What do you do to improve your descriptive writing?

[Demesnedenoir]

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.

The new book fantasy? If so I'm always curious to find a good one.

And... I agree with that sentiment, I'm making lots of focused passes over the text, not just general ones. The computer age is enabling.

Passes include:

passives, almost got these eliminated outside dialogue in first draft these days, but I still check them.
that, could, would, and a few others... make sure they aren't wasted space.
-ly adverbs = high bar to get over to stay in. Generally, if the meaning is worth being there it's worth a revision to make it better. I tend to keep maybe 1 every 1k words, thereabouts.
any sentence starting with a word ending in -ing or -ed. Make sure nothing dangles and doesn't get convoluted
every use of hear, heard, see, saw, taste, etc.
generic verbs, walk, run, etc. and any attached adjectives.

I will make these passes before it heads to an editor, then go from what they suggest, and make more focused passes as well as broad ones.

I think the trick is being obsessive without being too aggressive, I can go overboard on such things, LOL.

 

[Russ]

The new book fantasy? If so I'm always curious to find a good one.

Historically based Thriller I am afraid.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Drat! Good genre actually, but any reading I'm doing now is fantasy and history.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

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.

The book is a medium for conveying information from the author to the audience, the actual information is encoded in the words printed on the page. What the reader is doing by reading is the equivalent of plugging in a flash-drive or SC-card and loading the information contained with in. The author owes it to their audience to present them with a complete experience, and that is done through adequately paining each scene and every seen.

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.

Sitting at a table playing an Role playing game is an act of collaborative story telling between the players and the game master, but that is not what consuming a peace of fiction regardless of the medium is about. The purpose of story teller is guide the audience deftly through the story, and if an audience member happens to get lost then it is the author's job to guide them back to the path.

 

[Chwedleuwre]

There are at least two viewpoints about the use of description in novels. Those who use a lot and those who don't. Likewise, there are readers who adore long descriptions and those who don't. Of course, there's another way of looking at it. Not a middle ground necessarily, but a knack for knowing when to tell the reader that the woman wore "four-inch red spiked heels" and when to tell the reader that she wore shoes. I like to use color in some descriptions.

Then there are descriptions of people, cars - things. Descriptions of emotions. And descriptions of scene or setting. In my writing, I consider the pace of the scene. Fast-paced, action scenes may not require tedious details. But readers might welcome a leisurely, long descriptions of the place afterwards. As with most writing... it depends.

Yeah, I veered off your original question.

As I wrote, I like to use colors. And I collect adjectives and powerful verbs as I read. I keep a notepad next to my bed for that, as well and those midnight inspirations.

Happy writing to all!

 

[Devor]

I'm going to jump in just a little to the debate that's happening here.

I think somewhere down the line I've learned to separate imagery from other parts of a description. I think most good characters, settings, scenes, or whatever need a solid description. But vivid imagery is only a part of that description, and not always an essential one, depending on the subject or the author's style. Whether the character has dark hair, kind dimples and a thin face may not always be important to get across. It depends on too many things.

One thing I have found, though, is that there's nothing worse to me as a reader, description-wise, than suddenly realizing that I have the wrong image. And that sometimes happens when midway through the story an author puts a call-back to some unimportant detail in the character's features. So watch for that.

In a phrase, my opinion is: Don't waste your descriptions. Take advantage of it to provide information that's important to the thing's mystique and development. It's a powerful tool and an opportunity to give your reader something lasting. Don't skip it without a good reason, and don't blow it on an overloaded list of forgettable details. Look for ways to make that lasting impression, and build on that.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

The book is a medium for conveying information from the author to the audience, the actual information is encoded in the words printed on the page. What the reader is doing by reading is the equivalent of plugging in a flash-drive or SC-card and loading the information contained with in. The author owes it to their audience to present them with a complete experience, and that is done through adequately paining each scene and every seen.

This might work in the Matrix, but it's a poor analogy. Computers interpret code by a strict system of language, brains do not. Which is a good thing or a typo might make us fall asleep, heh heh.

I would like to see an example of prose you are talking about, which achieves this ideal.

 

[FifthView]

This might work in the Matrix, but it's a poor analogy. Computers interpret code by a strict system of language, brains do not. Which is a good thing or a typo might make us fall asleep, heh heh.

A) This reminds me of my days as a child typing in pages of nothing but hexadecimal code, from the back of a magazine, so I could play a game on my Commodore 64. One tiny error and it wouldn't work!

