  Action/Adventure
This week: Good Description Edited by: Legerdemain  
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A Good Description is Worth a Thousand Words
Have you ever come across a phrase in a book and thought, "Awesome description!". Generally, after I think it's awesome, I think, "Oh, why didn't I think of that?". Some authors are talented at finding the perfect phrase and injecting an entire image in a reader's head.
"Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment." ~Inkheart ~Cornelia Funke
In editing your writing, when finding a big descriptive chunk that is flat and unimaginative, try to find a phrase that will inject an image directly into your reader's thoughts. In my story, "Rusty and the Shillelagh" , I could have described Rusty's injury in great gory detail. While I wanted the reader to have an image, I didn't want the focus to be on injury itself. So instead I wrote "The lump on Rusty's head was growing away from his skull like an egg coming out of a chicken." Many reviewers found the description amusing and didn't focus on it being a bloody injury.
"For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else." On Writing ~ Stephen King
King goes on to say, "I think locale and texture are much more important to the reader's sense of actually being in the story than any physical description of the players. Nor do I think that physical description should be a shortcut to character." "Before beginning to write, I'll take a moment to call up an image of the place, drawing from my memory and filling my mind's eye, an eye whose vision grows sharper the more it is used."
It is a good exercise for any writer. Try getting an image you see in your mind, to text on your paper or screen. Once you cut the extraneous fluff, see if the words you have left still complete a picture for a reader. And as always, Write On!
This month's question: What great descriptive phrases have you written or read?
How do you use description in your writing?
Answer below  Editors love feedback! 
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Excerpt: My heart raced as the needle was extracted from a drawer. "If you come near with that, I can't promise what I'll do."
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#2052030 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: “I ain’t gonna bring another kid into this world for you to abuse. I’ll have an abortion first!"
Excerpt: On a cold day before Halloween in 1959, I was once again shunted off to visit relatives in the depressing southern town of Lucedale, about an hour’s drive north of my home on the Gulf Coast.
Excerpt: Night...it brings to life all the horrors and all the creatures of questionable persuasion. Instead of concealing the things that whisper from the walls and dark corners that can't be clearly seen into, or that which goes bump in the night...no, but rather it would give them form and substance allowing them the powers to impose a more sinister presence, giving their whisper's more volume.
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Excerpt: Ron proceeds to say aloud the dreaded words that he has been thinking, “Honey, I don’t think we are going to make it to the airport on time.”
Because Ron is never on time, Janice has learned to fudge the time in a variety of ways. This trip she lied about the departure time and made it earlier. She calmly replies, “Why do you say that?”
Excerpt: Sadie and her mother go shopping for bedroom wallpaper. Sadie is excited. Her favorite color is yellow. There is lots of wallpaper with yellow on it.
“That’s for babies,” Sadie pouts as her mother points at wallpaper with pink, blue and yellow alphabet blocks.
Excerpt: The shuttle, a fifty-meter cylinder with a rounded nose and two stubby wings, rose steadily as the fusion flame of its main engine drove it through the atmosphere. Captain Sully Sumner gazed out at the falling curve of the planet and the gradual winking on of stars in the black firmament.
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This month's question: What great descriptive phrases have you written or read?
How do you use description in your writing?
Last month's question: How do you track your character movements in their world?
Quick-Quill  responded: I had two in my novel. I had a map of the Allegheny Mtns (Id moved the family there from the Appalachains where the drive from there to my real city was too far. Same type of people live in both places. I had to figure how long it would take to get from the town to the city by bus and why they couldn't hop a car and go visit Dad when he was in the sanitorium. Its a bit vague, but it worked in my world.
I had to same for my new book. how long would it take to get fromMC2 house to HQ and from there to the airport. How far would MC1 have to drive north of Seattle to put him too far to gt back to his family in time to take them to the hospital. Details that make the story real. The Devil is in the Details.
Smee  advised: Haha, be careful though. This can open up a whole can of worms. Plonking down a mountain will implications to the local weather. Most mountain ranges have strong impacts on the environment on either side of them. Usually rain will hit the wall of mountains and drop their load all on one side making one side lush and wet, and the other side a desert.
Shadowstalker-- Covid free  replied: Since I write a lot of fantasy set in medieval times I use a 1 horse= 1 day rule of thumb. In many times and cultures where horses were the main mode of transportation, towns tended to be spaced the distance a horse can travel at a walk in a day apart. While there are variances in speed, and unforeseen obstacles, this allows me to keep a constant "speed" as my character travels from inn to inn.
If they are on foot, I can still use this measure of time/distance... just double it. maybe even add on a few extra hours to even that doubling to account for trouble on the road (rain/bandits/ gorge/ etc.)
Then, it is easy to keep them from "time-warping" and all i need to keep in mind is any variances/problems I throw in their way. (EG: plan on making town just at dusk but hero is stopped by raging river that takes three hours to cross by going to a ford upstream-- so the sun obviously can't "just be setting" when he gets to the inn.)
GaelicQueen  tells: I'm not much of an outliner, but let me draw a map. I will draw a diagram of character's family estate. I refer to maps of the region I'm working into a fantasy story so I may see mileage and topography. If you don't know where you are, how you got there, how are you going to know where you're going?
Elfin Dragon-finally published  reveals: I form more of a mental map (although I'll probably have to do a physical one at some point) of where my character is traveling). Like you sometimes I've had to adjust travel time due to features of landscaping or simply how large something really is. But I've found once I've gotten the hang of it, it's not too bad.
Jaeff | KBtW of the Free Folk  said: I occasionally play Dungeons & Dragons with some friends, and a few years ago I created an original campaign setting/fantasy world where the entire story took place on a single small continent. I only realized after I put a ton of work into it that the continent itself could be traversed on foot in about five days and yet, despite its incredibly small size, had climate zones that ranged from snowy mountains to tropical jungle to burning deserts to sprawling forests. So basically, a character could walk for about ten miles and see the landscape change from a humid swampland to arctic tundra. The players ended up loving it because each terrain offered unique combat situations, so my explanation for how this completely improbably variable weather island-sized continent came to be? MAGIC!  If I had it to do over again, I probably would have scaled it slightly larger so the variable terrain was a little more logical. 
Howler of the Moon admits: I've never really put much thought into it. Now that I've read this article, I've realized how important it is. Before this, I guess I never really kept track of time and instead focused on the characters reactions to the surroundings.
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Action/Adventure: August 19, 2015 Issue [#7170]
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