posted
My advice would be to just read all you can without regard to how much description per paragraph a book has. It seems a little fishy to read description-filled books just for the purpose of changing your natural voice... let it evolve on its own, I say, without intentionally trying to turn it into something it's not.
Besides, I personally can't stand it when a writer literally swamps his works in description. I think description is a great tool when you need to create a certain mood or when it's important to the part of the story you're telling, but many other times it seems to me that writers are just looking for an excuse to throw in fancy similes and pretty words, which all amount to nothing in terms of the story itself.
Mind you, I'm not saying there shouldn't be description, far from it. I just think that it's a tool, not an end of its own.
Hmm. All in all, this post wasn't very helpful. Sorry about that
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Any genre in particular? Fantasy: Terry Brooks: Jerle Shannara series. (all of the above) Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman: Death Gate Cycle (7 books) Very good description and plot.
Fiction: Holes (entertaining) Out of the Dust: Karen Hesse?(short but long on description and feeling) Growing up: Russell Baker (I read this many years ago, but refer to it often, good folksy stuff, really down to earth).
I am sure there are some better books out there but these are easy reading and entertaining. The way these stories are written make it sound so easy, just pick up your pen and paper and go to town.
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I very much enjoyed John Dalmas' Lion of Farside, though the sequel was a bit slow (for me, anyway). Lion is now one of my favorite fantasy/crossover type novels, even with all of its grammatical and structural 'quirks' (most of which serve to make the book more unique). I highly recommend this novel to you, but only if you don't mind a bit of risqué humor and vivid action scenes with violence. I couldn't put this book down when I found it, and have reread it several times since. It is most certainly a 'full of life' story.
Inkwell ------------------ "The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp." -Anonymous
posted
Mhh...I think that The View from the Mirror series by Ian Irvine satisfies all three, as does Carol Berg's Rai-kirah trilogy. Details are excellent things, but getting bogged down in them can be stiffling. If you're looking for details about the environment (as in general surroundings, culture, etc), fantasy would be a good genre to look at because authors who create their own worlds typically like the describe them more thoroughly than someone writing about "real life".
Posts: 4 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Look, the greatest novel ever written is Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Read it, and read it again. Gosh is it full of life.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Hah. Did you get KDW's message in the other thread? What was up with that? Wouldn't make more sense to post a new topic or something?
Also, just to be on topic, I found The Lion of Farside unutterable trash...and even if I hadn't, I wouldn't recommend reading it to learn how to do description.
posted
Off the top of my head, in the Fantasy genre, I'd recommend Wicked by Greg MacGuire. Evocative, creative, subversive, and very atmospheric without drowning the reader in description.
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Survivor -- Yes, I got KDW message in the other thread, and I've already e-mailed her. Thanks, though.
* * * * *
A Clairfication.
I can live with someone thinking David Copperfield is the greatest novel ever written. I'm not sure what I'd do if someone put one of the Harry Potter novels in that class.
For me, though, it's War and Peace. Do yourself a favor and read it.
quote: GZ: I liked the way you wrote your Evocation of Butterflies. Could you suggest any books that are written in that style?
While I’m not exactly sure how that the style of that particular piece evolved, I’d hazard a guess that it developed in part out of my life-long love of reading Robin McKinley, who has a lush, lyric, yet sparse style. Anne Rice and Patricia A. McKillip also have a lush, lyric, rich style I like. Others also feel this way about Ursla Le Guin (I’m just not one of them).
It's a frame of mind for the story, and the writer in writing it. When it seems right, that sort of voice just sort of flows naturally, at least for me. Your story may call for a different voice, or as a writer you may simply have a different voice. The pieces I've read of yours always sounded a bit more direct, and there is nothing wrong with that.
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After a TERRIBLY long absence, I figured I'd chime in.
Read the Wheel of Time series. You want description . . . there you go. Seriously.
Robert Jordan does great descriptions. I can imagine everything perfectly.
He also does too much. There's passages where I just totally zone out, 'cause it's nothing but descriptions and NOTHING HAPPENS for like . . . three pages.
To be fair, he usually does that when he's "hiding" little details you're supposed to gloss over and dismiss as unimportant, but which eventually end up being critical to the plot . . . then you go back and find them when you realize four books later that he put one over on you and go "oooooh" . . . but that gets old after a while.
He's also amazing at creating atmosphere. Find a cool atmosphere he creates and look at how he builds it up. WHICH details does he describe, and which does he leave to the imagination? WHICH descriptions really change the picture you WOULD have made in your head without them?
