Be Careful What You Wish For...

By J.D. Ray · Apr 3, 2020 · 1K · 10

Some recent feedback on my WIP said that my descriptions of new places didn't sufficiently immerse the reader in that place, so the work seemed a little flat. I asked for examples of what the reader thought were good scene descriptions, and am waiting for a response. In the meantime, I looked to the work of Rosamunde Pilcher, a famously descriptive writer. I'd never read her work, and given the opening paragraph of her famous and popular novel "The Shell Seekers", I'm not sure I'll continue:

The taxi, an old Rover smelling of old cigarette smoke, trundled along the empty, country road at an unhurried pace. It was early afternoon at the very end of February, a magic winter day of bitter cold, frost, and pale, cloudless skies. The sun shone, sending long shadows, but there was little warmth in it, and the ploughed fields lay hard as iron. From the chimneys of scattered farmhouses and small stone cottages, smoke rose, straight as columns, up into the still air, and flocks of sheep, heavy with wool and incipient pregnancy, gathered around feeding troughs, stuffed with fresh hay.
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My editor's eye sees several problems with this passage (SPAG, even), but frankly the worst part is that by the time I got to the end of page two of this work, I was worn out. Do people really like this stuff? Am I missing something by not pressing on?
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Comments

I've never read her, never even heard of her till this post, but I see nothing wrong with this excerpt (I might have some comma issues, but nothing serious, probably more a matter of preference) and find it effectively descriptive. A bit old-fashioned perhaps, but I was able to read through it effortlessly. Different books for different audiences; some authors, probably the ones I prefer, make sparser descriptions. But I can picture the setting very nicely. I don't know what followed it so I can't comment on the rest of it.

Maybe it's just not "your cup of tea."

GrahamLewis, Apr 3, 2020
I like it. It's hard to make a scene as vivid as that.
If you're looking for descriptive writing, allow me to suggest Gormenghast.

Friedrich Kugelschreiber, Apr 3, 2020
Yikes, she sneezed commas all over her page! The sentences are as pregnant as those sheep. I didn't like the contextual redundancy either: "...trundled... ...at an unhurried pace" and "...feeding troughs...stuffed with fresh hay." Not inherently bad, but I personally avoid it. Clutter.

Prose niggles aside, she did set the tone and describe the scene well enough.

Not the Territory, Apr 4, 2020
I think the main problem here isn't so much the description itself, but that we need a person to identify with. If we'd had a person in that taxi, looking forward to—or dreading the destination—then the description would have some meaning. What is this person thinking or feeling when they look out at this scene. Is this a homecoming? Or is this a stranger arriving someplace they've never been? This kind of slant can make all the difference.

Problems with description can arise when there isn't any human to attach the scene to. It's just bla bla bla, until humans enter the picture.

jannert, Apr 4, 2020
I do love descriptions not sure if I love this one simply because I don't feel a tension to keep reading. Like Jannert said there's no person directing it and it's pretty but fairly ordinary the best thing about it was the word trundled. I've become sort of hooked on odd descriptions. I've been reading Sol Yurick's the Bag and his are so brash I can't help but continue through the paragraph. Maybe you need to find a style you like.

peachalulu, Apr 4, 2020
I liked the descriptions. She was setting the scene very well. If there were two pages of it I'd feel worn out too. Definitaley OTT.

Reading should be like swimming under water and not under ice. Allow the reader to breathe and not drown in endless descriptions or endless anything for that matter.

Richach, Apr 5, 2020
Back in the early nineties, I worked in a book store. Pilcher was all the rage with the contemporary fiction readers at the time; I shelved a lot of her books. Wanting to know what people saw in her writing, I picked up a random book and opened to a random page. I found myself in the middle of a two-page description about a meadow. It was exhausting to read. I put it down, and until this, have never read another word of her works. Having said that, I wrote 1068 words yesterday describing a man serving two guests some tea. Ahem...

J.D. Ray, Apr 5, 2020
@Friedrich Kugelschreiber, I've just read the opening paragraphs of Gormenghast, and did not find it to my liking, though I can understand people really drinking it up:

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one halfway over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

Very little communication passed between the denizens of these outer quarters and those who lived within the walls, save when, on the first June morning of each year, the entire population of the clay dwellings had sanction to enter the Grounds in order to display the wooden carvings on which they had been working during the year. These carvings, blazoned in strange colour, were generally of animals or figures and were treated in a highly stylized manner peculiar to themselves. The competition among them to display the finest object of the year was bitter and rabid. Their sole passion was directed, once their days of love had guttered, on the production of this wooden sculpture, and among the muddle of huts at the foot of the outer wall, existed a score of creative craftsmen whose position as leading carvers gave them pride of place among the shadows.

At one point within the Outer Wall, a few feet from the earth, the great stones of which the wall itself was constructed, jutted forward in the form of a massive shelf stretching from east to west for about two hundred to three hundred feet. These protruding stones were painted white, and it was upon this shelf that on the first morning of June the carvings were ranged every year for judgement by the Earl of Groan. Those works judged to be the most consummate, and there were never more than three chosen, were subsequently relegated to the Hall of the Bright Carvings.
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I do love the description of the "hovels [that] laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock." That's brilliant work there. But however much I understand the word circumfusion (even though my spell check doesn't), I would rarely if ever use it in a description, and certainly not in the opening sentence. And, so long as I'm standing on this soap box, I'm thrown by the "were it possible to have ignored..." bit.

In the second paragraph, we get a bit of an infodump about the society. If it doesn't have immediate use to the story, it should go elsewhere. Show, don't tell, right?

For my WIP, I hope to find a balance between dry, non-descript scene-setting and overly soliloquent literary masturbation. My nature will drive me to the dry side. Perhaps with some help and a little focus, a shower in the desert will produce wildflowers.

J.D. Ray, Apr 5, 2020
How about this for some descriptive writing?

"About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London, and into this, if you'll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher."

P.G. Wodehouse, "Jeeves in the Springtime"

I really like the "homing rabbit" and "on the brink of a silent pool of coffee." Bright, tight, and descriptive. IMHO

GrahamLewis, Apr 7, 2020
Love that, Graham! I really must read some PG Wodehouse again. It's been a long time. Very funny writer.

jannert, Apr 7, 2020

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