B) I'm also reminded of the poem “The Printer's Error” by Aaron Fogel.

 

[Penpilot]

This might work in the Matrix, but it's a poor analogy. Computers interpret code by a strict system of language, brains do not. Which is a good thing or a typo might make us fall asleep, heh heh.

I would like to see an example of prose you are talking about, which achieves this ideal.

Actually, the computer analogy might work. But here's the thing. How is the data stored on this USB drive? Is it a word doc, word perfect, or one of a million other formats? If I don't have a program that can read that data, it remains inaccessible.

It can be like someone trying to plug an eight track tape into DVD player.

Other problems arise depending on what OS that USB key was formatted on. A windows machine can't always read a USB key formatted on an Apple machine, and vice versa. And what if a device doesn't have a USB port like the iPhone?

My point is like every machine can run a different OS and have different programs, every person is different in their make up. So there's no guarantee that just because one person can interpret something as expected that every one will be able to do that. There's no program or file that is guaranteed to be universally accepted by every machine.

 

[Heliotrope]

Case in point. It doesn't matter how much fancy description you guys used, I would still have no clue what you are talking about.

I still write by hand in a large black sketch book before transferring my draft to Microsoft word...

Which illustrates what we call in education as "coat hooks". People only absorb information if they already have some prior knowledge to "hook" the new information onto. If they don't have those "coat hooks" then they will automatically make sense of the new information using whatever prior knowledge they have, even if it is not accurate.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Well, I don't think that was their point. Still curious to figure out what the person actually means by their words.

Actually, the computer analogy might work. But here's the thing. How is the data stored on this USB drive? Is it a word doc, word perfect, or one of a million other formats? If I don't have a program that can read that data, it remains inaccessible.

It can be like someone trying to plug an eight track tape into DVD player.

Other problems arise depending on what OS that USB key was formatted on. A windows machine can't always read a USB key formatted on an Apple machine, and vice versa. And what if a device doesn't have a USB port like the iPhone?

My point is like every machine can run a different OS and have different programs, every person is different in their make up. So there's no guarantee that just because one person can interpret something as expected that every one will be able to do that. There's no program or file that is guaranteed to be universally accepted by every machine.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

A Commodore 64! Good times!

A) This reminds me of my days as a child typing in pages of nothing but hexadecimal code, from the back of a magazine, so I could play a game on my Commodore 64. One tiny error and it wouldn't work!

B) I'm also reminded of the poem “The Printer's Error” by Aaron Fogel.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

The author owes it to their audience to present them with a complete experience, and that is done through adequately paining each scene and every seen.

You've said this several times now, and while I disagree, because I feel what you're suggesting isn't fully possible, I accept this as your writing goal.

Still, I've read fairly widely and I've never read anything close to what you're suggesting. I've asked several times if you could provide an excerpt of writing that works the way you claim, but I've yet to see one.

Perhaps, as Svrtnesse suggested, there's a communication problem here, because I just can't understand how any experienced writer could possibly think they could create imagery that'd be identical for every reader, regardless of culture, ethnicity, life experiences, age, gender, color perception, & a thousand other variables.

I'm not asking for an example to back you into a corner, Logos&Eidos. I sincerely want to read something that you believe achieves this end. Or, once we see an example, figure out if there's something lost in the communication of our ideas in this thread.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

There are at least two viewpoints about the use of description in novels. Those who use a lot and those who don't. Likewise, there are readers who adore long descriptions and those who don't. Of course, there's another way of looking at it. Not a middle ground necessarily, but a knack for knowing when to tell the reader that the woman wore "four-inch red spiked heels" and when to tell the reader that she wore shoes. I like to use color in some descriptions.

Then there are descriptions of people, cars - things. Descriptions of emotions. And descriptions of scene or setting. In my writing, I consider the pace of the scene. Fast-paced, action scenes may not require tedious details. But readers might welcome a leisurely, long descriptions of the place afterwards. As with most writing... it depends.

Yeah, I veered off your original question.

As I wrote, I like to use colors. And I collect adjectives and powerful verbs as I read. I keep a notepad next to my bed for that, as well and those midnight inspirations.

Happy writing to all!

Its not about long or short for me.
"A blue stone glittered like it was sprinkled with the dust of powdered diamonds". vs "there was a sparkly blue rock".

