same for every reader?

I simply can't envision how that would work.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Words are abstractions, right? When we use words to describe something, those words become an abstraction of that which we describe. The transformation from the abstract (the words on the page) to the concrete (the image of that which is described) occurs within the mind of the reader.

This is audience participation.




...and I find the notion of love like oatmeal kind of... unsettling?

 

[AJ Stevens]

I think this has descended into something of a paradox, and the question is perhaps not one of participation, but one of control. The reader has no control over the words that end up on the page, and has only that to work with to create an image in their mind. Likewise, the author has no control over the mind of the reader. Oh, he/she can do their best to guide the mind in a certain direction, and I think this is what L&E is getting at. As the writer, it is his/her job to ensure that the reader's mind takes a certain path. Which is true, but with shades of grey. It's a matter of taste, and again, the writer has no control over that. Some readers want every last detail; some want just enough to be able to fill in the gaps how they see fit.

Of course, the beauty of reading is that no matter how hard you try as a writer, you will elicit a wonderfully diverse range of images in your readers' minds, because we're all different.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Words are abstractions, right?

True. I was thinking in terms of abstract description vs. concrete description, as in the abstraction pyramid.

...no matter how hard you try as a writer, you will elicit a wonderfully diverse range of images in your readers' minds, because we're all different.

Exactly. Why fight the impossible battle when you can use this certain effect to your advantage?

 

[Logos&Eidos]

Abstract is the opposite of concrete.

I'm sure you understand that. I'm just making the statement, as a point of reference, because I truly don't understand your position any longer.

Are you able to provide an example where the abstract creates a concrete image, understanding, or concept that would be the same for every reader?

I simply can't envision how that would work.

Any clear description in a book is going from abstract to concrete.
Words are abstractions of things that exist in the world, and we writers use those abstractions to create concrete images in the mind of the reader.

Words are abstractions, right? When we use words to describe something, those words become an abstraction of that which we describe. The transformation from the abstract (the words on the page) to the concrete (the image of that which is described) occurs within the mind of the reader.

This is audience participation.




...and I find the notion of love like oatmeal kind of... unsettling?

No that is being a spectator for you are watching the events unfold through the lens, which is the book. Through and clear description images scene through that lens become clear and concise. Leaving room for the audience is doing a half job, its a film
missing frames.

I think this has descended into something of a paradox, and the question is perhaps not one of participation, but one of control. The reader has no control over the words that end up on the page, and has only that to work with to create an image in their mind. Likewise, the author has no control over the mind of the reader. Oh, he/she can do their best to guide the mind in a certain direction, and I think this is what L&E is getting at. As the writer, it is his/her job to ensure that the reader's mind takes a certain path. Which is true, but with shades of grey. It's a matter of taste, and again, the writer has no control over that. Some readers want every last detail; some want just enough to be able to fill in the gaps how they see fit.

Of course, the beauty of reading is that no matter how hard you try as a writer, you will elicit a wonderfully diverse range of images in your readers' minds, because we're all different.

Your close maybe even on point.
I'll try to be plain and direct, a lot of what many people consider good writing I either don't or see as incomplete and some of what people would consider bad righting I see as essential, some of what people consider purple prose as long as it doesn't wax poetic I have absolutely no problem with.


Poetic language and impressionistic descriptions, can be obstructive. If the description doesn't serve the purpose of conveying clear information about the people/creatures,items, and environment then its just self-indulgent grandiloquence on the part of the author. Using big words and obscure terminology is fine, I've needed to whip out a dictionary while reading occasion.


Letting the reader fill in blanks is doing a half job as an author. I read to experience the world created by an author, I can deal with my own imagination on my own time. It's writers half doing their jobs and justifying it in the name of artistry. The only things that don't need to described are things that exist in the world to day and even then they could have something notable that warrants mention like gun powered that burned blue and smelled of ozone and burning metal.

