1. The Bishop

    The Bishop Senior Member

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    Writing Details

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by The Bishop, May 30, 2018.

    Easily one of the most difficult things about writing for me is details, writing descriptions is just hard for me for some reason. So, if you have any tips for writing details with more description then just share them here.
     
  2. Shoshin Samurai

    Shoshin Samurai Member

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    One thing that has helped me: I live asking the question 'why'. I know details and descriptions are more 'what' and 'what else' and 'what all', but all that doesn't make sense if not connected by the 'why'. Also, some research about anything helps a lot:

    Summer at the lonely house was always abuzz with activity. Standing in the balcony, he watched as the morning sun shone its glow on the leaves of the lovely, white Wisteria floribunda that had enveloped the tall fence. A butterfly, a White Admiral, spread its wings -- white dots on a veinous black stretched fabric -- but continued to sit busy without further movement, sucking on the white flower. I sucked on my white cigarette and flipped the butt. Lonely house or not, I had many things scheduled for today; I had two people to kill.
     
  3. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Using a thesaurus helps a bit :)
     
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  4. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Maybe the details are like a venn diagram between things the POV character cares about and things that readers will be able to draw conclusions from. I usually use 2-4 for a character and 4-6 for a scene, with most of them being shorter/smaller details.
     
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  5. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Generic: Cold wind cut through the valley. Flat stones bridged a mirrored lake, surrounded by fir trees. Wispy clouds burned in the setting sun.

    Hunter: Slick stones bridged the only clear water in five miles, and the fir trees surrounding the lake would be perfect cover for our quarry. We stopped by the water's edge as the mountain's shadow slipped over in the setting sun.

    Fugitive: I took cover in the fir trees on the edge of the lake. The sun was setting, and the mountain's shadow was dark. They'd never find me.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Last thing to add—you might be able to invent a guideline by looking at books you like. Like if you open one book and find five descriptive elements per scene, then another only two, and another with 15, you might realize you like sparse description and shoot for 2-4 (and by looking, you’ll learn better what to do, even without a rational guideline).

    I’m not published so, just opinions.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
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  7. Shoshin Samurai

    Shoshin Samurai Member

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    What fun! :) I had to try:
    All the trees seemed to point to the deceptive warmth of orange mountain peaks, bathed in the setting sun: it's a warm evening... jump in... enjoy... take the clothes off... swim... Jeez, the water was cold; the smell of the coniferous woods or the clear, smooth rocks had not been warning enough, and my shiny leather shoes were not gum boots. I strode into the shallow water, my bare feet noiselessly crunching the bed of pebbles that were coated with algae.
     
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  8. Lawless

    Lawless Active Member

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    IMHO, you don't need to sweat the details. There are writers who can fill paragraphs with hair waviness and birthmark shapes. That doesn't mean you have to. Concentrate on what you can do best. Don't compete with cats in tree climbing. Compete in swimming.
     
  9. rincewind31

    rincewind31 Active Member

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    Keep it simple. If you're not very good with detailed descriptions, don't do them.

    Up ahead, the road cut through the hillside, works just as well as, up head the road cuts through the hillside like a well defined buttock crevice, glinting cheekily at him through the haze of the early morning sunshine.

    Or some such thing.
     
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  10. Shoshin Samurai

    Shoshin Samurai Member

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    Oh, boy.
    'Up ahead, the road cut through the hillside.' : Sound to me like it could be from any piece of work.
    'Up head, the road cuts through the hillside like a well defined buttock crevice, glinting cheekily at him through the haze of the early morning sunshine.': The voice of the narrator is unique and playful. Or even obnoxious. And brings a picture to the mind: a haze, morning, sunshine, the mood of the narrator, and also reinforces the first version well.
    These two are so very different, and the first one doesn't just cut it. Well done on the second one though. :)
     
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  11. rincewind31

    rincewind31 Active Member

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    It's a basic as possible but there's really nothing wrong with either.
     
  12. Seven Crowns

    Seven Crowns Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    There are whole books on this . . . it's kind of hard to summarize. Here's how I approach detail.

    1) The story starts in your imagination but it will be shaped by each reader. If you try to force a specific image in minute detail, it will fail, and what's worse, your attempt will come off as manipulative. Because you're working with words, not pictures, what you create is going to be impressionistic. Every reader will see a different image shaped by the tone and colors your words carry. You guide the reader toward a description, but you don't drag them along.

    2) Like impressionism, some details are vague. Only the important features are in focus. It's a little like show/tell. Skim over the basics with tell, and then move into the sensory with show on what's important.

