Be a Better Writer--Description (Kind Of)
Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2015 12:15 am
This week’s topic is overly-descriptive writing—avoiding what some people call purple prose and writing descriptions without using too many adjectives and adverbs.
I’m going to start by having you read two excerpts from classic literature:
1. Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
1. I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
Now that you’ve read the two passages, which one would you say is overly-descriptive? I suspect that most of you are thinking it’s the second one, which certainly has an awful lot of adjectives—in many cases, the writer uses two or more adjectives just to describe one object.
The other passage, however, has adjectives and adverbs, but the writer also uses nouns and verbs very effectively to convey a sense of place (and the people in that place).
So…the second one’s not as good as the first one, right?
Nope.
They’re both wonderful descriptive passages, written by two of America’s finest writers (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River.)
That’s the problem with some of these lessons—I can give guidelines or rules for good writing, but sometimes great writing breaks all of the rules. So I’m going to get up on a soapbox for a bit, and then I’ll give you some ideas for writing without being overly descriptive.
I really believe that in order to become a good writer, you have to be a good reader. And by good reader, I don’t merely mean that you’re a person who can read with comprehension at a high school or college level. You need to practice reading like a writer—analyzing effective passages to understand why they work, recognizing writers who break the rules in order to make a point, understanding the writer’s voice. Unfortunately, in this day when anyone can publish anything, there’s an awful lot of junk out there. It does no good to be a voracious reader if what you read is less than excellent. That’s why I wholeheartedly recommend reading well-established, classic literature (if you haven’t already done so). Google “100 books” and you’ll be taken to several lists of great books—and get started.
You may feel that I’ve gone off-topic: what does this have to do with overly-descriptive writing? Well, take a look at that Twain passage again. It has dozens of adjectives, and one sentence in the middle with 144 words, but I doubt that anyone would say it’s overly-descriptive or would fault him for the run-on sentence. But if you were relying on rules about adjectives or run-on sentences, you might say that this is a poorly-written passage.
However—with a sigh, I’ll admit that there are some things that emerging writers can do to make their writing better when it comes to the use of modifiers. For this part of the lesson, I’ll take you back to school—maybe late elementary or junior high--and you’re working on a Language Arts assignment. The worksheet has lots of simple sentences, and the instructions say to “make the sentences more interesting” by adding adjectives and adverbs. So you see
I walked ____________ to the _____________ house with my ______________ dog.
…and you dutifully write:
I walked slowly to the little house with my fat dog.
“Congratulations,” your teacher says. “You’ve written a more interesting sentence.”
But you haven’t—not really—and yet this sort of exercise goes on every day in English classrooms and home schools.
Just adding adjectives and adverbs won’t necessarily make your writing better—and it might make your writing worse. I submit that this sentence:
I trudged to the cottage with my pug.
…is far more interesting than the one with the adjectives and adverbs. Not only that, this sentence has much more imagery—the reader can visualize the action of trudging, which is different from other kinds of slow walking (shuffling, ambling), she can visualize a cottage, which is different from other kinds of small houses (huts, bungalows), and she can visualize a pug, which is different from other kinds of fat dogs (bulldogs, French mastiffs).
So here’s your lesson in avoiding over-descriptiveness: In many cases, choose, strong, specific nouns and verbs instead of adjective + noun or adverb + verb combinations.
Please don’t think that I’ve just told you never to use adjectives or adverbs. Adjectives and adverbs are wonderful parts of speech, and they can certainly be used to make your writing more interesting. Just don’t rely exclusively on them, despite what your 8th grade English teacher told you to do.
Here’s the first paragraph of the Harper Lee passage again, this time with some of the effective words highlighted: nouns (red), verbs (blue), and adjectives (green). You can see that well-chosen words of several parts of speech can be effective in description.
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
And now for a message:
The last few lessons have received very low participation. It appears that people are reading them, but hardly anyone is posting responses or doing the homework. Please tell me how I can make the lessons a better learning experience for you. I can’t improve without your feedback, and I want to post lessons that are helpful for your writing. I get all paranoid and start to hide in the corner when I feel that people dislike the lessons—and it’s cold and lonely in the corner.
Another note: I'm leaving Friday, Feb. 6, for a weekend writers' retreat where I'll largely be offline. I usually post these lessons on Saturdays, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen next week. I'll either post the next lesson before I leave for the retreat on Friday, or it won't get posted until Monday, Feb. 9.
