# Descriptive Problems



## TrixBarred (Oct 15, 2012)

Hi all.

I just been have re-doing ideas for my first chapter of what I hope to be a new beginning for me in the world of writing. I lack the experience in writing but I am somewhat getting through the draft of chapter one slowly but surely. I have left out a lot of the descriptive detail and just focused on getting down the basic structure. 

My question is basically this. Does anyone know something I can look at to help me with my descriptive problems, maybes either a user made guide or perhaps a book. I'm not expecting to do well and fix my ways overnight. But I would like to learn and slowly improve. Any ideas ?


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## Saga (Oct 15, 2012)

Use vivid words? I dont know... I guess you could search for acronyms, too (+imstead of "The siren was loud", "The siren's wail flooded the acoustics of the empty street, instilling an initial feel of terror" :grin:


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## Saga (Oct 15, 2012)

Just describe in great detail all of the things that would be going on


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## M. LeRenard (Oct 15, 2012)

cyanogen said:


> Just describe in great detail all of the things that would be going on


I would suggest not doing this, actually.  You'd easily fall into the trap of purple prose, which serves to greatly increase your word count at the expense of readability.

I can't think of any book that focuses solely on descriptive passages, although I'm certain you can find good articles about it on various writing blogs or websites (can't think of any offhand).  Most books on fiction writing in general talk about it at one point or another (_On Writing_ by Stephen King, _How to Grow a Novel_ by Sol Stein, and others), though I think both of those mainly discuss what _not_ to do (which is a helpful place to start).  Is there anything specific that's holding you back?


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## Poetigress (Oct 16, 2012)

Two good books specifically on description:

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Fiction-Writing-Monica-Wood/dp/0898799082/
http://www.amazon.com/Word-Painting-Guide-Writing-Descriptively/dp/1582970254/

And for free, Janice Hardy's awesome blog has a section of posts on it:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2008/01/description.html

(I'd also recommend the rest of that blog for all kinds of writing topics.)

And, just seconding that you don't want to describe everything in great detail. Yes, specifics are more vivid than generalizations ("a red Mercedes" versus "a car"), but too much detail bogs things down and makes it read more like a catalog than a story. What you want is the telling detail, the few things that provide enough specific input so that the reader can sketch in the rest themselves.


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## BRN (Oct 16, 2012)

When you've got an idea in your head, it's pretty productive to write down the advancing scene, like you have done, without going into 'descriptive detail'. But you've probably noticed that it doesn't make a readable novel.

I think it's the mark of a better writer to judge, not "how much" description is needed, but to judge the _effects_ that different amounts of description have on the reader. As MLR said above, purple prose describes a scene minutely but it detaches a reader from feeling involved in the scene, while no description at all feels like the barest film script. Punctuation can break up, slow down, or intensify scenes, but too much frustrates the flow of the words. Finding an effective middle ground is about finding your style! 

Don't be afraid to work and rework what you've written down. While you're still producing the novel, you should feel free to spend time writing, and then deleting, retrying, and re-reading, just to try and judge how different arrangements of sentences feel to the reader. Don't feel like you need to get it "right" the first time you put words down - experiment!


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## TrixBarred (Oct 16, 2012)

Wow. Imagine my surprise to see so many responses when I woke up this morning XD
*cracks wings and stretches*
Right let me begin...

Cyanogen - Well my problem lays in the fact that I don't really have a wide vocab, so when I do try to describe something its in little detail. I will check out some acronyms, thanks for your input ^^

M. LeRenard - I am currently reading that book by Steven King, its quite a fun and interesting read. Like I said up top its mainly my lack of being able to think of anything but the bare basic when describing things. I had been writing quite a bit back in the day, but a couple of things happened and I put writing on the shelf for quite a while. Now I am having to go back to the basics now. Thank you ^^

Poetigress - Thats a lot of things to look at on that writing site. Will have to take a night to myself and read through it all XD. Thanks for the help ^^

SIX - Yeah, I am working through the first chapter, its a little overwhelming to try to get back into writing. But I am getting through it slowly. I have noticed that what I have got so far isn't much of a chapter written, still needs to be edited but that can come when the chapter is finished. Yeah, still trying to find out a comfortable writing routine and middle ground. 
What I have been doing is just a slight editing in the story, but apart from that I have just been typing it up without deleting or editing it until the end. It seems to help me get a healthy amount of typing done because it saves me from having to back track. 
Things I need to develop on are description, characters, and dialog. Basically everything XD


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## M. LeRenard (Oct 16, 2012)

TrixBarred said:
			
		

> Like I said up top its mainly my lack of being able to think of anything but the bare basic when describing things.


Well, in that case, try practicing by writing some poetry.  I find the most pleasurable description passages to read are the ones that sound like poetry, that use a lot of interesting and clever metaphors and similes, even plays on words if you can fit them in just right.  My trick is to try to make myself laugh or smile when writing a passage like that, so I don't resort to just tired, boring word-by-word synopses of the scenery.
And don't ever stop the story to describe something.  Keep things moving.  Like, if you need to describe a room, have a character walk through it on his way somewhere else.  Even something as simple as mentioning the stuff he walks by when going through the room does wonders to the story's whole flow.
So, I don't know... here's describing a door, first in a boring and stupid way, and then in a more interesting way, off the top of my head.

BAD: "He looked at the door.  It had a glass knob and a small carving of a tree at eye-level."
No one goes out of his or her way to examine a door unless there's a good reason.  Then, full stop, here's what the door looks like.  Then continue the story.  Terrible, right?

BETTER: "He grasped the door's glass knob, his attention catching for just a second on a small carving of a tree level with his eye, like one of those faux-Yggdrasil prints you see on nature Hippie t-shirts surrounded by words like 'peace' and 'respect'."
So now he's opening this door, on his way presumably to something more interesting than the door, and I tell you specifically now what to think of when trying to picture that little tree.  Notice I injected a certain playful tone into it, too, just for fun.  Point is, just try stuff like that out and enjoy yourself (while maintaining a consistent and appropriate tone, of course).  That's the whole point, after all.


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## cpam (Oct 17, 2012)

Pick up a copy of any of Ray Bradbury's anthologies and read through the first couple of pages of any of the stories within.  Nobody sets the scene as beautifully as he could.


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