 

[Svrtnsse]

No that is being a spectator for you are watching the events unfold through the lens, which is the book. Through and clear description images scene through that lens become clear and concise. Leaving room for the audience is doing a half job, its a film
missing frames.

No, what I was describing really was audience participation. But I'm starting to think we are referring to different things when we are talking about audience participation.

The way I see it, the book is not the lens. The reader is the lens. The words on the page may be the medium which is used to store the image, but the are still just words - they are not that which they describe.

It is not until the words are read that they become images in the mind of the reader. That is why the reader is the lens, and that is why I call it reader participation. Reader participation to me isn't about forcing the reader to make up parts of the story that I for some reason don't include.
It's about letting the reader breathe life into the images I give them.

 

[Geo]

Lol. The point is not really the meaning of the passage, but more about how wonderful it is we have such a vast variety of minds that decide to write.

Thank you Heliotrope for that great Garcia Marquez reference, not only is a great example of a description adapted and inherited from the POV of the character, but reading it in English was a new experience for me. An experience that had showed me (once more) that we put so much into what we read, and that most of our input is not even conscious.

Much in the vein of how the reader creates images depending of his/her own experience, and how we fill the gaps, I have to say that all I have ever read from Garcia Marquez I read in Spanish (which is my first language,). Spanish, much like English varies greatly from country to country, even in between regions of the same country. And the words, expressions, and phrasing used by Garcia Marquez are in itself pack with imagery, and make reference to very particular regions (like reading Harry Potter transports you to the UK, so to say).

So, I found fascinating that just by reading these sentences in English the image I formed of Macondo was completely different than the one I had from when I read the book in Spanish. Suddenly, I could not picture Macondo as this tiny village lost in the middle of the jungle but it turned into a small town from the mid west. I’m sure that if I keep reading, the image will come back to what it was (or at least move closer in that direction) but at the moment I’m surprise of how deep language differences affect us.

 

[Svrtnsse]

True. I was thinking in terms of abstract description vs. concrete description, as in the abstraction pyramid.

Got it.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect in this discussion about the meaning of audience participation, and there may be other terms used to mean different things too.

 

[FifthView]

Letting the reader fill in blanks is doing a half job as an author.

I see this differently. There are always blanks, because language is inexact, approximate. It's not so much a matter of letting a reader fill in those blanks; but rather, an inevitability.

But crucial to this, for me, is the idea of evocation.

I think we are way off base if we begin with the idea that language can express exactly an image or sets of images, laid out without gaps, blanks, or imperfection in a book and waiting for a reader to see that complete picture.

I do think that words are stimuli. The author may have an image in his head, but then he creates symbols meant to represent that image, and these symbols (words, sentences, and so forth) become stimuli for the reader who, seeing them, will have new images spring to mind. The new images are new, however informed by past experience–there is no direct mind-to-mind transference from author to reader, and even an image from memory is "new" in the sense of being "present," a biochemical process in the here-and-now. This is a process of evocation. The author creates stimuli which will, it is hoped, evoke the proper images within the reader's mind.

But imagery is not the end-all, be-all. In fact, objects without context and without motion–without consequence–actually rank very low, in my book, and may themselves be merely stimuli meant to evoke something else. The image of a bully tormenting a much younger child is not important simply because there is a bigger kid and a younger kid; no, it's what's happening, it's the memory of similar events in our own lives (whether experienced first-hand or from news stories or other literary examples). The importance in the bully-victim image may be in how it evokes a memory of an abusive older brother or father. And I don't need to know the color of the bully's hair in order to have that memory evoked.

So, it's all a matter of evocation. And, yes, the author bears great responsibility in this process. Even knowing that a reader will inevitably fill in blanks is important–or, that a reader will fail to fill in some blanks in the way the author intends. But it's not an exact science, because authors do not have perfect knowledge of every potential reader.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

No, what I was describing really was audience participation. But I'm starting to think we are referring to different things when we are talking about audience participation.

The way I see it, the book is not the lens. The reader is the lens. The words on the page may be the medium which is used to store the image, but the are still just words - they are not that which they describe.

