Word Painting Quotes

“Because the writer has done her job, the world of the book I am reading has become, for the moment at least, more real than the world at my elbow. Books this good should carry a warning: Your quiche might burn, your child might escape his playpen, the morning glory vine might strangle your roses, and you'll never know.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively

“But as musically evocative as Fitzgerald’s diction is, it’s his luxurious syntax that choreographs the scene. Like the liquid movement of the partygoers, his sentences “swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath.” Fitzgerald’s long, languid rhythms rise and fall seamlessly, then “with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.” His language is as opulent as the women’s costumes and as free-flowing as the champagne, continuing breathlessly to the end of the passage. As readers, we may eventually forget Fitzgerald’s colorful and musical descriptions, but we probably won’t forget the atmosphere of his fictional dream. Long after the last guest has departed and we’ve closed the covers on the novel, something— a fragrance, a snatch of song, a feeling—will remain in the summer air. ATTITUDE”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“One of the most effective ways to quicken your story’s pace is to move from a static description of an object, place or person to an active scene. The classic method for accomplishing this is to have your character interact with the subject that’s been described. For instance, let’s say you’ve just written three paragraphs describing a wedding dress in a shop window. You’ve detailed the Belgian lace veil, the beaded bodice, the twelve-foot train, even the row of satin buttons down the sleeves. Instinctively you feel it’s time to move into an action scene, but how do you do it without making your transition obvious? A simple, almost seamless way is to initiate an action between your character (let’s call her Miranda) and the dress you’ve just described. Perhaps Miranda could be passing by on the sidewalk when the dress in the window catches her attention. Or she could walk into the shop and ask the shopkeeper how much the dress costs. This method works well to link almost any static description with a scene of action. Describe an elegant table, for instance, complete with crystal goblets, damask tablecloth, monogrammed napkins and sterling silver tableware; then let the maid pull a cloth from her apron and begin to polish one of the forks. Or describe a Superman kite lying beside a tree, then watch as a little girl grabs the string and begins to run. You will still be describing, but the nature of your description will have changed from static to active, thus quickening the story’s pace. Throughout”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Tennyson’s figures of speech—the wrinkled sea crawling and the falling thunderbolt—appeal to my senses, bringing the imagined picture into sharp focus. They clarify, rather than blur, the picture. His metaphors and simile, rather than calling attention to themselves as figures of speech, illuminate the scene, bringing it vividly to the eye of my imagination. Tennyson’s metaphors and similes are not only concrete and sensory; they are also precise. Not literally precise, of course. Figurative language, by definition, deviates from the literal. Literally speaking, waves are not wrinkles, and the sea has no knees on which to crawl. But within the world Tennyson creates, the figures of speech are accurate; they follow natural laws. In contrast, a phrase like “her tears gushed like a geyser” is inaccurate. Tears might trickle, drip, even flow, but they cannot gush like a geyser, and saying that they do distracts the reader from the sense impression you’re trying to create—unless you’re intentionally employing hyperbole to accomplish some literary purpose. Figurative”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Another challenge we face is describing something commonly thought of as ugly,imperfect or disgusting. Again, we’re likely to jump to conclusions. Rather than considering our subject firsthand and describing what we observe, we label it. Because we’ve already established, for instance, that slugs are disgusting, we go on to describe them as “slimy” creatures that leave “gooey trails.” Cliché upon cliché. But when we engage our all-accepting eye, when we look beyond surface prejudices and preconceptions into the actual nature of our subject, clichés disappear. In her poem “The Connoisseuse of Slugs,” Sharon Olds transforms her subject with descriptive phrases like “naked jelly of those gold bodies,/translucent strangers glistening among the/stones” and “glimmering umber horns/rising like telescopes.” Her description forces us to see an old subject in a new way. We no longer have to choose between ugliness and beauty; they have realigned themselves, each side illuminating the other. When we engage our all-accepting eye, we discover the flaw that makes surface beauty interesting as well as the arresting detail that redeems a seemingly ugly image. THE”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“A writer need not be bound by flat statement like "It was a rough sea," when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spell from her pen.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“If I were fully conscious of my surroundings at this moment, I would describe the light through the window, the way it searches out the apples in the glass bowl, buffing them to an unnatural sheen. I bought them for their fragrance, not their freshness, so even if you were to close your eyes, you'd know you were in the presence of apples. You would smell the heavy softening, the sweet rotting where apple ends and cider begins.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively

“The Big Ear is a necessary tool for anyone attempting to describe the physical world or the world of the imagination. It helps concentrate our attention, block out distractions and provide access to the mysteries hidden beneath the surface. But these gifts are not granted free and clear. In exchange, we must pay the price of increased awareness. Like the boy in “The Big Ear,” we may overhear what we could have happily done without, something that changes forever the way we navigate our world. In giving our attention to the thing itself—the sight or smell or taste or sound or texture—we may forget to say what we originally thought we wanted, or needed, to say, some thought or purpose that probably calcified years ago. We become so involved in bringing forth the qualities of the thing itself that we are thrown headlong into the present moment. The roar, the squeak, the corduroy, the itch of it so fully consumes us that we can’t stop to think of what it all means—or what our inner censors have warned us not to say. We no longer have to struggle to force breath into our description. Suddenly