As a writer, there are times when your pen just flows like magic and words create wonderful worlds, but at other times, when the moon is dark and the crops are brown, you may find your writing well has dried and your world seems flat, barren. Your descriptions just aren’t profound and they lack life.
I have the medicine for just that, a potion that will bring your writing to life with vivid descriptions and words that dance. This is no magic, though. It is a tried and true exercise that will give you a place to start and helpful practice to write descriptions that engage readers and lure them right into your world. Ready?
Notice Your Surroundings
There is nothing more real than real life, and if you do not notice your surroundings and pay attention to every detail in it, how do you expect to write three-dimensional settings? Start by looking around you. Listen to every voice. Watch people’s movements and gestures. Touch surfaces and notice textures. Take in the temperature and the weather. Take notice of every single thing, be it dirty snow under your feet or the leather seats in your car. Take it all in. Look at it a little longer than normal.
We, writers, try to avoid our real life when it comes to writing. We like creating new worlds with imaginative characters and settings, indirectly, mimicking experiences that we’ve had through reading books with different worlds than ours. We enjoyed following through the adventures of a main character who was in a place and time that we’ve never experienced in real life, and now as writers, we need to recreate the same experience to ourselves and our readers, which means we depend solely on our imagination, ignoring the one significant tool that we all have; our own real shit.
No one can tell about your life better than you. In fact, the reason you’ve enjoyed someone else’s writing is because they’ve had a very close relationship with a lot in the book. They’ve had a first-hand experience with at least a few elements they’ve described and elaborated on, and that made their story as real as it could be, and that’s why it spoke to you. It resonated.
I’m not excluding fantasy and sci-fi books. Actually, a lot of the settings in such books depend on the physics of our world, and the chemistry between the characters speaks true to our humanity. On the other hand, our real world in all its reality and familiarity can inspire new worlds with different dimensions.
If J. K. Rowling could make you visualize the school of Hogwarts with the grand British architecture, it’s because this architecture is common in century-old buildings and ancient castles that you find in Britain. Her series is high fantasy, yet it’s clear that her settings were inspired by her real British background.
The condition is for you to live your life. Drink it. Embrace it. Notice your surroundings.
Grab Your Writing Stuff and Sit Down
Sit in your room, on the porch, in the garden, in a tree house; anywhere available to you at the moment. Describe your surroundings in detail, using all of your senses. What do you see? What are the prevailing and subtle voices you hear? How does the place smell? How does it feel to the touch? Does anything stimulate your taste buds? Does something provoke a memory or a mindset? Write it all.
You’re the perfect person to describe this place as you’re living in it, watching, feeling and reflecting.
Here Is What My Surroundings Transformed Into
This is me sitting on a sofa in winter two years ago.
Sinking three inches in the purple sofa, she sat cross-legged, bending her torso and laying her cheek on her fist. A tired post. Her finger scrolled the screen up as she read the long email. The soft roar of the fire burning in the iron stove gave a peaceful sensation, just as the expanding iron gave away a steady succession of metallic clicks.
She finished reading and raised her eyes to take in her surroundings, her mind working overdrive. An abandoned balloon sat motionless on the floor, a few scattered clothes covered another sofa to her left, and the door stood open revealing an empty hall. A louder click sounded in the stove and her attention shifted to it. The fire was the only thing that could be heard in the room. If she was in another mood, she would have felt the loneliness, but not now. Now she had no energy to feel anything other than the peace she was in.
She looked up and eyed the three used matches with black heads that had lain next to the stove for a long time. They were a testimony of life; the loud voices and laughs that filled this same room the day before. And on the other hand, they were an evidence of the laid back souls who lived here. The laziness in her bones that made her leave things be. Used matches could stay there for days and no one would bother…
Raghdaa Abdelkhalek, Feb 28, 2021, 7:14 PM
As you see, I’ve written this in third person from the character’s (my) point of view, making it look like a story. An alternative is writing a descriptive paragraph without reflection or a POV character. The choice is yours. The style is not an issue, and the goal is to translate your exact surroundings into words, and thus create a distinctive written experience for your readers.
What Have I Learned from This?
Looking at it now, I can tell that I would never normally think of putting such details as scattered clothes and untouched used matches in my books. I’ve grown up with the belief that your surroundings must be neat and sophisticated or else people would talk behind your back, and that means I’d never think of adding clutter to my story settings either. But now that I had to write about it honestly, it felt much more real and flawed, and this is what readers expect from a book.
Another thing I learned is that vivid description will ignite the feelings you plan to convey without you explicitly stating them. The fire and the quiet are an instant indication of warmth and coziness, and I believe everyone who reads this must automatically feel it even when I hadn’t plainly confirmed it.
Insert Real-Life Descriptions in Your Creative Writing
If you take a few minutes every time you’re in a different place to describe your surroundings, you’ll soon have a collection of settings that you can refer to when needed. Choose and pick special and unique settings and descriptions from your compilation, and embed them into your writing project. Scatter these realistic details in your novel wherever it lacks credibility or feels flat.
This exercise will help you create vivid, authentic descriptions that can bring your writing to life. Do this very often and start noticing things in your surroundings. That’s the key. Go ahead and describe your current settings, and discover the depth and significance of your real life in your writing journey.
If you like this exercise and would love to see similar content, like and share this post to help Fiction Cozy Cabin grow. Also share your opinion in the comments; how beneficial do you think this exercise could be?
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