Quickly, I put on my jacket, my shoes, and rushed downstairs. They smiled at each other and awkwardly began to make small talk. Readers need something to picture in order to become immersed in the dream world you create for them. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction. A familiar voice woke me up from my reverie. Let us know in the comments. A worn mustard-yellow bean-bag chair, a relic of the seventies. I fired him right after we opened because I found out he wasnt washing the dishes unless he could actually see food on them. For the architect had loved the trees so much that there was a mighty oak in the centre, centuries old, and the great house had been built around it. The silence symbolizes the shift from . Shabby chic? Be selective. Share one of your favorite descriptions and the author and book title its from in the comments and help us grow this resource for description examples. In all kinds of writing, but in fiction especially, description draws readers in and creates immersive character, specificity. Isolated Location, Exposed to the Elements By placing the house some distance away from the nearest settlement, the Gothic literature author creates a sense of isolation. The main entrance is situated on the side of the building with a long, sweeping driveway and a large garage. I have many but I dont know how to describe them as I dont know the names for decorations or things in rooms lmaooo. Choose whats important. What did I do to deserve this? She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughters journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. I know, she murmured. When had been the last time I'd longer in the room. See in the example from Julia Quinn how description of an activity typical of an era (Regency women doing needlework) can create a sense of time and place. They rode hard for three days and eventually reached the city.. An old tape deck and a towering set of speakers whose cloth was fraying. To my right is a framed poster displaying a poem of mine that had been on Chicago buses and trains. Self-publishing means keeping track of all the details. Since everyone locally was making quite a good living out of this, what with the sale of guide books, maps of bear caves, ornamental cuckoo-clocks with bears on them, bear walking-sticks and cakes baked in the shape of a bear, somehow no one had time to go and correct the spelling. The Consul looked at the thin face, cheekbones pressing against sallow flesh, eyes large but hooded in deep hollows, thin lips set in a permanent twice of muscle too downturned to be called even a cynical smile, the hairline not so much receding as ravaged by radiation, and he felt he was looking at a man who had been ill for years. If you dont describe the environment from the start, you will have characters talking and acting in space, and it becomes difficult to place it later on. However, your story and the character news need to coexist within a space the storys setting. Someone who lives on a cloud would find it dark and hard. For the reader, the story world doesn't . It was a grand room filled with expensive pieces in polished black with gold accents. (Out of musical integrity, or her hearts bold yearning for festivity, she never calls it a recital.) Everything hung straight and level, except for a gap where her dark, leather coat should have been. This isnt to say that every sentence has to draw on all of the senses, but if the reader never hears or feels the touch of anything, the storys world could read more drab and nondescript. While some authors might focus on describing homes in detail, others might take a different approach, relying on powerful imagery and sensory details to evoke a mood or feeling. Although Show, dont tell is a common adage, stories need both. The trees were still He bought black bread, beer and slices of cured sausage that resembled Westphalian salami. Does it fit her personality and what we alread know about her? It had weeks in the gutters, and green slime on the walls, and a cracked foundation pierced by creeper tendrils thicker than my wrists. For example, The showers wet water was a relief after the days grueling work. The reader knows water is wet, so the adjective isnt needed in that sentence. But dont then go on to describe the outfit of every character who appears in the story, including that of the waitress, the gas station attendant, and the receptionist at the doctors office. Click forthe complete list of 70 69 writers themed descriptions. Setting description is a crucial part of worldbuilding. Questioning Bothari had been like questioning a wall. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher. Small with clean white walls, a twin bed, a desk with a blank blotter on it, sliding closets opposite the bed, and thin green shag carpet. The first step to vividly describing a place, person, or thing is to imagine it in your mind's eye. There are many other rhetorical and figurative devices you can use to play with description. There's something conclusive about dead silence. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. How do you describe Mansions? To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers.Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict, people commonly found in these locales, and setting-specific notes and tips, and the . Home. The beams look like they are about to make the commuters levitate at any minute and float skyward. It had bushes and brambles up against the door and the windows. swaying in the wind and the leaves still rustling against the For example, the way Dickens description of Coketown in Hard Times (1854) conveys what a rapidly industrializing town is like, with its miasma of smog: Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the suns rays. Pingback: 10 Hits and Misses for 2014 | WordDreams Pingback: How to Find Love of Your Life by Finding Your Soulmate. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Tennis racquets were hefty and the racquet faces elliptical. A pleonasm is using more words than necessary to convey one meaning. Is it correct to use "the" before "materials used in making buildings are"? Placed under historical lock; critiques are currently off-topic. The haunted eyes and dark circles underneath them made the long, drawn-in face almost unrecognizable. Your email address will not be published. You could end up with a very bland description of the setting that doesnt win over the readers. What was his name? Tshirts were pushed into the top drawer along with more underwear and wadded socks. Here, human-like characteristics are attributed to objects or non-humans. Oblong with a lip, it reminded her of her mothers mixing bowls; of brownies being made, and the the sound of her spoon scraping the last morsels of batter as she licked the bowl clean. They are some other authors intellectual property. A foyer that would accommodate the Serengeti Plant at the foot of a vast curving staircase that probably went to heaven. Prints of gentlemen riding to hounds decorate the walls. They just need a few basic details and their imaginations will fill in the rest. Nature which explores seminal events in mans evolution one trilogy at a time. Shaking the water off my hands, I walked across the room, but then Succinct description doesnt necessarily sacrifice pace, either. You could try googling 'victorian mansion interior' and checking out the image results. As I emptied my bladder, I checked my face in the mirror. some painkillers only to realize there wasn't one. Press J to jump to the feed. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kids not going to do that. When I opened my eyes, it was still dark. The other really important task that narrative details accomplish is to help with characterization. Its been a few years since I last discussed houses. This type of description is not as concerned with accurate (or rather literal) representation as it is with capturing the essence of the described thing. Keep track of your favorite writers on Descriptionari. As a male reader, I would want to know what kind of house it was. If you do not consent to the above, please dont leave a comment. Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. Secluded among trees on one of DCs most exclusive streets, it had turrets, gables, dormers, balconies, a screened-in front porch, a free-standing garage, a gazebo, a pool, formal gardents, the American dream. In describing your setting, its not enough to start early: you need to be specific in your description. Where could she have gone at this Or reference to interplanetary spectacle or a woman tailing a man create intrigue in a sci-fi and thriller novel respectively. Read how Colleen Hoover creates the portrait of a person through their name and the hyper-specific conditions of their being fired from a restaurant. It might once have been nice; it might once have been the home of an actual family. Even before my mind registered the flatness, I knew she wasn't there. But sometimes this filmic style is taken so far that I have to ask the writer if he or she might not be more comfortable simply writing a script rather than a novel. That is, sets equivalent to a proper subset via an all-structure-preserving bijection. While playing around with word vectors and the "HasProperty" API of conceptnet, I had a bit of fun trying to get the adjectives which commonly describe a word. Her mother was clutching the latest edition of Lady Whistledowns Society Papers the way Penelope might clutch, say, a rope while hanging off a building. You feel hopeless, scared, angry, frustrated, alone and afraid. First you need to understand what sort of structure or dungeon you are trying to describe. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens at first in utter silence it left behind a churning column of dust and smoke. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. The afternoon shadows were the deepest and darkest she had ever seen. As with all my descriptors, dont use these verbatim!. And if nothing is calling for those details to come into play, they might not really be needed in the story. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. The first sentence should immediately catch the reader's attention, while the subsequent text should leave the reader wanting to dive further into the pages of the manuscript.
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