it gasps and sputters. It begins to breathe on its own. EXERCISES”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Positioning ourselves, physically and psychologically, on the same plane with our subjects can help us avoid what Gardner refers to as “frigidity” in our writing, one of the “faults of soul” he warns against. Frigidity is coldhearted failure to respond on a deep, human level to the characters and events of our story. Sometimes,”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“If you want the reader to feel intimately related to your subject, try a close-up shot. Describe the character, object or scene as if it were positioned directly in front of your eyes, close enough to touch. Let the reader see the hand-etched signature on the bottom of the wooden bowl or the white strip on the divorcée’s finger where a wedding ring once lay. Let him smell the heaviness of the milking barn after a night of rain, hear the squeak of the farmer’s rubber boots. If you want to get even closer, take the reader inside a character’s body and let him experience her world—the reeling nausea of Lydia’s first morning sickness, the tenderness of her breasts, the metallic taste in her mouth—from the inside out. Then, when you need to establish distance, to remove the reader from the scene as Shirley Jackson did in “The Lottery,” pull back. Describe your object from a great distance. The wooden bowl is no longer a hand-crafted, hand-signed original, or if it is, you can’t tell from where you’re standing. The pregnant woman is no longer Lydia-of-the-tender-breasts; she’s one of dozens of other faceless women seated in the waiting room of the county clinic. As you vary the physical distance between your describer and the subjects being described, you may find that your personal connection with your subjects is altered. Physical closeness often presages emotional closeness. Consider how it is possible that kind and loving men (like my father, who served in three wars) are capable of dropping bombs on “enemy” villages. One factor is their physical distance from their targets. The scene changes dramatically when they face a villager eye to eye; no longer is the enemy a tiny dot darting beneath the shadow of their planes, or a blip on the radar screen. No, this “enemy” has black hair flecked with auburn and a scar over her left eyebrow; she’s younger than the wives they left behind. If”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“As you review the descriptions in your stories or poems, looking for places where tone has gone astray, don’t just look at the words, noting their denotations and connotations. Listen to their musical pitch, color and volume, and to the rhythms and durations of your phrases. Since tone resides not only in what you say but in how you say it, you can’t ignore those messages even a dog can understand. Like muffled voices you hear through motel walls, the tones of your descriptions permeate your story’s inner boundaries. Tone”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. This one sentence could well serve as a crash course in how to create atmosphere. First the bare wires of where and when are suggested (a country road; an autumn day in a time period when men still road on horseback to reach their destinations). Then lights and sound are added: the scene is dark and shadowy; a palpable silence reigns. It’s not a peaceful quiet, the kind that might soothe a tired traveler. Rather, it’s a disturbing silence described only in terms of what it lacks : “soundless.” Other details add to the foreboding: clouds hanging low; a lone rider. And beneath it all a subliminal music plays. I imagine an oboe or a cello, its tones mournfully forlorn. Soon it’s joined by a chorus of deep vowels whose tones are split by harsh consonants and stopped rhythms striking like gongs foretelling doom: dull, dark, soundless, day. Each phrase of the description, like each step of the rider’s horse, draws us deeper toward the gloom that awaits us. Nothing”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“What really matters, finally, is the big picture, the fictional dream that lingers after the details have vanished. The big picture is formed not only by our descriptions of characters, settings and events but also by forces that reside above and below our story’s surface—atmosphere, mood, feeling, motif, theme, form, structure and tone. These terms are far from interchangeable.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Swift, noisy activity does not always get our attention. Filmmakers, aware of this principle, use it to their advantage. Thus, in the clang and clamor of battle—cannons to the left of us, cavalry to the right, swords clashing, thunder rolling—one soldier leans down to recover a fallen flag. The moment seems to last forever. What’s taking him so long? Slowly, slowly his arm bends, his hand begins its languorous ascent, the flag rippling in slow motion. The camera continues its deliberate tracking— up the length of his arm, across his square shoulder, his sinewy neck. Blue veins are pulsing—one beat, two. At this point, we are clay in the filmmaker’s hand. Through his skilled change of pace, he has grabbed our attention, and he’ll keep it, at least for a while. In this suspended moment, this pause in the action, the filmmaker actually increases our hunger to know the outcome. He’s free to move into the soldier’s mind, perhaps into flashback or dream. He’s free to dwell a while longer on the physical details of the scene—the soldier’s frayed cap, his labored breathing. We will hold still for the details because the filmmaker has slowed the action. Slow.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Before we move on to discussing specific ways description can modulate the pace of a story, let’s clarify what we mean by action. Action in a story is not the same as activity. Action is motion that is going somewhere, that pushes the story along. It’s a forward movement, an outward sign of an inward motive. Motion serves, as the lyrics of a popular song suggests, to “second that emotion.” Activity, on the other hand, is mere random movement. Made-for-TV movies often include lots of activity— cars crashing, buildings exploding, bullets flying—with little or no motivated action. When a viewer or a reader turns off the TV or closes the book, complaining that “nothing’s happening,” he’s usually referring not to the lack of activity on the screen or page, but to the lack of forward movement. The difference between activity and action is the difference between running on a treadmill and running in a race. So”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Sometimes the action in our descriptions is present but hidden, and a slight rewording is all it takes to bring the motion into view. For instance, “Her hair was black and curly ” can become “Her black hair curled in ringlets around her cheeks.