Be Specific With Your Descriptions
Wednesday July 8, 2009
"Vagueness is often our first impulse when we're getting things down," writes Chris Lombardi in the Gotham Writers' Workshop's Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School. But it's specificity that gives our descriptions power. Learn how to be more specific by studying Annie Proulx's wonderful descriptions of Quoyle in the first chapter of The Shipping News.
Wow. I don’t even know where to start with that. Sure, it was good writing, but I can’t help but feel a complete lack of sympathy for the man. Sure, your overweight (an issue that many of us, myself included, struggle with), but most of use do so without being emotionally scarred, or rolling around on the floor. Honestly, I would stop at this description and put the book down. Nothing about this makes me care about his fate.