When it comes to description, I find that I'm at my weakest. I can write dialogue and action pretty well, but when I want to describe something—especially something horrifying that it's flat. Are there tips that can help me get out of this rut?
I tend to take a less-is-more approach when it comes to descriptions in horror, specifically. What your reader imagines is going to be more terrifying than anything you try to make them see. Try a more barebones style, picking out only a few key details, and see if you like that.
I rarely if ever have any idea what anything I write looks like. Are you sure you need that for the type of story you're writing?
Yes, I think so. In my little writing group, everyone agreed that I didn't have enough description on my zombies.
Fair enough. I would recommend getting more feedback on general principle - "less feedback" is never the answer - but if you've gotten feedback from a bunch of people and they've all said the same thing, then that would definitely be a good place to start. Oh, hello One word: Smell. Seasoned professional forensic veterans often lose their lunch at the stench of a decomposing body, so there is no way that Joe Blow off the street wouldn't notice anything
Think of your setting as a character or an extension of a character. My protag has a scary encounter with her friend's father's in his office. The furniture looms, it's dark, the door shuts heavily. The family is rich and condescending. Everything in the house drips excess, carpets and furniture white, servants stay out of sight. The city is a jungle entwined with highways that weave it together threatening to tie my character inside. Those are examples of threads I then grow the scene from.
The technical name for this is called 'staging' and it is one of the best devices you can use in Horror. - I write horror, and I use Juxtapositions to give things a surreal feeling to them. Let me give you an example. - A red-furred ape, taller than a doorway and covered in necrosis, grabbed the jeweler by his arms and folded him into a box. As this living, screaming man was used for origami, //the Ape sang out in the voice of all-female choir. It matched my expectations of what angels would sound like, so I cried. -Nerium, Chapter 7. - I've put // where the scene almost contradicts itself. The horror of this scene is not in the fact that a man is being killed, the horror is in the fact that the MC does not cry about the man being murdered, -in fact, she almost ignores this- but cries because she finds the Ghost's singing, beautiful.
Thank you! I really like your example. Are there any books or a website I can go to. I'd like to read up on staging and maybe study more examples.
Hello Anitaex, 'The Art of Subtext' by Charles Baxter, is a 100+ page essay written on Subtext. I believe he covers Staging in either chapter 1 or 2 of the essay.
You just have to do the best you can. Let the words play off of each other. She was a fair site to say the least. Her porcelain skin more pronounced by her blood stained lips, as she crossed the room drawing all eyes upon her. See the words dance, and the flow is alright. And I was just riffing out an example of description. Another perhaps. His eye was drawn to her. Though he knew her hair was a synthetic weave of flaxen and honey, and her pale grey flesh glowed under the brilliance of the lighting. Her emerald green lips suggested she had more on her mind than to simply be of good company. Her large coffee brown eyes were that of a huntress on the prowl, and she was sizing up her considerably larger prey of the evening. In her much shorter stature, she knew he was seeing her. Yet he felt a twinge in the back of his mind, he dared not show his allure to her. So he played it aloof, calm and cool taking another sip of his scotch as she ambulated his direction. Her hips swayed suggestively, and he could not help but be entranced by her fluidity. She carried herself toward her prey, feinting frailty in her approach. Though she knew that she was not a delicate flower, but a hungry woman with a burn in her loins like that of a devil. When she made it to him, she could smell him. Smell the fear and desire of him. Though he still dared to hide his feelings from the huntress. Placing a small hand upon his forearm, her emerald lips upturned in a predatory fashion showing her crystalline teeth. He tried to pull away, but it was useless in her firm grip. She giggled softly at his reluctance, and held his gaze with hers. Then and only then did he realize her intent. Taking the nearly empty glass from him, she swallowed the remainder of scotch in a large swallow. Then he knew his evening was in for a long one. Basically just paint with your words and it will all come together in the end. Granted I don't think you will be having seductive Grey Aliens trying to pick up Human men at a Gala, but I think you understand what I am getting at. Description is more than merely depicting things, it has to be imaginable to the reader. While how much or how little is up to you. It is all dependent on how you like to go about things.
