Nov 20, 2024
seen from Türkiye
seen from Iraq
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Guatemala
seen from Algeria
seen from China
seen from Nicaragua
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Algeria
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Kuwait
seen from Yemen
Description: 5 Times When You Should (and 4 Times When You Shouldn’t) Rely on Description
❯ ❯ 5 Times When You Should (Probably) Use Description ❮ ❮
#1: Use Description to Make Introspection More Engaging. Poorly assembled introspection is boring, explores the obvious, and takes readers forever to cull. Progressive introspection isn't about what has already happened, it's about what might happen in the future. Use description to ponder what a character fears (or hopes) will happen next. Don't hesitate to ask tough, specific questions: What are the consequences of a character's actions? What are the consequences of her inaction? Introspection risks dulling a scene's immediacy. But it can also enhance readers' investment in finding answers to stated, understated, and unstated problems.
Additional Reading:
How to Write Excellent Introspection (September C. Fawkes)
The 5 Types of Lines We Use to Craft Stories (and How to Use Them to Reveal Character) (September C. Fawkes)
#2: Use Description to Explore the Unknown. Nudging reader interest in the right direction permits writers to finally use the senses, to use readers' innate curiosity, and to pull from all of those folders and documents of secondary or tertiary research. Did an explorer character finally crest a rocky hillock and settle her gaze upon a depression of wild conifers, each one flickering a shade of green different than the next? Is a butler sneaking a forbidden glimpse of all the fancily dressed ladies and gentlemen of a regional ball? Does a near-miss on the street corner, paired with the smell of burnt rubber, flash forward a bad memory?
Additional Reading:
Vivid Story Setting Description: Examples and Insights (Now Novel)
Description Checklists and Tip Sheets (One Stop for Writers)
Description Thesaurus Collection (One Stop for Writers)
How to Frame Scenes Like a Filmmaker (Kristen Kiefer)
Descriptive and Sensory Detail in Narrative Writing (.pdf) (Chandler-Gilbert Community College)
#3: Use Description to Bewitch the Reader. Depending on the writing style and the writing perspective, description can enable the writer to gift readers different details about different characters that collectively contribute to the greater, unfolding narrative.
If you describe a tense encounter with selective detail, then you can make a play at increasing the tension (the reader isn't sure what will happen next). If you reveal different information that explores different perspectives from different characters, then you might encourage the reader to play detective (the reader isn't sure who to trust). Description and detail can serve as meaningful points of differentiation -- of voice, experience, knowledge, familiarity, or perspective. Whether as nervous ticks, comments about clothing preference, poorly timed gestures of affection, or perhaps the refusal to acknowledge any of these (or other) markers of personhood or identity.
Additional Reading:
How to Describe: Writing Clear Places and Characters (Now Novel)
Novel Settings: 7 Tips to Get Setting Description Right (Now Novel)
Defining Place (ahb writes)
How to Make Your Description More Vivid (Writing Questions Answered)
#4: Use Description to Bewitch a Character. Writing in first-person perspective allows writers to offer readers the chance to experience a story's events as the characters experience them. To successfully maneuver this perspective in a way that makes the most of its opportunity, incorporate details that aren't what they seem.
The senses inform, yes, but they also misinform. Most of human recognition is based on snaring one or two particulars, relating those particulars to what is known (or presumed), and assigning meaning to those presumptions. Certainty is not the absence of a blunder; certainty is a blunder's fated precursor.
Additional Reading:
15 Unconventional Senses and Sensory Attributes (ahb writes)
Conflict Thesaurus (One Stop for Writers)
25 Things You Should Know About Narrative Point-Of-View (Chuck Wendig: Terrible Minds)
Using Nuance and the Implication of Movement to Tell a Story (ahb writes)
#5: Use Description to Encourage Readers to Infer More Than They Realize. Sometimes, referring to the shadow of a thing is more powerful than expending the energy to describe the thing itself. Sometimes, articulating the function a thing serves will grant readers permission to conjure their own version of what the thing itself looks like. This means using more than the standard five senses in your writing. Can you describe what it's like for a character to lose her sense of balance? Can you describe what it's like for a character to have forgotten something important that his partner told him that morning? The writer, in each of these scenarios, articulates the value and weight of certain clues and puzzle pieces, over and above the value and weight of solving the whole enigma.
Additional Reading:
15 Unconventional Senses and Sensory Attributes (ahb writes)
Direct Characterization: 6 Tips for Precise Description (Now Novel)
Indirect Characterization: Revealing Characters Subtly (Now Novel)
How Being Subtle Can Improve Your Descriptions (All Write - Fiction Advice)
How Fiction Writers Can Improve the Quality of Their Prose (Kristen Kiefer)
❯ ❯ 4 Times When You (Probably) Shouldn't Use Description ❮ ❮
#1: Don't Use Description to Rush Into a Scene. Don't push a detailed explanation of the surrounding environs on the reader the instant a character, or the reader, steps into the scene. Introduce the setting or surrounding context, yes, but don't rush in if it's not absolutely critical to the character's well-being or sense of self. Avoid this approach unless you're working with distance-related transportation and/or sudden or jarring (disorientating) scenarios. Why? (a) Because excess description fogs the viewfinder. (b) Because excess description deprioritizes what's truly important.
Entering a new scene means establishing new goals, large or small, for the character or story dynamics. Rushing into description means potentially ignoring the scene's tone, sidestepping the characters' needs, or muting readers' anticipation for what the scene can or should deliver. Take it easy. Be concise, if possible. Then, gradually, build on what you've offered readers. Don't throw in everything at once.