I’m going to start by having you read two excerpts from classic literature:
1. Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
1. I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
Now that you’ve read the two passages, which one would you say is overly-descriptive? I suspect that most of you are thinking it’s the second one, which certainly has an awful lot of adjectives—in many cases, the writer uses two or more adjectives just to describe one object.
The other passage, however, has adjectives and adverbs, but the writer also uses nouns and verbs very effectively to convey a sense of place (and the people in that place).
So…the second one’s not as good as the first one, right?
Nope.
They’re both wonderful descriptive passages, written by two of America’s finest writers (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River.)
That’s the problem with some of these lessons—I can give guidelines or rules for good writing, but sometimes great writing breaks all of the rules. So I’m going to get up on a soapbox for a bit, and then I’ll give you some ideas for writing without being overly descriptive.
I really believe that in order to become a good writer, you have to be a good reader. And by good reader, I don’t merely mean that you’re a person who can read with comprehension at a high school or college level. You need to practice reading like a writer—analyzing effective passages to understand why they work, recognizing writers who break the rules in order to make a point, understanding the writer’s voice. Unfortunately, in this day when anyone can publish anything, there’s an awful lot of junk out there. It does no good to be a voracious reader if what you read is less than excellent. That’s why I wholeheartedly recommend reading well-established, classic literature (if you haven’t already done so). Google “100 books” and you’ll be taken to several lists of great books—and get started.
You may feel that I’ve gone off-topic: what does this have to do with overly-descriptive writing? Well, take a look at that Twain passage again. It has dozens of adjectives, and one sentence in the middle with 144 words, but I doubt that anyone would say it’s overly-descriptive or would fault him for the run-on sentence. But if you were relying on rules about adjectives or run-on sentences, you might say that this is a poorly-written passage.
However—with a sigh, I’ll admit that there are some things that emerging writers can do to make their writing better when it comes to the use of modifiers. For this part of the lesson, I’ll take you back to school—maybe late elementary or junior high--and you’re working on a Language Arts assignment. The worksheet has lots of simple sentences, and the instructions say to “make the sentences more interesting” by adding adjectives and adverbs. So you see
I walked ____________ to the _____________ house with my ______________ dog.
…and you dutifully write:
I walked slowly to the little house with my fat dog.
“Congratulations,” your teacher says. “You’ve written a more interesting sentence.”
But you haven’t—not really—and yet this sort of exercise goes on every day in English classrooms and home schools.
Just adding adjectives and adverbs won’t necessarily make your writing better—and it might make your writing worse. I submit that this sentence:
I trudged to the cottage with my pug.
…is far more interesting than the one with the adjectives and adverbs. Not only that, this sentence has much more imagery—the reader can visualize the action of trudging, which is different from other kinds of slow walking (shuffling, ambling), she can visualize a cottage, which is different from other kinds of small houses (huts, bungalows), and she can visualize a pug, which is different from other kinds of fat dogs (bulldogs, French mastiffs).
So here’s your lesson in avoiding over-descriptiveness: In many cases, choose, strong, specific nouns and verbs instead of adjective + noun or adverb + verb combinations.
Please don’t think that I’ve just told you never to use adjectives or adverbs. Adjectives and adverbs are wonderful parts of speech, and they can certainly be used to make your writing more interesting. Just don’t rely exclusively on them, despite what your 8th grade English teacher told you to do.
Here’s the first paragraph of the Harper Lee passage again, this time with some of the effective words highlighted: nouns (red), verbs (blue), and adjectives (green). You can see that well-chosen words of several parts of speech can be effective in description.
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
And now for a message:
The last few lessons have received very low participation. It appears that people are reading them, but hardly anyone is posting responses or doing the homework. Please tell me how I can make the lessons a better learning experience for you. I can’t improve without your feedback, and I want to post lessons that are helpful for your writing. I get all paranoid and start to hide in the corner when I feel that people dislike the lessons—and it’s cold and lonely in the corner.
Another note: I'm leaving Friday, Feb. 6, for a weekend writers' retreat where I'll largely be offline. I usually post these lessons on Saturdays, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen next week. I'll either post the next lesson before I leave for the retreat on Friday, or it won't get posted until Monday, Feb. 9.