Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing can be really hard to get right. It’s very easy to make it sound clichéd or over the top or, sometimes, just too long and boring. I also find it can be easy to forget to describe things altogether if it doesn’t seem relevant to the story.

I have learnt, more recently than I would like to admit, how important descriptive writing is. You’re taught in primary school that it’s important to ‘set the scene’ with descriptive writing. But then you grow up, you develop your own writing style and you start to recognise that a lot of the things you were taught about story telling in primary school probably aren’t that helpful. However, setting the scene with description is one lesson we shouldn’t forget.

Description doesn’t need to be overly detailed. You don’t need to describe everything in the room. But just describing a few key details really can set the scene and mood of the piece of writing. Describing your character’s surroundings helps the reader know where they are in the world and what time period they’re in without you having to tell them. Say your character is sitting in a 19^th century pub. Describe a couple of the customers and what they’re wearing and maybe even what the tables look like and you’ve set the scene nicely without boring the reader with too many details. And without having to say ‘this story is set in 19^th century London’.

The best piece of advice I’ve been given about descriptive writing is to be specific. I think I covered this in my How To Avoid Cliches blog post, but general descriptions tend to sound very clichéd. Saying that it’s a wet and grey day isn’t as effective as describing exactly what the rain drops look like when they hit the puddles. Or what kind of car it is that is driving past with its windscreen wipers going at full speed. If it helps, look up photos on Google images to help you be as specific as you can.

Using specific brand names and titles helps as well. If your character has a drink, say whether it’s a Coke or a Sprite. If your character is looking out of the window at an overgrown garden, describe what flowers and what plants are overgrown. Are there dead tulips in the flower pots? Are the petunias wilting? (I don’t know anything about gardening, I’m sure there are better examples). If your character drapes a coat over a chair, describe what kind of chair it is. A Lloyd loom chair? An oak dining chair?

Being as specific as you can be not only helps you avoid writing clichéd descriptions, but it also really helps your reader build up a picture in their head of the scene that your character is in. And never forget to describe at least a few key details of the scene otherwise your readers might feel a little lost.

Thanks for reading. 

Writing in the form of a diary

Recently I’ve been experimenting with writing stories in the form of a diary. At first I thought that it would be far easier than writing ordinary prose. I kept a regular diary for years as a teenager so I’m familiar with the style. All I’d have to do is write down what the characters would be thinking to themselves at the end of each day. No need for detailed description or long conversations between characters.

But as I’ve continued with my story I’ve noticed a few habits it’s easy to fall into whilst writing in the form of a diary. These habits damage the story and should be avoided.

When you’re writing in the form of a diary, your first instinct would be to make that diary as realistic as possible. This instinct should be ignored. Yes, realistic writing is good and makes the reader identify more with the character but real diaries are boring. Real life diaries like Anne Frank’s Diary are only interesting because we already know the outcome.

Unlike in a real diary, you still need to write detailed descriptions of where your characters go and conversations they have otherwise the reader will get bored of seeing nothing but the inside of your character’s brain. Your reader needs to identify with other characters as well as the one writing the diary if the story is going to be successful. Therefore, the peripheral characters need to be a much bigger presence in the diary than they normally would be in a real diary.

It’s not enough to say ‘I saw Dan today. He said I looked pretty’. This conversation needs to be described and put into dialogue otherwise Dan won’t have an actual presence in the story. He’ll just be a brief encounter your character felt like writing about rather than a character in his own right.

Timing can also be tricky when writing in diary form. I’d advise not to feature a diary entry from every single day of the week otherwise you’ll run out of things to write about and the reader will get bored of the banalities of your character’s day to day life.

Your writing style also needs to be slightly different to what it would be in your own diary. It should sound more like an ordinary first person narration rather than a brief catch up on what happened that day which is what real diaries actually are. I’m not saying every single diary entry should be as detailed as a first person narration, but some of them definitely should be. 

I’ve fallen into all of these traps myself whilst writing my story and fully intend to go back and fix them all. But hopefully, if any of you ever decide to write in the form of a diary – and it’s loads of fun so I would recommend it – you’ll be able to avoid them better than I did.

Thanks for reading. 

How To Avoid Clichés

I recently had a very disheartening meeting with my dissertation supervisor in which I was told my first draft was ‘packed full of clichés’. I went home and started writing a second draft and I was so shaken by the meeting that, to me, everything started to seem like a cliché.

