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Novel writing ,

How to write descriptions and create a sense of place.

By Harry Bingham

Your first job as a storyteller is a simple one, and a crucial one. You have to get your passengers into your train – your readers into your story. Only then can you hope to transport them.

And that crucial first step doesn’t have much to do with characters or story or anything else.

What matters first is this: your fictional world has to seem real. It has to grip the reader as intensely as real life – more intensely, even.

Writing descriptions that  seem  vivid, with the use of evocative language, is therefore essential. The buildings, cities, places, rooms, trees, weather of your fictional world have to be convincing  there . They have to have an emphatic, solid, believable presence.

A big ask, right? But it gets harder than that.

Because at the same time, people don’t want huge wodges of descriptive writing. They want to engage with characters and story, because that’s the reason they picked up your book in the first place.

So your challenge becomes convincing readers that your world is real . . . but using only the lightest of touches to achieve that goal.

Not so easy, huh?

Start Early

Set the scene early on – then nudge.

It may sound obvious but plenty of writers launch out into a scene without giving us any descriptive material to place and anchor the action. Sure, a page or so into the scene, they may start to add details to it – but by that point it’s too late. They’ve already lost the reader. If the scene feels placeless at the start – like actors speaking in some blank, white room – you won’t be able to wrestle that sense of place back later.

So  start early .

That means telling the reader where they are in a paragraph (or so), close to the start of any new scene. That early paragraph needs to have enough detail that if you are creating a coffee shop, for example, it doesn’t just feel like A Generic Coffee Shop. It should feel like its own thing. One you could actually walk into. Something with its own mood and colour. One vivid descriptive detail will do more work for you than three worthy but colourless sentences.

And once, early in your scene, you’ve created your location, don’t forget about it. Just nudge a little as you proceed. So you could have your characters talking – then they’re interrupted by a waitress. Then they talk (or argue, or fight, or kiss) some more, and then you drop in some other detail which reminds the reader, “Yep, here we still are, in this coffee shop.”

That’s a simple technique, bit it works every time.

One paragraph early on, then nudge, nudge, nudge.

As the roughest of rough guides, those nudges need to happen at least once a page – so about every 300 words. If it’s natural to do so more often, that’s totally fine.

Be Specific

Details matter! They build a sense of place like nothing else.

Gabriel García Márquez, opening  One Hundred Years of Solitude , introduces his village like this:

Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.

Boom! We’re there.

In his world. In his village. Already excited to see what lies ahead.

And yes, he’s started early (Chapter 1, Page 1, Line 1). But it’s more than that, isn’t it? He could have written something like this:

Macondo was a village of about twenty houses, built on a riverbank.

I hope it’s obvious that that sentence hardly transports us anywhere. It’s too bland. Too unfocused. Too generic. There are literally thousands of villages in the world which would fit that description.

In short, what makes Marquez’s description so vivid is its use of telling detail. They’re not just houses, they’re  adobe  houses. The river doesn’t just flow over stones, its flows over  polished stones  that are  white and enormous, like  (wow!)  prehistoric eggs .

The sentence works so well because Marquez has:

• Created something totally non-generic
• Via the use of highly specific detail, and
• Uses surprising / exotic language to make those details blaze in our imagination.

That basic template is one you can use again and again. It never stales. It lies at the heart of all good descriptive writing.

So here, for example, is a more ‘boring’ space . . . but still one redolent with vividness and atmosphere thanks to the powerful use of atmospheric specificity. In Margaret Atwood’s  The Handmaid’s Tale , Offred introduces her room with details that not only grab us but hint at something dark:

A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.

Those clipped words transport us straight to Offred’s enclosed, and terrifying, space. We’re also told just enough to give us an image of that place, enough to heighten tension, enough to tease curiosity. This is just a description of a room – but we already feel powerfully impelled to read on.

Be Selective With Your Descriptive Details

Be selective – don’t overwhelm.

It might be tempting to share every detail with us on surroundings.

Even with a setting like Hogwarts – a place readers really do want to know all the hidden details of – J.K. Rowling doesn’t share how many revolving staircases it has, how many treasures in the Room of Requirement, how many trees in the Forbidden Forest. That’s not the point. (And it would write off a little of Hogwarts’ magic and mystery.)