    3) Describe with all senses. Don't be too visual. I think we watch so much television/videos these days that we tend to over-visualize. You're writing a novel, not a screenplay, so don't get too hung up with sight. Don't get caught up with left/right and location specifics. Oh, there are also more than 5 senses. The traditional 5 (sight, sound, etc.) were Aristotle's outer senses. There are also 5 inner senses. Shakespeare was fond of them. He called them the 5 inner wits. (common sense, remembrance, imagination, fantasy, estimation). These are absolutely huge when it comes to detailing because they link the environment to the MC/narrator and present the world deeply though their POV. (The outer senses do too, but these inner senses are purely the MC. They nearly define him.) There are other senses too, I guess, even if you count these 10. There are things like hunger, balance, nausea, etc. There are strange new studies going on with cryptochromes and layers under the skin . . . those link to more senses. I'd have to look at my old notes. I guess it's not too critical. The thing to realize is that you at least need to hit the Big 5, but be aware there are more.

    4) Don't tell people what they already know. That's insanely boring. It's okay to give them a little, just to ground the scene/character/whatever, but what's important about the description is what makes it unique. So if you have a cat, the reader assumes it has four legs and a tail and you shouldn't waste too much time on that (well, unless you're being funny or leading someplace else . . .). Let the reader know that it's a daubed calico and has a Hitler-stache under its nose and always smells like sauerkraut, which is why the neighbor kids have decided to throw pine cones at it. That's assuming it even needs describing. Anyway, the descriptions have to carry a purpose.

    5) Mixing the poetic/mundane. There are methods to get away with this (which are far beyond the scope of this post), but you need to do them with purpose. Don't be fancy to impress the reader, do it to make a necessary impression for the scene. The trick is balance, and honestly, not every voice will accommodate it. You have to establish your voice early and let it breathe . . . kind of making room for the language. If you have been writing pages of boilerplate and then suddenly lapse into line yanked from a sonnet, it will sound weird and remove the reader from the story. If you do nothing but the poetic, that's very irritating too. I set aside a book just yesterday. The woman knew how to shape a sentence/phrase, but would not KNOCK. IT. OFF. Everything was grandiloquent imagery. It becomes a kind of clutter. Balance is important.

    6) You can describe by contrast, negation, metaphor, and many other methods. It's not always just listing what's there in the scene. It's about comparison. Once again, this can be overused and become a disaster, so be careful.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
  13. Jupie

    Jupie Senior Member

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    There's some really good posts here by people. It's funny really, writing attracts all sort of people. Some write because they love detail or facts, others because they love characterisation and dialogue. I know some write to inform as well or because they're passionate about a subject. It can be all these reasons. What may not seem natural to you right away can eventually begin to take on its own shape and find its way into your writing. For instance, I have a good imagination but I'm not someone who visualises every room or setting... I sometimes don't know what detail to include but that's okay. It all comes back to your particular style. Sometimes as you're writing you begin to describe a scene and then it takes on a life of its own. Once you get carried away you'd be surprised by how much you can write on the page. I used to write details just for the sake of it, just so I could say well there's a picture, I've painted it. Only a lot of the time that sort of description is a little soulless... it's functional but not necessary. No one will remember the scene I've created, so why bother?

    Now I just write whatever comes to mind. I do like description so if it's relevant or will leave an impression I'll include it. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes you only need one or two details to stand out. My story is very character-led so I focus on his / her perspective and their reaction to their environment. If my MC is afraid of the dark as a child, I try and show that as much as possible. If he's the sort to be attentive to his surroundings (which he is), then I focus on what's around him, but only to show he's observant. You'll find ways that work for you. Finding ways to express what's in our imagination is one of the most enjoyable parts to writing, but to get at what we exactly mean takes practice. Even then, a good writer will still draw a blank from time to time. That's okay, just keep writing. It'll come.
     
  14. Shoshin Samurai

    Shoshin Samurai Member

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    Beautiful. I am a hardcore believer in the first two. But, I also believe it near impossible to force a very specific detail because words carry their own colour that is different for every reader, unless, the writer is desperately making an effort at writing badly. I love the impressionism analogy, and the five inner wits. Thank you for this post! :)
     