It is not until the words are read that they become images in the mind of the reader. That is why the reader is the lens, and that is why I call it reader participation. Reader participation to me isn't about forcing the reader to make up parts of the story that I for some reason don't include.
It's about letting the reader breathe life into the images I give them.

No. The reader is a receiver and monitor, the book is a signal sent from the author to the reader.
And that signal must be as clear and comprehensives as the writer's skill can mange. You must,I must paint a picture
with the words, going from a blank canvas to the complete image one line at a time.

I see this differently. There are always blanks, because language is inexact, approximate. It's not so much a matter of letting a reader fill in those blanks; but rather, an inevitability.

But crucial to this, for me, is the idea of evocation.

I think we are way off base if we begin with the idea that language can express exactly an image or sets of images, laid out without gaps, blanks, or imperfection in a book and waiting for a reader to see that complete picture.

I do think that words are stimuli. The author may have an image in his head, but then he creates symbols meant to represent that image, and these symbols (words, sentences, and so forth) become stimuli for the reader who, seeing them, will have new images spring to mind. The new images are new, however informed by past experience—there is no direct mind-to-mind transference from author to reader, and even an image from memory is "new" in the sense of being "present," a biochemical process in the here-and-now. This is a process of evocation. The author creates stimuli which will, it is hoped, evoke the proper images within the reader's mind.

But imagery is not the end-all, be-all. In fact, objects without context and without motion—without consequence—actually rank very low, in my book, and may themselves be merely stimuli meant to evoke something else. The image of a bully tormenting a much younger child is not important simply because there is a bigger kid and a younger kid; no, it's what's happening, it's the memory of similar events in our own lives (whether experienced first-hand or from news stories or other literary examples). The importance in the bully-victim image may be in how it evokes a memory of an abusive older brother or father. And I don't need to know the color of the bully's hair in order to have that memory evoked.

So, it's all a matter of evocation. And, yes, the author bears great responsibility in this process. Even knowing that a reader will inevitably fill in blanks is important—or, that a reader will fail to fill in some blanks in the way the author intends. But it's not an exact science, because authors do not have perfect knowledge of every potential reader.

And I owe it to the audience to present them with the most clear and exacting image possible.
If I could draw this issue would resolved intently, but since I cannot, I have to paint each scene and element with my words;every line of description a brush stroke.

I have to try and create the concrete from abstraction.
Every aspect of description is a different element added to the final portrait, emotion serves to give context and resonance to the unfolding events and the characters participating in them.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

If you can provide one single example, from any author, where the abstract provides concrete sensory details, which are precisely the same for every potential reader, I'd be amazed.

 

[Svrtnsse]

No. The reader is a receiver and monitor, the book is a signal sent from the author to the reader.
And that signal must be as clear and comprehensives as the writer's skill can mange. You must,I must paint a picture
with the words, going from a blank canvas to the complete image one line at a time.

Yes. This is correct.

However. The image is not on the page. The page contains only words. The image is in the mind of the reader. It's in the mind of the reader that the abstractions turns into a concrete image. That's what reading is.

 

[Russ]

No. The reader is a receiver and monitor, the book is a signal sent from the author to the reader.
And that signal must be as clear and comprehensives as the writer's skill can mange. You must,I must paint a picture
with the words, going from a blank canvas to the complete image one line at a time.



And I owe it to the audience to present them with the most clear and exacting image possible.
If I could draw this issue would resolved intently, but since I cannot, I have to paint each scene and element with my words;every line of description a brush stroke.

I have to try and create the concrete from abstraction.
Every aspect of description is a different element added to the final portrait, emotion serves to give context and resonance to the unfolding events and the characters participating in them.

While this is one philosophical approach to writing I would suggest that it is not the norm or not generally accepted.

