Thread: Descriptive Writing

Hiya,

First post!

I'm currently writing my first full 'short' story (although it seems to be growing daily!). My main problem is that I have no problem writing rich, descriptive elements- and I have some that I am really proud of- but when I try and weave it into the narrative or dialogue, the plot driven elements sound clunky and contrived and interrupts the 'poetic' flow of the description. Has anyone else encountered this? How can you strike the best balance? Could I take a stream of consciousness approach? Has anyone tried this? Is it really hard?! (I'm no Beckett or Camus!) It just seems to be the natural way my writing is going!!

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Packergator.

Why would you want to weave description into someone's dialogue?

A lot of the time on issues like this, less is more. Describing a hospital is irrelevant, for example, because everyone knows what a hospital looks like. Likewise, a church. Train station. In fact, most of your readers will draw their own picture regardless of how well you describe something. Plus, when you start spending pages describing things, you tend to lose your reader's attention. Keep it simple.

Thanks for the feedback- very swift and much appreciated! I can see what you're saying, and that would be perfect for, say, a thriller or pacy narrative, but it's not really a plot driven story- and the descriptive elements are pretty key; the descriptions of the ocean and seafront and nuances of the seasons / environment are quite a strong reflection of the main character and what is going on in his head. If I just stuck to the main action of the plot, the story would be only 2 pages long! I was going for something Ian McEwan 'Saturday'-esque..where not much actually happens plot-wise (apart from a couple of key moments); it's more about the minutae of everyday life and details of human interaction...if you get what I mean?

I probs should put some of it up here- but i've really only got word 'sketches' at the mo, so it wouldn't make much sense!

Thanks again!

P.

There's nothing wrong with using a lot of description as long as it's relevent to the charcter. It sounds like you're having trouble keeping the voice of your piece consistant. The only way to solve that problem once and for all is practise and editing. Read over the bits that you feel are clunky and make sure they use the same sort of vocabulary and phrasing. Wthout reading any of it that's the best I can offer, I hope iut's been useful.

I write hundreds of pages of really boring descriptions. People don't just read it, they study it. They find ideas in it that they incorporate into their own writing. But my target audience is made up of government officials, NGO leaders, donor agency management, and others for whom the descriptions are of vital importance. It's part of their job to read page after page of description and analysis laced with tables and graphs. I know of no one who would read such material for entertainment.

People read fiction for entertainment. Can you say that your descriptions will hold my interest and keep my attention? Or will I decide that the latest FAO report on hunger in developing countries is perhaps a better choice. It may be more important, I may need to read it for the information it contains. But is it entertainment? Are your descriptions entertainment?

Perhaps you have locked yourself into a style for which you are not yet equipped. As PageOfCups says, practise and editing will go far to solve your problem. Also if you broaden your reading habits you will discover that there are many ways of writing descriptions that do not bore.

Originally Posted by garza

People read fiction for entertainment. Can you say that your descriptions will hold my interest and keep my attention?

Above is the key. Writing is not what is key. Writers write for readers. Will your descriptions keep the interest of your target audience?

My best suggestion would be to post an excerpt from the work itself on the critique or workshop boards so people can give direct feedback to the issues they see. It's a little difficult to extrapolate from your brief description. It's always more effective when it's read, edited, and reviewed. It gives you, as the writer, the best opportunity to see how other people will see it. Sometimes your intention does not translate for the reader and that's an important bit to know

Cheers,
Linz

I think there's generally some resistance here because when a lot of new writers think "descriptive writing", they end up creating prose with tons of adjectives and wordiness. Which actually doesn't make for good description.

The best description, IMHO, uses small things to evoke big things. You can unpack a small detail and use it to describe something huge and complex. That's the kind of description I prefer, rather than just "blah blah the sky was dusky red and the leaves were green in the trees blah blah". Not to say that can't work, too, if you have an eye for that kind of thing (I know I don't). But I think it's an uphill battle.

Anyway, dialogue is generally very fast paced, and description is much slower. Even the density of text on the page, going from description to dialogue, will usually be different. So if you're going from a block of description to a block of dialogue, that can feel jarring. You can try to weave the dialogue and description together (don't just have dialogue with characters talking back and forth, fill in the spaces with stuff, to keep it from feeling like a screenplay), or rework the dialogue until you like it more (it might just be clunky dialogue in general), or cut down the amount of dialogue overall.

You say you don't know how to weave it but I'm not really sure what you mean. You just, weave them together. Rather than having two people talking back and forth, you have one person talk, then a little description, then the other person replies, then a little more description. Generally the description should be about the characters, of course. You don't want to interrupt a conversation for something completely unrelated, like a description of the weather. But the character's actions, expressions, emotions, and so on, can all be interleaved quite nicely between chunks of dialogue. This will slow the pace down, and will be less of a sudden change going from description to dialogue.

Hard to say, really, without seeing it. There are a lot of different ways to approach it.

I'd suggest posting your story in Writer's Workshop. Critiques on the actual story might be more effective than talking about it in the abstract.

Originally Posted by Packergator

I was going for something Ian McEwan 'Saturday'-esque..where not much actually happens plot-wise (apart from a couple of key moments); it's more about the minutae of everyday life and details of human interaction.

You can say that again! I found Saturday absorbing but slow. It's mostly the internal thoughts of Henry Perowne (MC). You have to write brilliantly to pull that kind of thing off. Even McEwan struggles (in my humble opinion). If there's not much plot you've got to have a lot to say as a writer, and have to be very observant and understanding of human nature and interaction. Maybe you are. Nothing wrong with having a go at this.

The problem you highlight is interrupting the 'poetic flow'. Perhaps what you're interrupting it with just isn't good enough yet, which is why it feels 'clunky, and you need to hone your skills.

Try posting a couple of paras - one where you're 'flowing' followed by a clunky one...