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Then, following Aristotle’s dictum of “using expressions that represent things as in a state of activity,” I ask the students to set the person in motion. Again, it’s important to be as specific as possible. “Reading the newspaper” is a start, but it does little more than label a generic activity. In order for readers to enter the fictional dream, the activity must be shown. Often this means breaking the large generic activity into smaller, more particular parts: “scowling at the Dow Jones averages,” perhaps, or “skimming the used car ads” or “wiping his ink-stained fingers on the monogrammed handkerchief he always keeps in his shirt pocket.” These three actions describe three very different fathers. Besides providing a visual image for the reader, specific and representative actions also suggest the personality of the character, the emotional life hidden beneath the physical details. As”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“In the previous chapter we discussed how a figure of speech fails when images are too farfetched or mixed, or when one image cancels out the other. The same principle applies to physical descriptions.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives, as you can see from these examples, is that adjectives encourage cliché. It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles; clean-cut good looks; frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but fresh. In “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often, the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.” Making”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Our characters come alive through all these descriptive methods, and more. We establish characters by direct physical description, by our choice of sensory and significant details about the character and his surroundings, and through description of a character’s movements and speech. Less directly, we describe our character through the eyes of other characters, by evoking a character’s private world of thoughts and feelings, and by describing what the character sees through his own eyes. CHRISTENING”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Childhood events aren’t the only forces that shape a writer’s vision. Your present-day preoccupations, interests and obsessions provide you with original metaphors, as do the subjects you discover through research or accident. Look back over your writing. Reread your stories, poems and essays, noting successful images or metaphors, those passages that seem to have sprung from imagination, not fancy. Notice what you’ve taken time and care to describe—description is one of the entries into metaphor. If you keep a journal or a writer’s notebook, reread old entries. Circle recurring images, descriptions, or isolated words; if the entries are stored in a computer, you can even do a search to see how often a particular word or phrase occurs. This process can help you discover your inner “constellation of images,” the ruling passions that fuel your most original work. Too”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Did you hear what you just said?” I say. “That’s exactly where your originality lies. In each bone of your body.” I go on to explain the root of originality: origin. Origin, as in source, spring, primary being. We are most original when we are most ourselves. Only then are we close to our first source, our fueling passions. Discovering”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Naming is so basic to the writing process, so intricately woven into every effective description, that we often overlook its importance. Yet without this first act, without a precise, significant and musical naming, no description can be attempted, no work of literature born. But”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“One way to focus on details is to describe the various parts that make up the whole. A tangerine, for instance, consists of rind, juice, seeds, fruit, pulp, grainy membranes, stem, blossoms and leaves. Describing each of these parts will force you to notice details you might otherwise overlook, what Chekhov called the “little particulars.” Later you may decide you’ve included too many particulars. If so, you can always remove some of them or group them in a different way. In”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Another thing I noticed as the children wrote was how often they changed their viewing perspectives. A child rarely looks at his world straight on. He lies flat on his back in the middle of a field, or peeks out from a hiding place, or climbs a tree and watches the scene from above.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“One of the biggest challenges we face as writers is describing something that almost everyone considers beautiful—a sunset, a rose, a new baby, the ocean. Although we want to write descriptions that are evocative and memorable, we end up filling our stories with phrases like “velvety petals” or “sparkling waves.” When this happens to me, it’s usually because I’ve proceeded, as my uncle used to say, “bass-ackwards.” Rather than beginning with the image itself, I’ve begun with a label, judgment or conclusion about my subject, then merely provided details that back up my label. Let’s say I want to describe a vase of tulips. My first thought is beautiful, springlike, fresh. Already I’ve jumped to conclusions, providing labels before I’ve taken the time to consider my subject, the tulips themselves. My description is bound to fail. It will be no more than a series of clichéd, forgettable details concocted to support my judgment about the tulips. But if I look before I leap, bringing forth the qualities of the tulips rather than merely labeling or explaining them, I might come up with a more memorable description, like Richard Selzer’s description of a vase of tulips delivered to a seriously ill man: …”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“Use only those adjectives that call forth the qualities of the object; avoid adjectives that label or explain. Words like lovely, old, wonderful, noteworthy or remarkable are explanatory labels; they do not suggest sense impressions. Adjectives like bug-eyed, curly, bumpy, frayed or moss-covered, on the other hand, are descriptive.”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

“In the fields of science, linguistics, grammar and mathematics, description concerns itself with the study of things as they exist, with bringing forth the attributes of subjects rather than simply explaining or labeling them. In literature, description refers to the language used to bring these attributes to the reader’s mind. Description is an attempt to present as directly as possible the qualities of a person, place, object or event. When we describe, we make impressions, attempting through language to represent reality. Description is, in effect, word painting. Theoretically”
― Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively