39 The Descriptive Writer’s Toolbox

Did you notice the problem with this “description”? To some, it may seem perfectly acceptable. But ask yourself: after reading that passage, did you get a clear picture of what the student actually saw? Was the image in your head likely to match the image the student remembered? In both cases, the answer, sadly, is no. We can sense the sincerity and detect that the writer was moved by the scene, but the description fails to share their vision with the reader. So what went wrong?

Beginning writers make two major mistakes in their first attempts to write descriptions. They use subjective words and neglect vivid details. Let’s briefly examine both of these.

Notice the bold-print words in the student’s example above: beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, lucky, and lovely. These words are subjective. The precise definition of a subjective word will shift from user to user. What is my ugly won’t be your ugly. What is my beautiful won’t be yours either. So if I label an object as wonderful, I am simply declaring that an object meets my subjective criteria without sharing what those criteria are. I am withholding information instead of revealing it. That’s the opposite goal of effective writing.

For a descriptive passage to be successful, the words must convey to the reader an accurate image of what the writer actually saw. The example above does not express a clear image, so readers will either imagine something different or fail to imagine anything at all.

Now let’s look at vivid imagery as a replacement for subjective words. Consider the following alternate description:

Now, compare this paragraph to the image above. Can you see how the description matches the image? Did the image in your mind at least somewhat align with the image being described? Hopefully! Here the writer used sensory details and spatial organization to convey the image observed with precision. Of course, it’s possible to overdo such efforts, but when handled well, descriptive writing becomes the unsung hero of the writer’s toolbox.

• See how the Sensory Details work. Notice the sense of  smell used in “sweat-scented,” visual words like “upturned faces” and “crouch on the floor,” sound words like “shirttail flapping,” “shushed,” and “fizz distractingly loud.”

• See how Figures of Speech work. Notice similes that make comparisons with the  word like: “like cigarette smoke,” and “like runners awaiting a starting gun.” Notice metaphors that make comparisons directly” “catbird seat,” “mouths straight lines,” and “stiff standees.” Notice personification that treats non-human things as human: “nervous flicker.”

• See how Spatial Relationships work. These are easy. Just look for words that show an item’s position: “in front,” “flanked,” “left and right,” and “farther back.”