Actually, you can do that with any writer. Go back to books where you really felt immersed in the story. Go to a scene where you forgot you were reading a book. Note how you feel while reading that scene. Then pay attention to what words, phrases, sentences, etc. contributed to that feeling. Look for places where the author could have chosen other words, but didn't and ask yourself why.
If you want to really over-analyze description, you can do that. That's the way you might learn some 'techniques'.
Seriously . . . RJ has some of the best examples of what to do and what NOT to do in a narrative.
In any case the best technique is to just do it . . . to practice. The way I write my stuff . . . I just sit down and write it. It feels GREAT when I'm doing the first draft. Inevitably, when I re-read it a week later, it sucks. Because what I thought I was emphasizing in my narrative, was really all in my head, and the picture I painted (by leaving important description out, and unimportant description in) was totally wrong. Go through your story a week later . . . note where you're getting the wrong picture in your head, and fix it. A week later, do the same thing. Repeat ad nauseum. And seriously . . . wait a week before each time you do this. You have to get the picture out of your head before you try to fix bad description, 'cause otherwise you're gonna have a preconception of what's supposed to be there and . . . I'm rambling. You get the point.
And finally . . . once it's done . . . hand it to a reader you trust and ask them specific questions. Don't CORRECT their misconceptions verbally. LISTEN. Try to figure out how you can clarify your narrative.
And finally, to deliberately misquote Brad Pitt from the 'Ocean's Eleven' remake "Don't use a hundred words where a dozen will do." MORE IS NOT BETTER. Better is better.
And that's my two cents' worth.
Which may not count for much since I've never published . . . or even finished, for that matter . . . a damn thing.
But hey . . .
-Nate
*edited to remove distracting, spastic caps, and instead made it worse by leaving most of the caps in and adding distracting, spastic bold*
[This message has been edited by Falken224 (edited April 01, 2004).]
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It's all a matter of what type of desription you want. However right now I'm reading one of Isacc Asimov's novels. If your writting Science Fiction then that is deffinitly the man to read, however I've learned that some of his books are much more heavily described than others. Once again it's a matter of what your writting and in the end a matter of preferance.
I could write a huge list of other good books to read from, however many other people have already covered many of my other points.
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I just thought of two more reading suggestions (actually, the second is a whole series). The first suggestion is a historical fiction novel called The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour. I'm pretty sure you will find this one in the westerns section of your local bookstore (it's not a western, but L'Amour wrote so many books in that genre that most stores group this novel with the rest of them, and rightly so). This book is one of the most realistic works of historical fiction I've laid my hands on. And you want detail? This book talks about everything from 12th century science, war, and medicine to the culinary delights of Spain in the year 1176. Action? Metric tons of it...and written with a distinctive style I have yet to come across since. I learned much about 12th century history and culture just from reading this book, which has a delightfully broad scope. Some people I've talked to can't stand L'Amour’s writing style, but I happen to enjoy his books immensely.
The second suggestion is the Belisarius series written by David Drake and Eric Flint. You may have already read this batch, but if not...READ THESE BOOKS. Excellent, amusing (especially if you have a cynical sense of humor), and very exciting. This is some of the best alternate history/science fiction I've read so far. It's not quite as in-depth as Turtledove, but it was detailed enough for me (and I get more enjoyable laughs out of this series). The first book in the series is An Oblique Approach.
BTW, if you pick up The Walking Drum, and end up liking L'Amour's writing, try The Haunted Mesa. This one is about a parallel dimension and a ‘lost’ civilization called the Anasazi. The protagonist is searching for a friend who unknowingly built his house on the wrong mesa. The story is set in the southwestern United States (late 1980s, I think). I read it in one night...couldn't put it down (literally).
Inkwell ------------------ "The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp." -Anonymous
posted
Read whatever you can, two or three books at a time. Read with a pen. If you're studying description, mark every passage of description that you find. You can learn a lot from good description, but someone on another thread said that you can learn more from bad books than from good ones.
Pay attention to passages that don't work well for you. Try to figure out why they don't work.
I think the best advice I could give, though, is to really learn to write good discription you're going to have to practice.
You can do exercises. Spend 15 minutes or a half hour writing description. Put it away for a couple of days, come back to it, and critique it. Change it, make it better, write some more.
This is a problem I have - I'm so afraid of what I don't know how to do, I read instead of write. But I know that the best way to improve my writing is to practice, practice, practice.
Oh, and try Victor Hugo. He's good. (If it's a good translation - I can't read the French.)
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