Of course you are perfectly welcome to write that way I don't think you should suggest it is suitable for all writers. Many readers would also disagree with this approach become many of them have no interest in being as passive as you suggest they should be and like to exercise their imagination while reading. This is really one of the differences between writing and other media like movies or television and some people like reading just for that very reason.

Personally I think of writing as a partnership between writer and reader and expect my readers to invest some time, thought and imagination into my writing to make the experience the best it can be. This is particularly important in areas like imagery, metaphor and subtext.

 

[Devor]

The question is what I do, so that's what I'll talk about.

This is an opening description I wrote about a month ago. I'll go through the skills process I used to write it.

Devor clutched his notebook and passed into the barricades alongside two hundred soldiers, most of them roaring out the laughter of victory, smelling of smoke and guts, covered with dirty blood. He hurried by the tents as the men carried crates of junk and stolen scraps to their straw beds. He staggered past the fire pit where they burned and mocked the long scarves carried back from their victims. He stumbled up to the barricade wall that had kept them safe from their enemies long enough to become murderers, and then he turned and fell into the dirt, smacking his back against the wood, dropping his head to his knees.

First, the most important thing to me when I write a description is to activate it. That means a focus on good, strong, compelling verbs. In a shorter sentence, you push the verb towards the beginning of the sentence and let it carry the rest. In a longer sentence, you use more of them.

Here's a list of the verbs in this paragraph. Just reading them makes you feel that something is happening.

clutched, passed, roaring, smelling, covered, hurried, carried, staggered, burned, mocked, stumbled, kept, become, turned, fell, smacking, dropping

The next thing I want to do is use power words. For instance, one of the lines originally read:

. . . the men carried crates of food to their straw beds.

But food, to me, didn't have any emotional power. Food is delightful, it's interesting, it's work in the kitchen, it's important for survival. But emotionally, the word does nothing here. I wanted something that conveys the emotion that's happening in the scene:

". . . the men carried crates of junk and stolen scraps to their straw beds."

Junk. Stolen. Scraps. These words have a lot of power, and together they really hit that tone.

Next, I wanted to build the parallelism in this paragraph so that it could better carry all the wordiness. There's a lot going on, and I want to make it easy on the reader to process all of it. I did that through the parallelism in the structure. But I also masked that "clever but distracting author parallelism" by using it to show progressing emotional notes as the emotion in the scene built up.

Devor . . . . passed into the barricades . . . .
He hurried by the tents . . . .
He staggered past the fire pit . . . .
He stumbled up to the barricade wall . . . .

Each verb here pretty much means he walked, but with deeper and more emotional tones.

Finally, there's a "big reveal" in this paragraph for the readers. There's lots of hints, getting more and more obvious as the paragraph moves forward, so that it should gradually dawn on the readers what's happening here. I'll bold the hints.

Devor clutched his notebook and passed into the barricades alongside two hundred soldiers, most of them roaring out the laughter of victory, smelling of smoke and guts, covered with dirty blood. He hurried by the tents as the men carried crates of junk and stolen scraps to their straw beds. He staggered past the fire pit where they burned and mocked the long scarves carried back from their victims. He stumbled up to the barricade wall that had kept them safe from their enemies long enough to become murderers, and then he turned and fell into the dirt, smacking his back against the wood, dropping his head to his knees.

Note the double meaning of the word "guts" - both are appropriate.

Those are in addition to the more subtle emotion that the MC is clearly feeling in this passage. Why is he hurried? And then staggering? He's shaken up by something that just happened - that the soldiers just became murderers.

- - - -

Anyways you can all decide for yourself if the passage is any good. But do consider the thoughts that went into it, and whether they can help you.

 

[Russ]

I should not let Devor's excellent post directly above pass without comment.

One of my most successful writer friends (whose new book just came out...fingers crossed for NYT #1) is obsessive about his editing process. But what he always emphasizes is the power of verbs and how he does an edit where he goes through the whole manuscript and rethinks each verb to determine whether or not he can find a better one for the job.

The kind of verb work that Devor is suggesting can make your prose orders of magnitude better.