eWriteLife Blog

How to Write Amazing Descriptions for Stories, Essays, Poems, and More.

Have you ever wondered why some stories, essays, poems, and other types of literature seem more interesting than others? Apart from following the rules of grammar, spelling, and other technical aspects of writing, one factor that makes a piece worth reading is the use of amazing descriptions.

Amazing descriptions make any topic you write about more interesting, colourful, and alive. So, how do you try and achieve this?

The most important tip to remember is: make use of your senses. Using our different senses, try the writing exercises as follows:

Sense of Sight

What do you see around you right now? Don’t limit yourself to simply writing down: “I see a computer in front of me.” Describe exactly what you see. For example, “Red borders surround the language arts for kids web site. The colorful titles, logos, and tables resemble a rainbow.”

Other than colors, you can take note of things like shapes, sizes, and patterns (among others) when describing something, someone, or some place.

Sense of Smell

When you read, “The aroma of coffee, freshly baked bread, and cinnamon wafting in the air,” it is easy to picture a sense of homely calmness. Describing scents gives the feeling of familiarity - whether you’re describing a flower garden, a stinking alley, or a hospital. You can set the stage for your essay, story or poem, with scents of lilies and roses, garbage dump stench, or the smell of anesthesia.

Other words about smell: perfume, smoke, rot, moldy

Sense of Taste

How do you describe taste? Other than writing the usual words associated with taste (bitter, sweet, dry), you can also try to liken something with another thing. For example, instead of simply writing “The apple is sour,” you can write something like, “At first bite of the apple, I grimace in disgust. It’s like eating a tropical green mango.”

More words associated with taste: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, hot

Continue reading ‘Writing Descriptions’

It was great to spend a day at the Adelaide Writers’ Week during the Arts Festival. I’ve been looking forward to attending this event for a long time, and I’m glad to have finally managed to go. Not only did I get to attend a few great talks from authors like - Ben Rice (UK), Andrew Taylor (UK), Mark Danner (USA), and Marele Day (Australia) — I also managed to bring home some good books to read.
A couple of things that kept coming up during the talks are the concepts of “writing voice” and the process of completing a manuscript. While “voice” may be a bit more complicated to explain, it was good to hear different sides of the writing process, where majority of the writers advocated just getting through the first draft as fast as you can - without editing, researching, and getting bogged down with the little details. It’s more important to finish first then shape it all up later.

Marele Day, on the other hand, also gave the audience an insight in to creating a book with the aid of research, by sharing her experiences while writing Mrs. Cook. I love what she said about the role of artefacts in telling a story.

Mark Danner read his piece that talked about politics, journalism and fiction writing. Something he said about putting art in to truth through journalism and affixing the truth in art through fiction struck a chord in me.

I was definitely inspired to start reading and writing more. So yes, I’m definitely booking myself in for the next Writers’ Week.

If you’re still wondering whether online publishing is the way to go or not, then David S. Hirschman’s MedioBistro article, Don’t Bother Writing For Print (Why you can make an easier living online) might be something that you’d like to read. He has some really good points on why online writing is a good way to go.

I also wrote about this article and topic here: On Web Writing.