"Description felt forced..."

Hey Bone2pick. I think I might be responsible for one of the comments you're talking about. I had to go back and check, but I said, I thought you were reaching for the voice in the beginning of the piece, and some of the descriptions felt laboured (I'm not quoting directly, but that's the gist).

I would be willing to try to clarify what I meant in that thread (or here), although I have a feeling my criticisms (which are actually pretty minor) will seem trivial now. Let me know if you're interested. I really don't want to shoulder my way in to either discussion if I have the wrong end of the stick.

I will simply add, that if you feel you need clarification on any workshop comment (from any member), you might as well ask for it.

 

I typically would have, but with this workshop piece I chose to run an experiment where I didn't explain my choices or ask for clarification. I wanted to see how the critiques would fall completely free of my insight or questions. The only comment I did leave was to the sole poster I requested a critique from via PM - I figured he deserved as much.

As far as clarifying what you meant: don't worry about it. I simply created this thread to discover if a "description felt forced" criticism has a widely shared understanding. It appears it doesn't. So if I receive similar feedback in the future I'll be sure an ask for clarification.

 

It's interesting how the format we commonly write in can become too influential. Most of my creative writing was, and is, for online roleplaying posts. So I'm very comfortable writing in that length (typically 700 - 1300 word scenes). Because of that, I'm not nearly as comfortable writing scenes that are 2k words or more. I have a powerful urge to compress them. The best way I can describe it is that it's similar to driving a car—I'm comfortable going 60 - 75 mph, but I'm uncomfortable at faster speeds.

 

How are you on longer journeys?

 

Yup, I read something that said that a novel chapter should be about 4000 words. My Rainbow short story is my magnum opus to date, and that whole story is only about 4700 words.

 

Unhurried.

 

I can imagine myself thinking this on a variety of occasions:

1) If I'm over-aware that, "Oh, the author's describing something now; I'll read through this but I'm really waiting for the story to continue."

2) If the author sneaks bits of description in, in ways that end up not being sneaky. Often this is when elements of description are inserted where they're not relevant. Things like, "She pushed back her shining straight black hair with her slim white fingers, then fired the gun."

I consider (2) to be worse than (1). If you need to describe, just openly describe.

3) If there's just too much description. I don't need to know height, beauty rating, hair color, eye color, the fabric the clothes are made of...

4) If there's an overload of adjectives, or an excess of emotion. ("...shining straight black hair, a silken curtain that would cause any man to catch his breath..."")

5) As someone else said, if the stuff being described is not something that the POV character would notice. This is similar to, but not identical to, (2)--in (2) the author is pretending not to describe at all. In (5) the author may be signalling that he's describing, but he's violating the emotions/priorities/whatever of the POV.

There are no doubt others. I think I would try to narrow down what I meant by "labored", but it's possible that my issue wouldn't be obvious to me in the moment.

 

Yeah, I think I do need to clarify what I meant in the comment. It doesn't fit into any of the examples you gave, ChickenFreak, but the fact that there are so many valid interpretations does suggest the comment is too vague to be truly helpful.

My feeling is Bone2pick used few adjectives and modifiers in the first half of his piece which jumped out at me as being - I already said it - laboured (we're talking two or three words). Things like 'lofty', 'cacophony' and 'midnight blue', but not necessarily those, specifically. I'd like to add, at this point, I thought some of the word choices were an attempt to convey the POV's voice, rather than just description to set the scene. I assumed this was a deliberate choice, Bone2pick, and thought it was skillfully done, for the most part. It was a little obvious (at times) in those early paragraphs, I thought.

What I mean is, I noticed it.

My problem was, when I tried to put my finger on exactly where I thought the problems were, I couldn't. I wasn't confident any specific suggestions I could offer would be more than a matter of personal-preference. So I didn't leave any, I just said what I felt when I read it (I still feel that way about it). I agree, this thread has already established it was too-vague a comment. It was a general feeling, that was difficult (as it turns out) to articulate.

 

I understand that, and I'm perfectly cool with it. Believe it or not, I wanted people to feel comfortable leaving feedback (be it negative or positive) that they might have a hard time clearly articulating - which is why I ran a no reply experiment.

It was when the poster after you also said my description felt forced, that I thought I would probe the forum (after some time went by) to see if that criticism has a widely agreed upon meaning.

 

Absolutely, and there were a lot of positives to take away, I'm sure.

It's a good thread, I've found it helpful as a reviewer. As I mentioned before, I was reluctant to hijack it and make it all about myself. I just wanted to explain my meaning after it became clear the original criticism wasn't constructive.

 

I think good writing feels effortless. It seems like something anyone could do. It seems much easier than it is. I want my writing to come across as effortless, regardless of the effort it actually takes to get there. If anything seems forced, it doesn't seem effortless. I think that's the big takeaway from the feedback you received. I did not read your piece. I'm not one to participate in the workshop section much if at all. But I think it's more of a direction you might want to take as a writer than something specific to fix. The pros in anything (not just writing) have a way of making it look so easy. When something comes across as forced it's the opposite of that.