A part of it is my instinctive rebellion against the status quo, the other is the fact what I am seeing as good writing advice on many sites just pings to me as wrong.

No purple prose. Yet some of the things that I've seen accused of being that aren't florid,grandiloquent,or poetic to the point of being obstructive. It was just an excerpt of that showed a clear and detailed description of scene?

Let the audience have a place for the selves in material.
That's a big no because a book, any fiction, is a product of the imagination of its creator. To immerses yourself in the mind of another is why you read, that and to be entertained, is part of the point of reading.

Also the way I've seen this described reads like an artistic justification for doing a half job on description in a book.

I'm going to jump in just a little to the debate that's happening here.

I think somewhere down the line I've learned to separate imagery from other parts of a description. I think most good characters, settings, scenes, or whatever need a solid description. But vivid imagery is only a part of that description, and not always an essential one, depending on the subject or the author's style. Whether the character has dark hair, kind dimples and a thin face may not always be important to get across. It depends on too many things.

One thing I have found, though, is that there's nothing worse to me as a reader, description-wise, than suddenly realizing that I have the wrong image. And that sometimes happens when midway through the story an author puts a call-back to some unimportant detail in the character's features. So watch for that.

In a phrase, my opinion is: Don't waste your descriptions. Take advantage of it to provide information that's important to the thing's mystique and development. It's a powerful tool and an opportunity to give your reader something lasting. Don't skip it without a good reason, and don't blow it on an overloaded list of forgettable details. Look for ways to make that lasting impression, and build on that.

I'm using image in a much broader sense than just appearance. My goal is to create a clear and exact of an image as possible
so that readers never imagine things wrong, because I did my job and painted a clear image.

This might work in the Matrix, but it's a poor analogy. Computers interpret code by a strict system of language, brains do not. Which is a good thing or a typo might make us fall asleep, heh heh.

I would like to see an example of prose you are talking about, which achieves this ideal.

I have heard poetry,seen exerts but it has never appealed to me.

My analogy stands.
Language creates a common system/medium through which humans may convey information. It is the responsibility of the author to use that common medium to convey what they imagine to the audience.

Well ideals are something that you strive for but never quite achieve. I do not possess excerpts of choice bits of description. But I can tell you what it is, any concrete non florid description of a person ,place,thing or event is in line with my ideals.

 

[FifthView]

Which illustrates what we call in education as "coat hooks". People only absorb information if they already have some prior knowledge to "hook" the new information onto. If they don't have those "coat hooks" then they will automatically make sense of the new information using whatever prior knowledge they have, even if it is not accurate.

...or, from context.

This may be a problem particularly for fantasy, which often uses archaic/historical terminology–gorget, hauberk, cuirass, pauldron–and science fiction which can have its own in-genre tropes already established or use uncommon scientific terminology (inertial dampeners, Dyson spheres, tidal locking.) Many readers may understand these terms, many might have general ideas, or the gist, but not all readers will have solid knowledge.

For me, the same thing can happen with colors. Fuchsia, mauve, puce...Sorry, these just don't spring clearly to my mind, and I know this by doing a Google search. But the gist....yeah, usually.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think I'm starting to get it now, sort of.

Descriptions should convey information that the reader can form an image that's complete as far as its relevance to the story goes.

Let's look at an example.

Three people stepped into the room - one man, one woman.

That description is incomplete, because it leaves out the gender of the third person. The third person may be completely irrelevant to the story and their gender may not be important. However, as the other two were identified by the gender and the third one omitted, it leaves the reader with incomplete information. Mentioning the gender of the first two people highlights that the third one isn't mentioned and it makes the reader wonder why.
This is the bad kind of audience participation, where you have to fill in a blank (the third person's gender) without guidance.

Three people stepped into the room - one man, one woman, and a third person of undetermined gender.

This description is complete. The description mentions the gender of all three people, even if one of them is undetermined that is still mentioned. Within the context of the description, it's complete.

Obviously there's a lot of room for filling out other details. The above are just very basic examples. There's nothing mentioned of what the room looks like, or what the people look like, or the house the room is in, etc, but for the sake of simplicity I left that out.

And then there are exceptions too, where intentionally leaving out information can be used to great effect, but let's not get into that now.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

My analogy stands.
Language creates a common system/medium through which humans may convey information. It is the responsibility of the author to use that common medium to convey what they imagine to the audience.

