Thread: Describing houses, buildings and accommodations.

Oh, lord, this is something that gets me each and every single time, without fail. When writing, I can describe people, I can describe scenery, I can describe emotions and feelings, but if there's one thing that I cannot describe, it's accommodations. I just can't do it. See, for a piece I am writing, I had an idea of what my main character's home would look like. So, I went to google, and search for a picture of a house, which best represented the house I kept seeing in my mind's eye. However, I'm having a hard time describing it. So, if I post a picture of the house, which I will, below - do you guys think you could help me out, because I've literally got nothing, here.

The old wooden house was in disrepair. Several of the boards had rotted with age, and those that hadn't were tainted with years of accumulated grime. Remarkably, the windows were still intact. Curtains were drawn across two of them towards the front (I actually think they're boarded-up with plywood) and a child-proof design adorned the one on the upper floor. Overgrown foliage rustled in the wind, lending the house a sinister presence.

THIS OLE HOUSE - 28/03/1981
3 weeks at #1 - 17 weeks on chart

This ole house once knew his children
This ole house once knew a wife
This ole house was home and comfort
As we fought the storms of life
This old house once rang with laughter
This old house heard many shouts
Now she trembles in the darkness
When the lightnin' walks about

(Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer)
(Ain't a-gonna need this house no more)
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't a-got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no windowpane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
She's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

This ole house is gettin' shaky
This ole house is gettin' old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold
On my knees I'm gettin' chilly
But I feel no fear nor pain
'Cause I see an angel peekin'
Through the broken windowpane

(Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer)
(Ain't a-gonna need this house no more)
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't a-got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no windowpane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
She's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

This ole house is afraid of thunder
This ole house is afraid of storms
This ole house just groans and trembles
When the night wind flings out its arms
This ole house is gettin' feeble
This old house is needin' paint
Just like me it's tuckered out
But I'm a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

(Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer)
(Ain't a-gonna need this house no more)
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no windowpane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
She's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

(Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer)
(Ain't a-gonna need this house no more)
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no windowpane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
She's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

Rosemary Clooney, Shakin' Stevens, et al

My Dad used to sing that as we worked in his bakery at night. Great memory.

As for a description:

Maybe just some call words and phrases you could elaborate on?

Old (obviously)
Has seen many lives pass through
Ghosts stuck in the walls
Abandoned possessions
Empty windows
Worn linoleum
Naked bulbs
Forgotten flowers returning year to year
Volunteer flowers

I like doing this!

The gray, weathered, wooden house was old, so old that the more recently added electric lines went up the outside of the wall. It was a plain-Jane sort of place, no Victorian gingerbread or other adornment. The steeply–pitched roof of the main part of the structure pointed toward the sky like an arrow. An addition and porch had been crookedly attached to the main house, roofed with now rusty, corrugated steel. Vegetation had encroached on every side. It was still too sturdy to blow over, but I wondered if a lighted match would be an act of kindness to this lonely house that had been abandoned by its people.

Does the appearance of their house actually matter to the story? If I see a two-paragraph description of a building and it has no apparent relation to story then personally I'd probably just skip over it.

Although his residence is a classic farmhouse shape, the two story tee, with the third gable behind the tree, it seems to probably be situated in a town, with a sort of false-fronted commercial space facing the street, yesterday's notion of a cubicle, where an accountant perhaps, or the village lawyer, receives petitions. The building is smudged with something, as if scorched with a passing fiery scourge meant for another target, and one can almost imagine it being neighbor to spinster Joanna Burden's doomed mansion, but otherwise it abides very securely, all its lines running unwaveringly straight; even the flat porch roof off the office, usually a flimsy and hasty construction suitable only for corners and always the first to sag, stands square to the earth.

Under the end gables, a diligent workman, not content with the ordinary practice, used stout diagonal planks in the transition to sheltering roof, arching bulwarks against the earth's leveling attraction, but he left the upper floor respectfully humble, only a half-storey, and those inhabiting this higher plane, in utilizing the full extent of their domain, were forced, at its extremes, to bow their heads.

ppsage, that's good. Very descriptive.

Thanks, everyone. Everyone's responses were brilliant. I especially liked Sam's.