Additional Reading:
How to Write Descriptions and Create a Sense of Place (Jericho Writers)
#2: Don't Use Description to Take Up Space. If you have too much dialogue, or too much action, or too much summarizing, and you've conspired with your inner critic to toss in a bunch of descriptive detail, then your problem isn't one of description (or a lack thereof), your problem is one of a broader, more systemic dilemma of overloaded and unbalanced storytelling. Beware the false equivalency of identifying (a) where description can go and (b) the purpose description can serve.
As the writer, you are welcome, if not wholly encouraged, to introduce a paragraph or two to explore a scene, but don't use description as an excuse to "do something else" on the page. Description should be purposeful. Or, to be more precise, description should add an emotional, compatible, lived-in dimension to a scene.
Additional Reading:
When "Telling" is Okay (Writing Questions Answered)
Words for Skin Tone & How to Describe Skin Color (Writing With Color)
Words to Describe Hair (Writing With Color)
#3: Don't Use Description to Layer the Intensity. Successive description doesn't always have the effect many think it does when it comes to scenes or events of high emotional tumult. When a difficult or powerful scene arrives, it's not uncommon for a reader's pulse to flare up and for anticipation to quickly follow. In other words, if the author dabbles for too long, then readers are apt (tempted) to skip ahead.
Good suspense fiction relies on simple (effective) language. Compelling action storytelling is brief (and to the point). Immersive character dramas pick their moments (very carefully). Acute attention to diction and syntax makes for a better marker of scenic intensity than a preponderance of verbiage.
Additional Reading:
6 Secrets to Creating and Sustaining Suspense (Writer's Digest)
Picking the Right Details (September C. Fawkes)
The Linguistics of Horror (velatrill; eldest oyster)
Opening Lines for A Story (Great, Effective & Bad Examples) (Jericho Writers)
How to Make Your Descriptions Less Boring (The Literary Architect)
How to Write Better Smut (chaoschaoswriting; ahb writes)
15 Unconventional Senses and Sensory Attributes (ahb writes)
#4: Don't Use Description to Embellish Dialogue (Tags). On a trickier note, don't fall too deep in love with those lists of "250 Ways to Say Said" or "125 Words to Describe a Character's Voice" or what-have-you. To a point, those articles can work as delightful little thesauri, but very few of them provide genuine instruction on how to use the list of terms they provide. Dialogue shouldn't be a crutch, nor should any descriptive text that might accompany it.
Often, these lists contain descriptors for behavior, or descriptors for behavioral or emotional intent (attitude), insofar as they purport to explore any character's physical voice. Would you really describe someone's voice as "admiring," or "egotistical," or "sensational"? You might, but you probably shouldn't. These words don't empirically convey shifts in tone, tempo, inflection, depth, volume, and so forth. A helpful cheat for beginners is to go with actionable sounds or utterances the human mouth can reasonably make or to stick with easily identifiable transitive verbs, like "cough," "bark," "chirp," or "ask".
One functional workaround is to explore the ambiance underlying a character's "egotistical gaze," or the tonal implication that accompanies her "grand, egotistical gestures," or on others' response to his "penchant for sensationalism." A critical focus on using the correct language frees up the opportunity to include gestures, reactions, and other, more inimitable expressions. Clarity makes a bigger difference than you may realize: Not so much, "he spoke indignantly," but rather, "he added, indignant."
Additional Reading:
4 Ways to Unlock Your Character's Unique Voice (The Novel Smithy)
11 Do's and Don'ts of Writing Dialogue (The Novel Smithy)
Quantity and Quality of Dialogue (Writing Questions Answered)
Avoiding Repetition With Dialogue Tags (Writing Questions Answered)
graffitos
It's 4am. I can't sleep. Here's one of the photos I took while filming part 1 of my exploration vlog. If you're interested in the video I'm talking about & my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CidxHRdnYmg Photography IG: @exploretheworldphotography Personal IG: @mk6_bluebella
Writing Description: Explore the Unknown
Use Description to Explore the Unknown. Nudging reader interest in the right direction permits writers to finally use the senses, to use readers' innate curiosity, and to pull from all of those folders and documents of secondary or tertiary research. Did an explorer character finally crest a rocky hillock and settle her gaze upon a depression of wild conifers, each one flickering a shade of green different than the next? Is a butler sneaking a forbidden glimpse of all the fancily dressed ladies and gentlemen of a regional ball? Does a near-miss on the street corner, paired with the smell of burnt rubber, flash forward a bad memory?
Additional Reading:
Vivid Story Setting Description: Examples and Insights (Now Novel)
Description Checklists and Tip Sheets (One Stop for Writers)
Description Thesaurus Collection (One Stop for Writers)
How to Frame Scenes Like a Filmmaker (Kristen Kiefer)
Descriptive and Sensory Detail in Narrative Writing (.pdf) (Chandler-Gilbert Community College)
❯ ❯ Adapted from description-writing masterpost: 5 Times When You Should (and 4 Times When You Shouldn’t) Rely on Description
The Three Fates: A Very Old Job Description
(Now Featuring the Part They Left Out) Cue the Music…♪♩♫♬♩ 🎶 “Well now listen up, sugar, gather ‘round,’Cause fate’s been dragged all through town…Spooky yarn and snip-snip fear,But baby, that ain’t the whole story here.” 🎶 Now honey, listen up. We need to talk about the Three Fates. You know them.Spooky ladies.Yarn obsession.Dramatic scissor energy.Permanent resting fate-face. Yeah. Those…
View On WordPress