Writing Vivid Descriptions (and when to shut up) | On Writing

POSTAL ADDRESS (if you're kind enough to send me a letter or something!)

Tim Hickson
PO Box 69062
Lincoln, 7608
Canterbury, New Zealand

Script by meeeeeeeee
Video edited by Lalit Kumar

The artist who design my cover photo:

Stay nerdy!
Tim

[HelloFutureMe]

What's the most VIVID fictional place/world for you?? ☺️☺️ Or your fav bit of your own descriptive writing?? Stay nerdy!

~ Tim

[steel]

Ongoing descriptions are an option too, describe parts of the castle as they become relevant. Emphasize the outer walls and towers as characters approach, back to plot, describe gates and flags as they enter, back to plot, etc... I've seen a few authors divert to describing a castle down to the type of wood used in the lord's dinner table while the characters were still looking at the place on the horizon.

[Zeknif]

I’ve learned something very important today… apparently Cthulhu statues capable of summoning the Eldritch god are not in fact a normal thing to keep in one’s Library.

[hannaaxelsson]

Neil Gaiman does some excellent descriptions, and one of my favorites is in "Neverwhere", where he describes the villains Croup and Vandemar like this: "They wore black suits, which were slightly greasy, slightly frayed, and even Richard, who counted himself among the sartorially dyslexic, felt there was something odd about the cut of the coats. They were the kind of suits that might have been made by a tailor two hundred years ago who had had a modern suit described to him but had never actually seen one. The lines were wrong, and so were the grace notes."

[dswcartoons]

Despite the thumbnail there is a lack of Howl's Moving Castle, so...

"Sophie put her hands to her face, wondering what the man had stared at. She felt soft leathery wrinkles. She looked at her hands. They were wrinkled too, and skinny, with large veins in the back and knuckles like knobs. She pulled her grey skirt against her legs and looked down at skinny, decrepit ankles and feet which had made her shoes all knobby. They were the legs of someone about ninety and they seemed to be real."
Diana Wynne Jones

[skylark]

Lol I love writing super descriptive stuff, esp with scenery, but sometimes I’m like “wait I’ve spent like two paragraphs talking about a lake I should probably move on”

[a.morphous]

I think the best description I've ever heard wasn't even written. It was a college English professor, talking about his life and describing the island he grew up on as follows:
"It stuck out into the bay like a crooked finger trying to induce vomiting."
Only a single, shortish sentence, but it told me so, so much about this place in an instant and how he felt about it.

[micaelagonzalez]

I always remember Jon Snow's description when he wakes up beyond the wall and everything is frozen and glittering. And I remember it not because of the details but because of the emotion. That landscape makes him think fondly of how his sisters would react if they were there.

[amrys_argent]

What's occurred to me while watching this is that one of the most valuable functions of description is what it can tell you about the character observing whatever is being described. I have a first-person protagonist who *absolutely* would use words like "cerulean" and "vermilion, " because he is a young wizard who hasn't yet figured out that knowing a lot of things and having an extensive vocabulary isn't the same thing as being wise. When I heard the Sanderson passage, I remarked to my spouse (a Sanderson fan) that it sounded very businesslike. They said that the character in that passage *is* a businesslike person, and that Sanderson writes more interesting descriptive passages when another character, an artist, is the viewpoint. And of course famously, a case where the environment's description tells you pretty much everything about the character, is The Yellow Wallpaper.

[BackAlleyTANGO]

I think you'll notice that Brandon Sanderson's descriptions change depending on which POV character we're following. Kaladin is a soldier, a surgeon. He notices and describes the world around him from the perspective of a practical, to-the-point person. Shallan's POV chapters are more descriptive and less "dry" because she's an artist and scholar who takes interest in things like art, architecture, flora and fauna. I'd still agree that Sanderson's prose isn't where he shines the most as a writer, but I think he has far more range and is far more deliberate with his descriptions than some give him credit for. :)

[IAmAdamTaylor]

11:05 This suddenly came to me and I had to write it down

I stepped into the library and made my way over to the large reading tables at the centre. A handful of other students were there already, leafing through heavy reference books to find the perfect quotes for their essays.