If you’re describing a bar, don’t write:

The bar was approximately twenty-eight feet long, by perhaps half of that wide. A long mahogany bar took up about one quarter of the floor space, while eight tables each with 4 wooden chairs occupied the remaining area. There were a number of tall bar stools arranged to accommodate any drinker who didn’t want to be seated at one of the tables. The ceiling height was pleasantly commodious.

That’s accurate, yes. It’s informative, yes. But it’s bland as heck.

The reader doesn’t want information. They want atmosphere. They want vivid language. They want mood.

Here’s an alternative way to describe a bar – the Korova Milk Bar in  A Clockwork Orange.  This description delivers a sense of intimacy and darkness in a few words:

The mesto [place] was near empty … it looked strange, too, having been painted with all red mooing cows … I took the large moloko plus to one of the little cubies that were all round … there being like curtains to shut them off from the main mesto, and there I sat down in the plushy chair and sipped and sipped

We’re told what we need to know, thrown into that murky Korova atmosphere and Burgess moves the action on. All we really have in terms of detail are those mooing red cows, some cubies (curtain booths?), and a plushy chair. There’s lots more author Anthony Burgess could tell us about that place. But he doesn’t. He gives us the  right  details, not all the details.

And if that’s not enough for you, then try reading  this .

Write For  All  The Senses

You have a nose? So use it.

Visuals are important, but don’t neglect the other senses. Offering a full range of sensory information will enhance your descriptive writing.

Herman Melville, say, describes to us the chowder for the ship’s crew in  Moby Dick : ‘small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes.’ Such descriptions are deft, specific, and brilliantly atmospheric. Where else but on board a nineteenth century American whaler would you get such a meal? By picking out those details, Melville makes his setting feel vibrantly alive.

Here’s another example.

Joanne Harris’ opening of  Chocolat  plays to readers’ senses, as we’re immersed straightaway in the world of her book through scent, sound and sight:

We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausage and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hotplate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters .

These non-visual references matter so much because sight alone can feel a little distant, a little empty.

By forcing the reader’s taste buds to image Melville’s clams or Harris’s pancakes – or making the reader feel that warm February wind, the confetti ‘sleeting’ down collars – it’s almost as though the writers are hauling the readers’ entire body into their scenes.

That’s good stuff: do likewise.

(And one easy test: take one of your scenes and highlight anything that references a non-visual sense. If you find some good references, then great: you’re doing fine. If not, your highlighter pen remains unused, you probably want to edit that scene!)

Get Place And Action Working Together

That’s where the magic happens!

Use the atmospheric properties of a place to add to other properties of the scene. That doesn’t mean you should always play things the obvious way: no need for cliché;.

You can have declarations of love happen in idyllic meadows, as in  Twilight  by Stephenie Meyer, but why not at a bus stop in the rain? Shouted over the barriers at a train station?

Your character also brings one kind of mood to the scene, and the action that unfolds will bring other sensations.

Lynda La Plante’s crime novel  Above Suspicion  makes a home setting frightening after it becomes obvious a stranger has been in protagonist DS Anna Travis’ flat, and she’s just been assigned to help solve her first murder case.

So the place is influenced by action, once Anna notices:

Reaching for the bedside lamp, she stopped and withdrew her hand. The photograph of her father had been turned out to face the room. She touched it every night before she went to sleep. It was always facing towards her, towards the bed, not away from it. … In the darkness, what had felt safe before now felt frightening: the way the dressing-table mirror reflected the street-light through the curtains and the sight of the wardrobe door left slightly ajar.

Here a comfy, nondescript flat becomes a frightening place, just because of what else is going on. Go for unfamiliar angles that add drama and excitement to your work.

Descriptions As Active Characters

You know the way that a place can turn on you? So (for example) a place that seems safe can suddenly reveal some other side, seem menacing, then almost try to harm the character.

That’s an incredibly powerful way to build descriptive writing into your text – because it feels mobile, alive and with a flicker of risk. You can use  plotting techniques  to help structure the way a reader interacts with a place: starting with a sense of the status quo, then some inciting incident that shifts that early stability, and so on. The inciting incident can be tiny – discovering that a photo frame has been moved, for example.