Well ideals are something that you strive for but never quite achieve. I do not possess excerpts of choice bits of description. But I can tell you what it is, any concrete non florid description of a person ,place,thing or event is in line with my ideals.

That may have been the attempted point of your analogy, but it was a flawed construction.

I've come to the conclusion that you aren't really saying anything uncommon. Here is the basic problem, you say "any concrete non florid description of a person, place, thing or event is in line with my ideals" but you didn't really tell me what it is to you, because those words are abstractions that mean different things to different people.

 

[FifthView]

Let the audience have a place for the selves in material.
That's a big no because a book, any fiction, is a product of the imagination of its creator. To immerses yourself in the mind of another is why you read, that and to be entertained, is part of the point of reading.

When I'm reading essays, autobiography, and the like, I do often want to immerse myself in the mind of another. At least, I expect the author to refrain from lying to me, so that I can believe I am experiencing his true thoughts, his mind.

But when I'm reading fantasy, I honestly don't care about the author's mind. Yes, I want to immerse myself in a good story, an exciting/interesting world, intriguing characters, great ideas, and these might be the products of an author's mind–or, are they? The question is moot, in the end, because I am more interested in what I find there in the words.

There was an interesting Writing Excuses podcast on "Creator vs Creation," in which the group talk about the experience of having readers come up to them and saying (paraphrasing), "Hey, I really love that you put X in this novel!" and the author is like, "Um, ok, I'm glad you liked that" even if he did not in fact put it in the novel or intend for a reader to have that particular interpretation of a metaphor, event, etc.

Mary Robinette Kowal mentions, near the start, this, which I think might approach what you have been saying through these various comments, my emphasis added:

[Mary] One of the things we say in the theater, and it applies across this, is “If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage.” Which is basically that whatever you put out there is what the audience will see. And that once it leaves your hands, you don’t actually have any control. You can’t go back and adjust the audience’s response. That’s one of the things about fiction is that everything that leaves… Everything you write is going to have some sort of life of its own. So you need to kind of look at what you’re putting on the page and try to imagine the different ways it can be perceived and make sure that you’re… You don’t have to make sure… Like you don’t have to overthink this. But also, don’t be surprised when someone comes to you and says, “Oh. This thing that you did! I…” And you’re like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”​

She cut off that thought, but the idea was important. Authors do have a responsibility to create a clear "image" (term used broadly, here) or to lead a reader down the path that will deliver the intended story. But still, not every base can always be covered perfectly, and sometimes readers will read things that the author did not intend. That can be both, a bad thing and a good thing, so authors do need to take care.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

That may have been the attempted point of your analogy, but it was a flawed construction.

I've come to the conclusion that you aren't really saying anything uncommon. Here is the basic problem, you say "any concrete non florid description of a person, place, thing or event is in line with my ideals" but you didn't really tell me what it is to you, because those words are abstractions that mean different things to different people.

Here is an excerpt.

Lord Tresting frowned, glancing up at the ruddy, mid-day sky as his servants scuttled forward, opening a parasol over Tresting and his distinguished guest. Ashfalls weren’t that uncommon in the Final Empire, but Tresting had hoped to avoid getting soot stains on his fine new suit coat and red vest, which had just arrived via canal boat from Luthadel itself. Fortunately, there wasn’t much wind—the parasol would likely be effective.

From chapter one Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

Adamat wore his coat tight, top buttons fastened against a wet night air that seemed to want to drown him. He tugged at his sleeves, trying to coax more length, and picked at the front of the jacket where it was too close by far around the waist. It’d been half a decade since he’d even seen this jacket, but when summons came from the king at this hour, there was no time to get his good one from the tailor. Yet this summer coat provided no defense against the chill snaking through the carriage window.

Promise of Blood chapter one, by Brian Mccallen.

Both are examples of of conveying information to the reader without waxing into poetic obstructiveness, though personally I wouldn't have objected to more description.

Just one line,just one paragraph wouldn't be enough to exactly what I think to be ideal. I've said before that each line of description is a brush stroke on a canvas, the book is the entire painting.

"any concrete non florid description of a person, place, thing or event is in line with my ideals".

The context in which the words are used, provide what is necessary to understand them. My other post also serve to paint the picture of what I find unsatisfactory.

Or would you rather Info-dump my opinion on, which is another writing-sin.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Thanks for the example. I think this shows that we've been talking about different things - or that we've been using similar words to mean different things.