Do you have trouble writing descriptions and detail?
“Just remember to write as if you were a movie,” I routinely tell my writing coach clients. “Beat by beat, sound by sound (including dialogue and internal thought), image by image. If you can include smell, taste and touch, so much the better.”
Descriptions bring writing to life. The more texture you add, the more the reader can viscerally experience what you’re writing about. That doesn’t mean just plunking in an unaffiliated description of a character or setting. The details you share should be carefully chosen to reveal a character’s traits, situation or past, to evoke a mood or emotion, to give a nod to upcoming conflict, etc…
I find that most writers struggle with two main issues when it comes to writing descriptions:
- As I noted in an earlier post, they haven’t trained themselves to hone in on their surroundings—whether inside or out—and appreciate the little things.
- They don’t know how to share details in the context of their story.
So I was delighted to discover a whole new type of thesaurus that helps on both fronts.
Writing Descriptions with a Whole New Kind of Thesaurus
The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Personal and Natural Places and The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces each offer descriptors of typical sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and sensations for more than 100 settings. Additional sections include people commonly found in a particular setting and possible sources of conflict, as well as notes and tips. All of which are super helpful in terms of sparking ideas and cranking up your creativity.
My favorite part, however, is the setting description example at the end of each entry. As you’ll see from the passage from The Rural Setting Thesaurus, which I’ve quoted below, the descriptions and details don’t just sit there. From characterization to relationships, the interplay of the descriptors and story adds a depth of information that transports you into the scene. Just as importantly, the details are carefully chosen to convey a specific mood.
A Child’s Bedroom
From the doorway, I watched my nephew sleep, relieved by how much more bearable his room was at night. With the window open to pull in a cool draft and shadows turning the piles of clothing, dirty glass collection, and overflowing trash can into vague lumps, I could almost pretend a vacuum had seen this space sometime in the last century. I loved my free-spirited sister, but I wished that cleanliness was a value she had chosen to instill in her child.
Angela Ackerman’s fabulous series of thesauruses also offers volumes having to do with emotions as well as positive and negative character traits. Don’t worry. I’ll write about those soon.
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