Having your characters voice their perceptions of a place in  dialogue  also adds to its dramatic impact, because now the reader sees place both through the eyes of a narrator and through the eyes of the characters themselves. Good, huh?

Do you need more help? Did you know we have an entire video course on How To Write? That course has had awesome client reviews, but it’s kinda expensive to buy . . . so don’t buy it!

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Use Unfamiliar Locations

And smart research ALWAYS helps.

Using unfamiliar settings adds real mood and atmosphere.

Stephenie Meyer, when writing  Twilight , decided she needed a rainy place near a forest to fit key plot elements.

Like protagonist Bella, she was raised in Arizona, but explained the process of setting  Twilight  in an unfamiliar setting on her  blog :

For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest. … In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.

As her success has shown, it’s possible to write successfully about a place you don’t know, but you must make it your business to know as much as you can about it. (Or if you’re writing a fantasy or sci-fi novel, plan your world down to its most intricate details.)

And to be clear: you’re doing the research, not because you want that research to  limit  you. (Oh, I can’t write that, because Wikipedia tells me that the river isn’t as long / the forest isn’t as thick / or whatever else.)

On the contrary:

You are doing the research, because that research may inspire and stimulate a set of ideas you might not have ecountered otherwise .

The key thing is to do your research to nail specifics, especially if they are unfamiliar, foreign, exotic.

Just read how Tokyo is described in Ryu Murakami’s thriller  In the Miso Soup :

It was still early in the evening when we emerged onto a street in Tsukiji, near the fish market. … Wooden bait-and-tackle shops with disintegrating roofs and broken signs stood next to shiny new convenience stores, and futuristic highrise apartment complexes rose skyward on either side of narrow, retro streets lined with wholesalers of dried fish.

There’s authenticity, grit to this description of Tokyo, as opposed to using ‘stock’ descriptions that could apply to many modern cities.

Note this same thing with foods: in Japan, your protagonist could well be eating miso soup, as per Ryu Murakami.

Or say if your story was set in Hong Kong, you might write in a dai pai dong (a sort of Chinese street kitchen), something very specific to that city if you’re describing a street there.

Alternatively, if you are setting something in the past, get your sense of place right by doing your research right, too.

In historical novel  Girl with a Pearl Earring  by Tracy Chevalier, set in Holland in 1664, maid Griet narrates how artist Johannes Vermeer prepares her for her secret portrait, musing, to her horror, that ‘virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings’.

That last is just a tiny detail, but Griet’s tears show us how mortified she is. Modern readers won’t (necessarily) think about seventeenth-century connotations like this, so if you’re writing a scene set in a very different era or culture to what you know, research so you’re creating a true sense of place.

Use Place To Create Foreshadowing

A brilliant technique – we love it!

Descriptions of place are never neutral.

Good writers will, in overt or gently subtle ways, introduce a place-as-character. If that character is dangerous, for example, then simply describing a place adds a layer of foreboding, foreshadowing, to the entire book.

Just read how J.R.R. Tolkien describes the Morannon in  The Two Towers : ‘high mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained … like an obscene graveyard.’ It’s obvious from this description trouble lies ahead for Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee.

But even if you’re not writing this sort of fantasy, character psychology and plot (as we saw above) can also render seemingly harmless places suspect, too. A boring apartment in  Above Suspicion  becomes scary when it seems someone’s been inside.

In the same sense, we thrill to the sense of a place with excitement and promise, too, like when Harry makes his first trip to Diagon Alley (in  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ) to shop for Hogwarts equipment with Hagrid.

There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels’ eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon. … They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk.

Just weave place and action together like this to create atmosphere, excitement, tension, foreboding.

Think About Your Words – Nouns And Adjectives

Specific is good. Unexpected is great!

One final thought. When you’ve written a piece, go back and check nouns.

A bad description will typically use boring nouns (or things) in settings, i.e. a table, chair, window, floor, bar, stool, etc.

If you try to fluff up that by throwing in adjectives (i.e. a grimy table, gleaming window, wooden floor), the chances are you’ll either have (i) made the description even more boring, or (ii) made it odd.

Of course, this works for that first passage we looked over from Margaret Atwood.

We sense Offred counting the few things she has in the little room she calls hers, the window and chair, etc., in terse phrasing. We sense her tension, her dissociation, and we feel trapped with her.

