How to Write Descriptions People Want to Read: an African Landscape
How do you communicate to Western world readers the uncivilized, nature-controlled land that is Africa. If your story includes an African setting, you must get that untamed, mysterious feel across or you lose credibility.
Here are a few books you can read that will drench you in the scents and colors of Africa:
In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall (or any writing by Jane Goodall)
Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald JohansonandMaitlandEdey (about the discovery of Lucy, but filled with the smells of the habitat)
Letters from the Field 1925-1975 by Margaret Mead (many on Africa, and some on other world locations in which she researched)
The Forest People by Colin Turnbull (about the BaMbuti Pygmies and their environ)
The Tree Where Man Was Born by Peter Matthiessen (about the African Cradle of Mankind)
The Land’s Wild Music by Mark Tredinnick (translates the visual pictures of Africa to the other senses)
The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior by Tepilit Ole Saitoti (the African habitat of the Maasai)
Bunyoro: An African Kingdom by John Beattie (case study based in Uganda)
Here’s a list of descriptions, in part drawn from these books:
Flat, dry, and monotonous, a seemingly limitless scrub waste without landmarks or water or other relief
because of the time and the approaching rain
followed small antelope trails instead of the larger buffalo trails
Oxbow lake
Narrow rocky defile
Beneath the jutting stone ledge, she sat hunched into a ball, knees tight against her chest, her damp clothes about her.
Olduvai appeared like a dark rift
Along its length, cottonwoods had sprung up; young trees little more than twice a man’s height.
Thick grass had carpeted the narrow strip
distant harsh mountains composed of granite, covered with thorny shrubs and acacia trees
mountains, thrusting spires of naked rock into the heavens so high that you would believe the very sky was pierced
thickly scented spruce branches clutched at his clothes, slapped against his chest and shredded his hand
thick forest that carpeted the uplands
dust was everywhere—on leaves, branches, even on my teeth and lips
Easing over humps and trenches, potholes and stone rivers, bashing through the trees where a track is blocked, the bucking climbs up steep eroded banks
the cloud mist lifted, gradually came the dull patches of red glowing far beyond the cliffs. Two active volcanoes
mouth of a thick sulfurous stream
watch the river to see the coiling of its muscular currents, catch the shimmering of waves that caught the sunlight like scales
swallowed up by the jungle
dry creek bed
bounded on three sides by basalt outcrops and partially screened by brush
followed the ridge down toward a patch of grass
back to a rotting log that some long-forgotten flood had deposited crossways on the spit
Cracks like hardweed through a broken sidewalk
Gordian knot of …
he saw its fields, steppes, villages and towns, all bleached white by the moon and bright stars.
the gallery forests of river red gum, various grasses, that lined the channels. Maybe a low-lying area where runoff from high ground collected after rain. Sometimes dense stands of mulga (acacia) woodland would grow there, where water was easiest to find in a desert.
Photo credit: Kibuyu
More Descriptors:
Characteristics That Make Your Character Memorable
How To Write Descriptions People Want to Read: Horses
How To Write Descriptions People Want to Read: Wild Animals
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman , the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. In her free time, she is editor of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer.
Filed under: authors, descriptors, research, setting, writers resources Tagged: african environ, african landscape, bunyoro, Colin Turnbull, forest people, goodall, johanson, lucy, maitland edey, margaret mead, mark tredinnick, matthiesen, tepilit ole saitoti, tree where man was born