Imagine for a moment that you are beautiful young lad, lured into the world of an exotic woman, "Lay down" she says, and you do so upon a silk clad bed. She is exquisite, she shines with such potential vamprisim, her face begs you to ask "what is wrong with your mad vampire teeth?" but you were brought up as a catholic in a catholic school, and after a life time getting buggered by priests, there is little argument left within you. So instead you say, "Ok Demon mad freak shit, I am yours," and strangely your acquiescence calms you, for now your life belongs to this vampire queen. "Ooh Mince" she screams in response.
Just how little is your writing group? Do any of them now owt from nowt? Get more feedback! Post some of your description, and let us see if we can give more specific pointers than "That's not enough description".
Yeah... I mean, they're zombies. Who can't imagine a zombie? I assume if your zombies are different from Basic Zombies you would describe that (or else what would be the point?) so I'm questioning your critique group...
Personally, I think it helps if it's something you yourself find frightening or disturbing, then it'll be easier for you to "transfer" that feeling to the readers. It also depends on what type of writer you are, not all writers like detailed descriptions and wants things to be up to people's imagination, which can also work. Like if you describe a monster as "a horrible abomination with features twisted in nightmarish form", people are more likely to imagine something they themselves find disturbing. That said, I usually prefer detailed descriptions of my monsters. Here's one example: " Out in the streets walked a creature taller than the tallest man he had ever seen; its girth exceeding that of the largest bear. A monstrous mockery of a man; it's naked feet sinking deep into the mud. It seemed to almost struggle under its own massive weight with each step it took. Its arms were bulky and the thick layer of fat did little to hide the muscles beneath them. A big, bloated belly, unable to be contained by the thick leather belt around its waist, from which hang several rusty knives, meat hooks and a leather apron. Its skin was thick and leathery, of a sickly, greyish colour; pus leaking from uncountable sores, scars and boils while maggots crawled in and out of infected wounds. In its oversized meaty hands, it dragged along a great blade, in the shape of an elongated cleaver constructed of rusty, dirty metal; its long crude handle seemed to have been hewn from a tree. But what was above its shoulders made him even more unsettled; for in place of the head of a man sat the fat head of a pig. Its eyes were sewn shut with heavy thread. Around its mouth were stains of old blood and other remnants of its last meal and its teeth were jagged and rotten. It seemed to him, to almost be a grotesque parody of a butcher; and over its shoulder was slumped the body of a young man. Unconscious by the looks of it. " It's made up of various elements some people might find disturbing, but if someone doesn't find any one of those things frightening or disturbing, then it kinda falls flat. I think horror is very personal and it will be hard to create something everyone will find equally scary. Don't know if anything I've said has made sense ^^
The trouble with detailed descriptions of anything, is that your reader can nod off in the middle of it. It won't scare them. It will put them to sleep. I'd treat a horror description the same as any other. Filter it through your main character, assuming your main character isn't the monster. What matters to your character AT THAT MOMENT? What do they particularly notice, and why? What effect does it have on them? I'm not a 'monsters' person, so descriptions of monsters don't really scare me anyway. One of the scariest descriptions I've ever encountered, came from a secondhand telling (in an actual interview ...not a tale of fiction) of an event the teller had witnessed. The teller and his friend were walking home down a country road in Nova Scotia, at dusk one evening, when they saw something creep across the road in front of them. It looked like a man, hunched over, but it crept along, dragging a foot as if it was wounded or something. The teller of the tale was inexplicably frightened, and wanted to run, but his friend went to investigate. The friend returned a few moments later, staring and silent. He refused to speak, or let on what he'd seen up close. The next day, the friend was dead. The teller of the tale had no idea what they had seen—but his own hair turned prematurely white just afterwards, and he was now agoraphobic. I have spent many an hour trying to picture what the hell that creeping thing could have been. THAT scared me.
I love your description. I got some clear pictures in my head from your details. This is how I want to write with just enough details so the reader can visualize what I wrote.
About five sometimes six. Good idea! I will be happy to put something up here. I'm working on something now. As soon as I tweaked it to my satisfaction, I will put it up here. That way I can identify what is troubling me as well.
I will try the library, but I live in a small town, and I don't think that they carry anything after 1975.