crassmahariel reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Could you give any advice for "descriptive" writing of any scene or action scenes or mapping out the scenery (Mountains, forests, streets etc) - i believe this is a struggle for Non-English speaking writers due to lack of vast vocabulary.
Common Scenery Description Tips
Vocabulary is clearly an important part of description, but it doesn’t have to be a limit. The most important thing about description in fiction is picking the right details to mention:
- How does the details add to the mood of the story? A mountain ridge will be dark, gray and foggy if the overall mood is meant to be mysterious/brooding. In contrast, a mountain can be brilliantly snow-capped, lush green and “smiling down” upon the character if they’re out for a light stroll.
- How are the contrasts/complementary aspects being brought out?
- Are you using the five senses? You can even combine the senses, ie. blue ringing of the church bells
- (If you have the POV character) what
Some other tips for setting description:
- Use similes and metaphors. Creative figures of speech always get my attention as a reader.
- Mention story-specific elements. For example, “The sky was the shade of Zoes’ eyes” or “the mountains looked like a group of trolls sleeping on one another”
- Be concise. Today’s readers don’t want to read paragraphs and paragraphs about one landscape. Outline the larger elements in the scene, their location and general mood. Add some details, then move on.
- If the same location appears multiple times, differentiate the description little by little as you write, instead of trying to lay out one scene in too much detail at once.
That said, here are some helpful words/phrases:
Forests/Mountains
- Color: bone-white, phantom-white, hazy gray
- Sound: rumbling, booming grumbling, bellowing clapping, trundling, growling, thundering
- Shape: crinkled, crumpled, knotted, grizzled, rumpled, wrinkled, craggy, jagged, gnarled, rugose
- Action: sky-punching/stabbing/piercing/spearing, heaven-touching/kissing, snow-cloaked/hooded/wreathed/festooned
- Sloping sides, sharp/rounded ridges, high point/peak/summit
- Majestic, gargantuan humbling, vast, massive, titanic, towering, monumental, mighty, vast, humbling
- Mountains having faces, etc.
Seas
- Color: blue-green, crystal-clear crystalline, emerald, frothy, hazy, glistening, pristine, turquoise
- Size: boundless, abyssal, fathomless, unconquerable, vast, wondrous
- Sound: billowing, blustering, bombastic
- Action: boisterous, agitated, angry, biting, breaking, brazen. Churning, bubbling, changing, brooding, calm, convulsing, enticing erratic, fierce, tempestuous, turbulent, undulating
- Alluring, blissful, betwitching, breezy, captivating, chaotic, chilly, elemental, disorienting
Deserts
- Sight: A landscape of sand, flat, harsh sunlight, cacti, tumbleweeds, dust devils, cracked land, crumbing rock, sandstone, canyons, wind-worn rock formations, tracks, dead grasses, vibrant desert blooms (after rainfall), flash flooding, dry creek
- Sounds: Wind (whistling, howling, piping, tearing, weaving, winding, gusting), birds cawing, flapping, squawking, the fluttering shift of feasting birds, screeching eagles, the sound of one’s own steps, heavy silence, baying wild dogs
- Smell: Arid air, dust, one’s own sweat and body odor, dry baked earth, carrion
- Touch: Torrid heat, sweat, cutting wind, cracked lips, freezing cold (night) hard packed ground, rocks, gritty sand, shivering, swiping away dirt and sweat, pain from split lips and dehydration, numbness in legs, heat/pain from sun stroke, clothes…
- Taste: Grit, dust, dry mouth & tongue, warm flat canteen water, copper taste in mouth, bitter taste of insects for eating, stringy wild game (hares, rats) the tough saltiness of hardtack, biscuits or jerky, an insatiable thirst or hunger
Streets
- Dusty, fume-filled, foul, sumptuous, broad, bucolic, decayed, mournful, seemingly endless, empty, unpaved, lifeless, dreadfully genteel, muddy, nondescript, residential/retail
- Bleach, flimsy, silent, narrow, crooked, furrowed, smoggy, commonplace, tumbledown, treeless, shady
- The blacktop streets absorb the spring sunshine as if intent upon sending heaven's warmth back through my soles.
- The streets absorbed the emotions in the air, the city as the steady and reassuring mother.
- The streets were a marriage of sounds, from bicycle wheels to chattering.
- In the refreshing light of early daytime, the streets had the hues of artistic dreamtime, soft yet bold pastels.
- Cobbled streets flowed as happy rivers in sunlight.
Parties
Some extra tips for locations like parties, where lots of action is going around practically everywhere:
- Focus on the important characters - where they are, who they’re with.
- Provide some overall description of the structure of the party scene (a pool, a two-storey house with yard?), then move on to details.
- Don’t try to describe everything.
- whirlwind of laughter and music, a symphony of joyous chaos.
- It was a gathering that shimmered with the glow of twinkling lights and echoed with the rhythm of dancing feet.
- The air was alive with excitement, buzzing with conversations and the clink of glasses.
- Every corner held a story waiting to unfold, a moment waiting to be captured in memory.
- It was a tapestry of colors, a mosaic of faces, each adding their own brushstroke to the vibrant canvas of the night.
- Laughter cascaded like a waterfall, infectious and unstoppable, filling the room with warmth.
- The night was a carnival of senses, with aromas of delicious food mingling with the melodies that filled the air.
- Time seemed to slip away in the whirl of the party, moments blending into each other like colors on a palette.
- The energy of the crowd was electric, pulsing through the room like a heartbeat, binding everyone in a shared moment of celebration.
- It was a celebration of life, where worries faded into the background, and the present moment was all that mattered.