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  15. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    1. Read poetry it will teach you how use brevity, metaphor, and more exciting verbs
    2. Pov's change details; a thirty year old man will look at an attractive woman and think different things than a nine year old boy. Always keep your character in mind
    3. Describe only what your pov character would take notice of
    4. Use the senses only go deeper -- use the clichés as your jumping off point -- tasting fear, hearing a heart break, smelling danger, start your own
    5. Use concrete words when necessary -- instead of umbrella words like car, dress, food, house -- all these are vague (sometimes vagueness is needed) but when you want to nail home an impression it's the difference between a blind date showing up in a car or a Ferrari Testa Rossa. Your impression changes immediately.
    6. Try using words for sounds like alliteration or to soften the image or sharpen it.
    7. Use techniques like metaphor, simile, personification, irony, slang, name brands.
    8. Collect pictures off the internet. You can't always have what you need at the drop of a hat. You mind need to describe something summer during winter and pictures can really help to get the words flowing. They can remind you that sunsets aren't always as pink as the clichés -- they can be a burning yellow.
    9. Keep a sense of humor. Don't take everything so seriously.
    10. Brainstorm -- jot random words on a sheet of paper -- no lists, just spider them out from a main word like The MC's House and let ideas keep flowing -- this can really help to unearth some distinctive jewels and get past surface cliches.
    11. Choose words that help convey a mood -- the cliché is the cold woman with the icy eyes but I recall Colleen McCullough expanding on this in Tim to describe an old maid's glacial living room and being frightened of bold uses of red -- which helped reinforce symbolically her fear of sex.

    The main thing is to layer -- you want everything to resonate with the pov character, you want the descriptions to strike a mood for the over all novel, and you want them to strike a mood that is going on within the scene.
     
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  16. The Bishop

    The Bishop Senior Member

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    That's amazing
     
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  17. ocean blue

    ocean blue New Member

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    This is such a good idea! I never really thought about how different characters would describe the same scene in very different ways based on why they were there or what their nature/upbringing was. Next time I try to write a detailed scene, I'll think about how the POV character would see it, which is not necessarily the same way I would see it if I were there.
     
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  18. Seven Crowns

    Seven Crowns Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    One thing that I don't think was said is to break apart the description. Rather than hitting a reader between the eyes with a massive block of detail, leave the pieces scattered across several lines. So if you take the basic elements—dialog, action, narrative—the description falls across them. The shift from one mode to the other lets the description be larger without dragging.

    Here's a great paragraph of this that I was just reading. (To explain: the MC is trying to purchase a spot for his Jewish brother on a boat out of WWII Poland. He's meeting the guy with the ship.)

    "We have one ship," said Hermann Hoffman. He was dimpled and plump, with a trim Vandyke, bags under his eyes that had an air of permanence, and a shiny black hairpiece almost aggressive in its patent falsity. His office at the Transatlantic Rescue Agency overlooked the iron-black trees and rusty foliage of Union Square. He had spent twenty times on his gray worsted suit what Joe, whose economy grew more draconian as his income increased, had spent on his own. With the precision of someone cutting a deck of cards, Hoffman drew three brown cigarettes from a pack that featured a gilt pharaoh and dealt one to Joe, one to Rosa, and one to himself. His nails were clipped and pearly, and his brand of cigarette, Thoth-Amon, imported from Egypt, was excellent. Joe could not imagine why such a man would wear a toupee that looked as if it had been ordered from the back cover of Radio Comics. "One ship, twenty-two thousand dollars, and half a million children." Hoffman smiled. It was, on his face, an expression of defeat.​

    Look at how this is assembled. It's pretty clever.

    "We have one ship," said Hermann Hoffman.
    The author prefers "X said" to "said X," but switches the order here to connect closer with "He was dimpled . . ." The pronoun is a sentence connective and wants to be close. He didn't have to do this, but it was pretty skillful, IMO.

    He was dimpled and plump, with a trim Vandyke, bags under his eyes that had an air of permanence, and a shiny black hairpiece almost aggressive in its patent falsity.
    Direct character description. Builds from short to long, from word to phrase.

    His office at the Transatlantic Rescue Agency overlooked the iron-black trees and rusty foliage of Union Square.
    Now to setting. It mirrors the character in some ways. It's like an indirect description.

    He had spent twenty times on his gray worsted suit what Joe, whose economy grew more draconian as his income increased, had spent on his own.
    Back to character description. This time its done mostly by contrast rather than listing details.

    With the precision of someone cutting a deck of cards, Hoffman drew three brown cigarettes from a pack that featured a gilt pharaoh and dealt one to Joe, one to Rosa, and one to himself.
    Now an isolated action beat. The character is described through mannerism.

    His nails were clipped and pearly, and his brand of cigarette, Thoth-Amon, imported from Egypt, was excellent.
    Back to character description.

    Joe could not imagine why such a man would wear a toupee that looked as if it had been ordered from the back cover of Radio Comics.
    Now to the MC's inner musings but describing the character.

    "One ship, twenty-two thousand dollars, and half a million children." Hoffman smiled. It was, on his face, an expression of defeat.
    Dialog closes and another character description finishes it all up.
     

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