Elaine Smith Writes

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Tag Archives: Description

Two Timing

Another way to improve your descriptions.

So, we’ve been talking–intermittently–about descriptive writing.  I believe it started with me mentioning that I don’t think I’m very good at it.  Then, last Tuesday’s Tip was the I look up and I see… exercise.

Today, I have another exercise for you.  Once again, I don’t remember where I got it and will have to add that information if and when I can.

The idea is this:

Take a scene, a setting, and describe it twice in such a way that the passage will convey completely different moods.  You might use words that impart a sense of danger and dread in one iteration and then sketch the same scene in joyful and exhilarating terms.

For example, here’s some practice writing I did for this exercise.  Try not to consider this the best example of my work, okay?  It’s just to give you an idea of how to explore this.  In this case, it’s two descriptions of the same boat ride:

  1. Hundreds of rolling wavelets marched toward her like an advancing army, broken only when the jet ski roared by.  Looking at the dark slice it cut through the gun-gray water, her heart beat in sudden panic.  That chainsaw buzzing of the motor. . . .the accompanying sound of the dozens of horror movies she and Eddie had watched in their teens.  Maybe it was that subliminal memory of blood and gore that was making her feel queasy and not the unstable floor beneath her feet rocking and rising and falling with every shudder of wind and water, giving her the sensation of an earthquake’s aftershock.

  2.  Hundreds of rolling wavelets marched toward her like a crowd of eager children on parade, the procession broken only when the jetski bounced across the shimmering wake bubbling out aft.  Looking at the gray-green line the other craft sketched through the green-gray sea, her heart lifted.  The darker patch was there in the water, in her life, but it was behind her now, and she was free of it.  Maybe it was that subliminal sense of liberty that made the simple act of balancing on the gentle rise and fall of the deck as exhilarating as surfing.

So, any purple prose aside, do you get the idea?  Give it a shot.  And if you’d like to share the results, feel free to post your work in the comments.

Happy Writing!

The parts that people skip*

Description Difficulties

I’ve found a new author.  Well, new to me.

I’ve always read a lot, but I went through a lengthy period where I rarely read anything new.  Life was so busy and hectic that I wanted to know, when I sat down with a book, that I was going to enjoy it.  I tended to re-read old favorites.

Now that I have moved and my days are less about just getting through them and more about enjoying them, I have been able to branch out.  And I’ve come across Ruth Rendell.

The Baroness (I love how the English reward artists as well as CEOs) is a well-known (although not to me, apparently) and much honored author of murder mysteries.  Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good English murder mystery?  A cup of tea, a body in the library, a good old-fashioned butler looking down his nose at the man from the Yard (Scotland, that is) while Miss Marple or her equivalent saves the day.

I like a book with a clear point.  It doesn’t get much clearer than a murder mystery.  Once you know whodunit, you are done.

The thing, however, that I really want to say about Ruth Rendell is how masterful her descriptions are.  I feel that this is an area where my own writing falls short.  (Basically, I suck at description.)  I don’t know why this is, although it is possible that in my early reading years, the descriptions were the parts I skimmed.  I remember skipping whole pages of Ivanhoe, for example.  It’s possible that I never really absorbed descriptive technique due to lack of paying attention.

It’s also possible that I am more of a verbal than a visual person, although I can conjure up mental pictures of people and places with ease.  There is some major disconnect, though, in my brain when it comes to putting words to the mental pictures.  I would be a total failure at that exercise I’m told happens early in police training–where someone with a gun bursts into the classroom, holds up the teacher and then flees, and the recruits are asked to describe the perpetrator.

The recruits, however, are taught to be more observant and probably given tips and tricks for estimating heights and weights.  They improve.  I probably can, too.

Of course, rookie police officers’ descriptions, of necessity, tend to favor clarity over the evocation of personality or a mood.  That evocation is that at which Ruth Rendell excels.  I think I’m going to have to study her writing a little more.

She’s written dozens of books, as both herself and under the name Barbara Vine.

How nice for me!

 

* I try to leave out the parts that people skip. — Elmore Leonard


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