Anyone got tips on descriptive writing?

[Navi.Hog]

It feels more like pulling out even more ideas than to flesh out on how to do descriptive better... :3

My personal philosophy of storytelling is to treat your reader like your lover.
Here is my thing.
I want to take you by the hand to see my thing.
Look at this thing!
How great is this thing!
Shock!
I push my thing down a cliff!
Etc etc you get the idea.
It's basically bringing them on a journey, and you decide how the reader engages with your story.

(Apologies if it doesn't make sense... I probably should not reply posts with only 3 hours of sleep..)

[joe_galindez]

I push my thing down a cliff!

So do you normally keep it rolled up, like a fire hose?

[melindemari]

It does, doesn't it... Reason # 1 I like forum topics like these - plenty of inspiration!

No! It actually made perfect sense to me!
It actually brought a whole new set of (more) ideas to mind ~LOL~

But that philosophy is correct; when writing you should think of how to bring a reader into you mind where the whole play is being imagined (like a movie) and finding that balance of how to engage with readers is important because you're not using pictures or sound... you're using words!

I good idea is not to just 'study' other novels, but instead to read poetry; I've found that poetry can read like a mini-mini short story and yet it doesn't use a whole lot of words yet it can contains the same whole worlds of ideas, emotions, philosophy, stories, etc. in it!

[Navi.Hog]

I usually keep my thing slung over my shoulder. XD

[Navi.Hog]

Yes it is, isn't it.

Sentences doesn't have to be like this.

It can take different forms.

Shapes.

Bring to life certain ideas.

Inspire.

Sometimes you need a paragraph. And sometimes all you need is

whitespace

[melindemari]

And the "white space" is something I'm not really great at... With Strokes that is... with poetry it comes a whole lot more naturally!

[joe_galindez]

I usually keep my thing slung over my shoulder.

This Halloween, try wrapping it around your waist and sticking it in your ear.

Then say you're a gas pump.

[lazhiral]

I like to make small daily exercises with description of objects to help me warm up. I often get a normal object in my room and try to write about it the most precise way possible without mentioning it's function, then I show it to a beta-reader friend and ask if they can guess what object it is

Don't know if you're interested in comics, but I'm making one with writing tips and maybe it could help you

Writing is SO cool | Tapas

[JeffBaker]

I would say, especially in a serial novel where you want things to be interesting and move fairly quickly, to pick one or two aspects you feel really need describing and then move on. sort of like "Her green eyes welled up with tears" just dropping that instead of saying "she started crying" or, on the other end of the spectrum "Her eyes were emerald green and glistened in the evening light as she began to cry". The first one is descriptive while allowing the story to move. I hope this makes sense. Post a link to your novel so we can all read it!

[Navi.Hog]

Yeah, in today's context where reader's attention span is much shorter, it's much more beneficial to keep it going fast but yet still give ample description to set the mood right.