Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="papastebu" data-source="post: 3755947" data-attributes="member: 40894">Let me start by saying that I have a tremendously difficult time finishing projects, especially long-term ones. That said, I think that this is relevant.When we are children, everything we do is learned by imitation. We learn speech, our written language(s), music, art, and any other activity--its rudiments, at least--through copying those who have gone before, or trying to mimic the world around us.I would suggest that you do the same thing with written description of ANY sort. At first your descriptions will perhaps seem too wordy or possibly too sparse, but practice makes perfect. Write a description of your own features, or your parents', siblings', or your parents' siblings'. Just a suggestion.A book to read for general writing knowledge is Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, by Lawrence Block, deceased, mystery writer and writer about writing. Not only is it very informative, it is amusing enough that I have read it multiple times.Something that can be done to make a character stand out in the reader's mind is to give them a striking feature. One character that I created had piercing blue eyes in a face that resembled aged leather. His eyes were clear and unblemished in this harshly-weathered face, and I think that it really makes him stand out when he is first introduced in a scene.One of the major concerns with descriptive passages is to keep them as brief as possible while keeping all of the important stuff evident. If you haven't named the character that scene, yet, or aren't planning to, like when they are being seen through another character's eyes, make sure that all of the tell-tale signs of that character are there, taking into account things like distance and visibility.Another thing that can be done is to space out the description of a character, giving through description of actions the traits that will later identify him or her. This is particularly effective when describing a character for the first time in a longer work. Given this sort of treatment early on, you can then trot out some mannerism that points to the trait, such as, "Raking slender fingers through shaggy, reddish hair, Jacob steeled himself before placing his pale hand on the icy doorknob. Palmade slickened his grip, and he could smell the camphor from the Carmex he'd just slathered over his chapped and cracking lips."Also, try and engage as many of the senses in the scene as possible, and keep it in the POV character's perspective while doing so. One thing that has always made action scenes pop off the page for me is minute description of something that is very much a part of what's going on, but might be irrelevant, like the way a character might notice heat suddenly blossoming where he'd been shot, and white-hot sound filling his ears, but not realize that he had even BEEN shot until a few lines later as he picks himself up off the piss-stinking floor of the tenement hall where he fell.I do go on.</blockquote>

Verification