Descriptivery

[Omni]

So Dark Link mentioned this in a review recently and I gotta admit, flowery desciption is probably the area in which I'm weakest as a writer. As aomeone who aspires to write fantasy books, this shall not do. So I figured I'd ask for a little more advice on this. Anyone got tips on 'illustrating' through writing, as it were? Any great examples to share from authors or such? I am good at visualising but bad at taking the time to convey scenery to the reader.

[Cloud Strife]

In my experience (however little it may be), it's always a good thing to imagine how you would say what you write, or describe exactly how you see it and then go back and edit it later. It's also great to have a nice arsenal of words so you don't use the same words too often to describe what the character feels or sees as well as how they act and speak.

Hope this helps

[Schwi Dola]

I would consider it a strength and not a weakness. There are times to be flowery and most of the time is not it.

[Sarah_Kerrigan]

I have strong opinions on the matter - as I love fantasy myself. Description is what builds worlds. If you want to improve I would suggest reading select passages that Tolkien has written simply regarding how he describes his own world. He is quite wordy but if you are really interested in adding detail to your own writing - there is not a better author I can think of that created a more in depth world than he. One of my favorite scenes from Lord of the Rings is how the Barrow Downs are elaborated on when Frodo and his fellow hobbits encounter the Barrow-Wights. If you're curious I think the chapter is called Fog on the Barrow-Downs.

In roleplaying sometimes less is certainly more, but I think we can be in agreement here that you are more focused on creating a coherent story than simply playing out the life of one particular character. To do that you can't avoid being flowery. It is one thing to say Coruscant is a spiraling city comprised of many tiers. It is another entirely to describe it from the eyes of your character, or from the vantage of a specific location. My next post actually will touch upon that, handling the first impression of how it appears when someone steps through the Gate from the Nexus.

[Magus]

Anyone who aims for a Tolkeinesque level of description of a glade or something that isn't central to the story you're trying to tell needs to be shot. Including Tolkein himself - it was the hardest part about getting into his books for me. So there's that.

I share this weakness with you, and it kind of makes sense. You and I both developed most of our abilities on a site dedicated to action/fights.

That said, one thing I've found that helps me a lot lately is to try and sublimate 'inappropriate' words as descriptors. I used 'spears' to describe a nasty smell in one of my Magus thingies, for instance. I picked it up from a few other writers - I think Butcher & Ondaatje use this technique - and shamelessly stole it for my own ends.

One thing that damages my writing more than anything is rust. The first five pages of the novella I'm writing are very matter-of-fact, very to-the-point, and not terribly eloquent. But it's also the very first stuff I'd written since I became inactive here (and it's not like I was getting much practice here either). I think I've began to shake it off and get back into my groove but it'll be some time yet before I'm confident again.

I think you're already aware of that: you gotta keep writing stuff to be good at it. But I think it needs to be said; just keep at it and be aware of your flaws - it'll make you focus on them more. The stuff you're already good at will just spill out - you don't need to stress about it.

[Illidan Stormrage]

I don't think you need to have flowery description to be a fantasy writer. It's more important to have your own voice.

[Lex]

This is just my experience with writing, so please don't take it as any kind of rule. Most people I know, from Lit majors to Plumber Joe, swear by KISS when it comes to novels (Keep It Simple, Stupid). The few people I know that write entire short stories in purple prose have found the classes they present such stories to have nothing to comment on, apart from the fact that they understood very little of what was going on. Maybe with enough time to read, and re-read, and re-read again, I might have a firm grasp on it. Unfortunately, that's not really my idea of "a good time", especially when most of those short stories involved a cold winter's night and something dying in a very artsy way.

I personally find purple prose useful in situations where a lot is happening in a very small frame of time, such as what goes through one's mind at the moment of an epiphany, or at the exact instance that something extremely important has just occurred. Metaphors are strongest in situations like these, where the importance of a feeling, emotion, or action is determined by what you can compare it to. By it's nature, flowery writing is disruptive, so it's really best kept to small bursts, with a limited time frame. In this way, you can be dramatic (and poetic) while still delivering the information to the reader, and hopefully without the reader having to look up any words you used to do it.

I've found that dialogue and character interaction, not imagery, are where most works tend to fall short -- especially if the author doesn't know how to work exposition into an actual conversation -- or in short stories where there is no dialogue to speak of, the narration is either inconsistent or bland, or both. Above that, it all comes down to the plot; if that's good enough, you can follow every single line of dialogue with "he said." or "she said." and you can still hook your reader. Depending on how mundane your setting is, you may not need to describe what a forest or a river looks like. If it's not critical to the plot at hand, the need is even less.

Of course, there are entire series of novels built on the back of purple prose. It's not entirely fair to dredge up older authors like Tolkien as modern examples; those were different times, entertainment was different, the human brain most likely handled information with a higher attention span, and some of the literature we call "classic" sold extremely poorly. I think it's more appropriate to call "The Lord of the Rings", "A Primer on Middle Earth Culture, Geography, and Linguistics, in which a Story Also Happens to Occur". A more modern series like "The Wheel of Time" handles itself very nicely, but can be a huge hassle to read and digest.

But as for actually writing descriptive imagery, no matter which way you go, it all comes down to how many questions you can answer. If Alice and Bob are talking, where are they talking? What time is it? Is the sun in Alice's eyes? What's Bob wearing? What goals are driving each of them? Do they have a rapport, or is it their first time talking? Are they nervous? Does it show? Is there something the reader should know that they don't? Once you start answering questions about what's surrounding the event you're describing, it's not too difficult to fill out the narration with the relevant details. Can't paint a picture if you didn't bring any paint, right?