What do you love to describe in writing?

I have a tendency toward the bazaar.

However, I like to get into the mind of the characters and describe scenes/situations and their reaction to them and their reasoning. Sadly I've found this invariably involves dollops of info which seems to be the anathema of good writing at the moment.

God know how old Tolky got away with it.
 
TEiN said:
God know how old Tolky got away with it
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"Tolky" :)rolleyes:) got away with it, as you put it, for several reasons:

  • It's good writing - well thought out and revised descriptions that are integral to the scene-setting and action.
  • The book is, for all practical purposes, pre-TV - most readers would not have a lot of previous experience of fantasy landscapes.
  • Likewise, the spare descriptions of "show, not tell" were not yet fashionable. People expected to be told about the places that characters were inhabiting.
  • An often-forgotten point - LotR and The Hobbit were entirely self-edited. JRRT didn't have (or need) anyone telling him how to alter the books to make them "better" - a situation that might improve a lot of the stuff published today, IMHO.

Sorry to go OT - red rag to a bull, unfortunately. I'll shut up now...:eek:
 
Editors don't do much heavy editing these days, pyan. At least not in my experience. Of course that could be because everything I turn in is nearly perfect anyway ...

So I think the problems you are seeing arise where neither the author nor the editor does much editing, rather than because of too much input on the editorial side.

I think that Tolkien "got away with it" not just because readers expected more of that sort of thing in his day, but because (since that was the way books were written during his formative years) he had read and assimilated enough books in that style to do it well himself. Very often when younger writers attempt that style, it's because they've read a few books that impressed them, and they go ahead and try it long before there has been time (or enough different books) to complete the process of assimilation. The result is that the info gets dumped rather than integrated.
 
MeriPie said:
I was thinking bazaar in the sort of street-market in Aladdin sense :D
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No. Cul is right I fell foul of the spell checker and went for the first one. (It might have been the only one actually).

I make no excuse other than the pins and needles, the poor vision from the the tears caused by the matchsticks the piles and lack of vitamins due to poor diet. Intravenous nourishment is no substitute for meat and vegetables but the only meat/flesh I get nowadays is from rodents or spiders (they're the best) that I have to kill with my teeth and eat raw if they run over my keyboard.
 
As you may have guessed, MeriPie, what TEIN likes to describe is the torments he endures, the rigors of his personal situation, and the pathetic quality of his entire existence.

We can only be grateful that in the midst of his unthinkable physical suffering (not to mention the mental anguish to which he is continually subjected, the details of which would no doubt harrow* our very souls) he finds time to log on here.

Although ... perhaps the time he spends with us is yet another of the travails inflicted on him by those capricious and unfathomable entities who delight in making such cruel sport of him.




*And if our souls should be harrowed, what then? Might the seeds of sorrow then be sown, and a crop of melancholy eventually reaped? We will never know, because there are some things TEIN bravely withholds rather than involve us in his own tribulations.
 
TheEndIsNigh said:
Intravenous nourishment is no substitute for meat and vegetables but the only meat/flesh I get nowadays is from rodents or spiders (they're the best) that I have to kill with my teeth and eat raw if they run over my keyboard.
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You're forgetting that some of us have seen you eat lunch and dinner, TEiN...the word "awesome" comes to mind.

I'd love to describe it in prose, but unfortunately, I lack JRRT's descriptive ability...:p
 
TheEndIsNigh said:
No. Cul is right I fell foul of the spell checker and went for the first one. (It might have been the only one actually).

I make no excuse other than the pins and needles, the poor vision from the the tears caused by the matchsticks the piles and lack of vitamins due to poor diet. Intravenous nourishment is no substitute for meat and vegetables but the only meat/flesh I get nowadays is from rodents or spiders (they're the best) that I have to kill with my teeth and eat raw if they run over my keyboard.
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TEIN

You could always roast the scabs from the sores on your body as it's always nice to have a little crackling with a good bit of spider.:)
 
I'm sorely (geddit?) tempted to remove that post for sheer unpleasant imagery, Gary...:D:D
 
PLEASE DON'T I can't afford any more infractions I think they're called.

In me defence me Mother once said I'd cause trouble in a vacuum!!

'Please be lenient oh great one:),' he said on bended knees praying to the MOD God
 
Eh? You haven't got any infractions. And the :D:D should be a dead giveaway, as should this one...:D
 
I know that you dipstick Rodney. I was only winding you up.

Geordie humour!!
 
Infraction coming for calling a moderator a dipstick. And Rodney. I'm not sure which is worse.

I don't use smilies, so you might have to live in fear for a little while, Gary, to see if I'm joking.

And we might like to get this thread back on track. I apologise for momentarily derailing it, but now let's get back to the subject at hand.

I like describing the way characters dress, though I don't know if I'm particularly gifted at it. Usually a little ham-fisted, I think. I can always picture what I want my characters to be wearing - it's just getting it eloquently onto the page that's difficult.
 
Culhwch said:
I like describing the way characters dress, though I don't know if I'm particularly gifted at it. Usually a little ham-fisted, I think. I can always picture what I want my characters to be wearing - it's just getting it eloquently onto the page that's difficult.
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Yeah, I'm with you on that one. Too long and you start seeming like you're writing your first teenage fanfic in long run-on sentences; too short and you risk readers making up their own idea of what characters are wearing.

I'm always afraid of describing characters physically in too much detail at all, particularly as my story's in first person. I really admire how Robin Hobb slips in little details of Fitz's appearance through other people telling him he looks like Verity etc., but I don't know if I have that much patience!
 
Culhwch said:
I like describing the way characters dress
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I like doing that, too, if I can use it to reveal aspects of their personalities, age, social standing, etc.

Lately, I haven't been doing so much of that sort of thing because my characters have mostly been too busy dragging themselves across thousands of miles of rough terrain to take the time to change their clothes. When I write something that centers more around urban settings, the characters take a little more time over their clothing and personal hygiene.
 
And if our souls should be harrowed, what then? Might the seeds of sorrow then be sown, and a crop of melancholy eventually reaped?
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I'm tempted to quote this often and tell people it's from Hamlet.

Another thing I like to describe is the detail that places the setting. In some ways, the less description the better: I like it particularly where a character glances at something that is normal to him but helps place the story: the polished brasswork on a spaceship control panel, or in another setting a clockwork tank rolling along behind mercenary cavalry.
 
Tobytwo said:
And if our souls should be harrowed, what then? Might the seeds of sorrow then be sown, and a crop of melancholy eventually reaped?
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I'm tempted to quote this often and tell people it's from Hamlet.
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Turn it into iambic pentameter first:

And if our souls be harrowed, what comes next?
The seeds of sorrow sown, the green grief grows,
And melancholy cropp'd and harvested?
 
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