I think it’s very easy to start writing in clichés when you’re writing in a style you’re not used to.  For instance, I usually write in first person and, more often than not, in present tense. But my dissertation is in third person past tense and I think, to compensate for my lack of confidence in this new style of writing, I started to write in clichés.

So this week I have been thinking a lot about clichés and how to avoid them. And I think the best way is to just to write exactly what you mean in a very straightforward manner. Don’t try to find metaphors for everything, don’t try to use overly figurative language to describe a scene. Describe exactly what your characters are seeing, feeling, doing.

However, you have to be very careful that this doesn’t get in the way of the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule. Being straightforward doesn’t mean you have to spell out exactly what’s happening. It’s all about choosing what to show and writing it in the right way.

Be specific. Using general descriptions of things tends to end up sounding clichéd. I’ll use an example. My dissertation originally opened with ‘As Katie stood on the doorstep of her grandmother’s house, confronted by overgrown hanging baskets and the chipped white paint of the normally pristine front door, she remembered her mother’s words’. I tried to describe the overall appearance of the front door and it resulted in something that sounds like a typical story book opening (Note: starting a story with the word 'as' tends to give it that 'storybook' feeling.)

Now it opens with a detailed description of what Katie sees in the hanging baskets and her thought process about how the baskets are usually only out during summer.

The new opening sets the scene much better and introduces the point of view of the character much earlier. It's specific, but still subtle, and it doesn't sound clichéd.

Clichés can also be used and subverted to create great descriptions. There’s a useful trick of taking a cliché like ‘his blood boiled’ and describing it specifically, as though it is really happening, which can turn out some interesting descriptive writing.

As far as I’m concerned, clichés can be useful. A first draft is meant to be bad. If you use clichés in a first draft just to get the story down, that’s fine. You can work on it later. But, in later drafts, you should try to avoid them.

Thanks for reading.

8 Creative Writing Rules to Follow

In most creative writing classes you will be given a list of basic rules to follow that make your writing more effective. Obviously these rules can, and in some cases should, be broken. It’s always up to the artistic discretion of the writer. But if you’re just starting out and haven’t developed your own unique writing style yet, these rules can be really useful.

Here are the eight most important rules I’ve learned:

1. Show don’t tell – This will always be my number 1 rule. A sentence is much more effective if you can demonstrate how your characters feel or look without having to spell it out for your readers. The reader is always cleverer than you expect them to be. And ‘he was old’ sounds much more juvenile than something along the lines of ‘beneath his wrinkles you could see the young man he once was'.


2. Try to cut down on ‘ly’ words – If you can find a verb that accurately describes what your character is doing, it’s much better to use it than to stick an adverb on the end of your sentence. 


3. Try to cut down on ‘ing’ words – I disagreed with this rule when I first heard it. But now I’ve realised that a lack of ‘ing’ words tends to improve a sentence. ‘He walked down the road and shook his head’ sounds better than ‘he walked down the road, shaking his head’. I can’t explain why, but I genuinely believe this rule works. 


4. Avoid long sentences – I mean really long sentences. It worked for Dickens and Tolstoy but modern readers will get bored and lose focus if they have to read paragraph-long, convoluted sentences. 


5. Don’t use verbs other than ‘said’ to describe speech – I’m not sure I agree with this rule. It’s one that could definitely be broken if you do it in the right way. But ‘he said/she said’, or even no verb at all, often sounds better than ‘she exclaimed’ or ‘he gasped’ which always sound like they’ve been snatched right out of a children’s book.


6. The best dialogue doesn’t state exactly what characters mean or want to say – Sometimes people find it hard to express what they really mean. Our characters are no different. Dialogue doesn’t sound very realistic if characters come right out and say exactly what they’re thinking. They need emotional depth and complexity in their conversations.


7. Less is more – My stories normally end up half the length they were in my first drafts. It’s usually best to cut any unnecessary description or anything that doesn’t really add to the overall effect of the story.


8. And of course… write what you know – This has to be the most common creative writing rule there is but that’s probably because it’s the most important. Writing what you know doesn’t mean that you have to recreate your life but it does mean you can make your fictional story more realistic and relatable.

So these are my top 8 basic tips for good creative writing.  I hope they’re helpful. 

Thanks for reading.