I think you may be thinking too much about describing something that will almost surely bore the reader to death. So, I recommend brevity at all costs. You can get away with suggesting a picture with words; you can't paint one--not if you want to hold the poor reader's interest anyway.

I'm not going to write it for you but give you a description from one of my stories and then point out some of the main points I followed writing it.

The building he was looking at was mid Victorian. “Drawn up large and well proportioned”. Terry would put mental inverted commas around phrases like that, they were the sort of things he could imagine people saying without being able to identify who, like, “A well known phrase or saying”.
The main fabric was built of yellow stocks, the common South London brick of that time, laid three stretchers one header, good, regular Flemish bonding. The brickwork had been laid with a thin layer of mortar that a modern bricklayer would find difficult to emulate, and the original weather pointing was still almost perfect in the sheltered places. Red stocks and lime stone had been used to effect in places like the outside corners and the soldiers over the windows. Everything was topped off with a real slate roof which was surmounted by an imposing chimney stack and fitted with cast iron gutters and down pipes. The architect and artisans responsible knew their craft; and it was well placed. Large and detached it faced the common and occupied a good size plot on the corner of a junction large enough to be worthy of a traffic light.
Thus far he approved, but the additions and subtractions of those who followed the original builders nearly all offended him. Waste pipes, overflows and ventilators pierced the walls, odd coloured bricks and flettons had been used to “fill in”, disused insulators and bits of plastic gutter were tacked on or left over. Altogether everything done since the completion of construction expressed expedience, in direct opposition to the original Victorian intent.
Then there was what he could see of the grounds, though a high wall concealed the rear. Tenacious shrubs clung on in bark covered beds between trees. A thin skim was attempting to contain the gravel drive, which, refusing to be contained, was flashing through its tarmac in slow motion volcanoes. Originally the drive had passed across the front of the house from one road to the other. But now one end of the drive had been cut off, to stop opportunists taking short cuts, and a turning circle added. The combination of “The best possible motives” with “The worst possible taste” had united to mar something “of its time” he decided.
“It was some cowboy tarmacked that drive.” Terry paused in his thoughts for a second, and pictured in his head the way it had once been. “Where carriages once turned on tuned gravel.”
Another pause,
“The surrounding grounds, now woefully run down, had mossy banks to take one’s ease and Springtime bulbs beneath the trees”
But, just as he was starting to get lyrical, he was distracted by a development over the road[/I].



Here are the points I think worth making about that description,
It is made by one of the characters, what he sees and the way he sees it help to define him as well as the house and the fact that he is involved help to stop it simply becoming a boring description of a house (I hope).

I have looked for various things, firstly the main structure, then there are details; there is the way it appeared when it was first built and what has happened to it since, both in terms of maintenance and what has been taken away or added.

I have taken a look at the grounds around it and the way they are kept, which is in keeping with the maintenance that has happened to the house, and the access through them to the house (There is more of this when he crosses the road and approaches, it is important because it is the perspective most people get first, they are usually visiting, not simply looking).

Originally Posted by Edward G

You can get away with suggesting a picture with words; you can't paint one

Have you any idea how ridiculous those two remarks are, taken together?

Going with movieman: is the house important to the story?

If it is, show us how the main character sees the house.

It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant. No two people will look at the same building in the same way. A burglar will look at a mansion one way; a personal protection specialist hired to secure that mansion will look at it differently. And an architecture student will look at the same mansion in yet another way.

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

Have you any idea how ridiculous those two remarks are, taken together?

Let me break it down for you: You can suggest the physical appearance of a building, but you can't go on describing it because you're going to lose the reader after the second sentence of description.

You can write your story any way you want to. This is the era of self-publishing after all, but as soon as you start writing for "you" and not your reader, you have left the world of literature and started a journal. It's your choice.

I'm not going to try and write it for you, nor am I going to debate whether or not it's absolutely necessary for your story. If you're set on describing this building, I usually just do a google search for architectural terms. If I need something specific and know what it is, I go for architectural style: gothic, antebellum, victorian, graeco-roman, baroque, etc...

Architecture Glossary - Illustrated Dictionary for Architecture Words

That link has a pretty nice list complete with illustrations (granted, you need to click each term to see the pic). If you're really stuck, you could maybe send it to someone in the know and ask them to help you identify the key features of the building? I've emailed experts on various subjects and most were more than willing to help me out.