Surrounding the tables were rows upon rows of bookshelves. Each one seemed to stretch off into the distance, like the never-ending paths of a maze, with the weight of musty books pressing in from both sides. Even the sunlight, streaming through the large, domed window in the ceiling above couldn’t penetrate much more than a few shelves into a row. Something about them unsettled me, as if there was something lurking in the darkness amongst the stacks, waiting for a lone student to wander unknowingly into it’s section.

“Stop it.” I whispered to myself, as I passed by the watchful eyes of the marble Cthulhu statue that stood near the horror section. It had been there for decades, despite the best efforts by multiple librarians to remove it. Every time they took it away, it would reappear the next morning, back on the same shelf staring out across the room. Somebody had graffitied a finger across it’s mouth in a shushing gesture - ‘Shhthulhu demands your silence’.

[bimlauyomashitobi]

Perfect example of this; Me and my friends used to have a writing group. We were writing collaborative stories, and I spent the entire first half of my first page of the story describing, in vivid detail, how the protagonist was jumping over a dumpster. Everything, from the type of dumpster to the alley, it was horrible.

They still haven’t let me live it down, years later. You don’t need to go overload on detail. We aren’t Edgar Allan Poe, getting paid per word here, we don’t need to be as wordy as possible.

[DynaStaats]

I have complicated issues with my love of Harry Potter, but one scene description from a book that really got to me was the description of Harry waiting for his turn to face the dragon in the Goblet of Fire. The sound of the crowd above him, the gut feeling of dread, the nervousness of waiting your turn-dreading it while also wanting to get it over with… as a stage performer I recognized these feelings right away and that recognition made that scene so real for me.

[coolbrotherf]

I know a lot of people don't prefer the landscape descriptions from authors like JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis but I find them really interesting. Knowing not only that there are trees around, but the specific kinds is a unique way of picturing a scene.

[pedroff_]

While I don't remember the details (ha), the Brazilian Novel "Vidas Secas" is often praised for its lack of description. Makes the barren and desolate place feel even more so. People were too busy surviving to care about many details. And, apparently, that lack of description made the place feel much more universal for foreign readers, especially from other places with pretty arid and underdeveloped places

[monkeymox]

I think that what Tolkien shows is that if you're going to write very long descriptions, you'd better be _extremely_ good at it. Luckily, he is. There're very few paragraphs in LOTR which I find extraneous, simply because the experience of reading his words is always a joy.

[finaldusk]

I've found description to be a remarkably strong tool for controlling the pace of a story.

If characters are in a hurry or in danger, descriptions can be brief and quick to keep the story's forward momentum.
But if there's downtime for introspection or the like, characters can take their time exploring or observing a setting, reflected in longer descriptions.

[zoe_bee]

So many of these (especially the "specificity" and "ordinary places" tips) overlap with tips for writing good poetry! (I think prose writers could stand to learn more from poets, but that's a conversation for another time, haha)

I also think, as you mention briefly at the end, that the issue with over-describing (or describing when they shouldn't) is one of the side effects of the emphasis on "show, don't tell". "'Show, don't tell?' Okay, so I'll describe EVERYTHING!"

Anyway, I loved this video! Always so helpful & clear 💜

[annaivanova]

The opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House is the best description I've ever read. I got goosebumps when I first read it. It is also a good example of the point you made about description and experience.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

[gabriellepfafflin]

Gotta disagree about Tolkien. You were right that he gives extremely vivid descriptions that can be long-winded and difficult to remember, but the point is not to remember them. He always brings the description back to the character's experience making the description even more impactful, because he spent so much time and work building the description up. In the example you use, he describes impenetrable walls that seem built beyond the ability of man. They stand impervious against the most dangerous enemies, and yet, much like the fall of the Numenoreans and Middle Earth itself, even these walls have fallen into decay. This knowledge leaves the reader with a feeling of dread and you realize that Minas Tirith also stands upon the edge of the knife and it hits harder because so much time was devoted to building those walls and everything they represent.

He uses grandiose description, not so that the reader memorizes the minute details, but so that the important aspects hit harder and leave you with a feeling.