All the same, play with nouns, with taking your readers to new surroundings. Give them a Moloko. Play with surroundings, how you can make them different, how you can render the ordinary extraordinary. With the right nouns in place, you’ll need fewer adjectives to jazz things up – and when you do use them, they’ll feel right, not over the top.

Happy writing!

About the author

Harry has written a variety of books over the years, notching up multiple six-figure deals and relationships with each of the world’s three largest trade publishers. His work has been critically acclaimed across the globe, has been adapted for TV, and is currently the subject of a major new screen deal. He’s also written non-fiction, short stories, and has worked as ghost/editor on a number of exciting projects. Harry also self-publishes some of his work, and loves doing so. His Fiona Griffiths series in particular has done really well in the US, where it’s been self-published since 2015. View his website , his Amazon profile , his Twitter . He's been reviewed in Kirkus, the Boston Globe , USA Today , The Seattle Times , The Washington Post , Library Journal , Publishers Weekly , CulturMag (Germany), Frankfurter Allgemeine , The Daily Mail , The Sunday Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian , and many other places besides. His work has appeared on TV, via Bonafide . And go take a look at what he thinks about Blick Rothenberg . You might also want to watch our " Blick Rothenberg - The Truth " video, if you want to know how badly an accountancy firm can behave.

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Writing About Place

Techniques for writing about real places and settings effectively.

Regardless of genre, the use of setting in creative writing is of singular importance. However, there are further complications to the use of real world settings in your writing. Whether an author claims an alternative history, or a parallel world, there are particular expectations from readers about the way in which a setting in a real place is shaped. This following discussion is going to outline a number of recommendations for writers when considering how to best develop real settings.

Meg Mundell in her discussion of literary place-making comments that “every story takes place somewhere ,” 1 and offers the five modes of place-orientated experiential techniques (POETs) as a structure for writers. Mundell’s model is a practice-based framework designed to help with the process of literary place-making. As a set of techniques it is well considered and offers useful advice specifically to those writing in real places.

The five POET techniques are Retrospective, Immersive, Collaborative, Vicarious and Nebulous, and will be unpacked in more detail through the following discussion. I will also discuss some perceived complications, adjacent values, and demonstrations of application. This discussion is designed to offer writing advice, but is not a step by step writing process, rather I invite the reader to take from it what would best benefit your own writing.

POET One: Retrospective technique

The first technique Mundell outlines concerns the harnessing of place-based personal memories. Both recent and older memories can be utilised and can often be a powerful source as our memories are not the visuals alone. Rather memories come with additional sensory and emotional information that can help an author provide a setting with more than just description. The retrospective technique, Mundell states, is drawing on autobiographical memories of place.

It is easy to see the value in starting here. Most authors will draw from their own experiences when developing their narratives anyway. This may not correspond directly to the plot or characters, but rather is often utilised in a myriad of ways throughout the stories. For instance, an author could consider the inclusion of a particular habit that takes place in a certain setting. Such as crouching down to run their fingers through the sand when they visit the beach. Or it could include a preference by a character for a certain season or time of the day. Even without noticing most authors will utilise their own preferences and memories to populate a narrative’s setting.

Memories, as mentioned, are incredibly powerful. It is not just the visualisation but the encoded states that accompany these. For example, when trying to utilise the setting of a windswept coast in the narrative, a writer may remember the coast line where they grew up. This will be encoded with polysensual information such as smells and tastes, the feel of the cold air on their skin, or how the salt stings sunburnt skin, or how cold the water is first thing in the morning. It will also be populated with corresponding emotions, such as pleasure, joy, or even grief and despair. This is a rich place for an author to draw from to help create settings that resonate meaningfully with the reader.

A retrospection does not need to rely upon memory alone. Photographs, video, even collected items from visiting these places can be useful. They can help clarify descriptive details, such as the specific type of blue of the ocean in the morning. They could also provide context for memories, such as exactly where something is located. This can be useful to then prompt further research into that place. They may also work to jog memories that have faded with time.

There is power in harnessing these personal memories. At times it can be easy as a writer to focus on the plot and dialogue, to the degree when a scene becomes merely talking heads in a vacuum. Retrospective techniques invite the author to immerse themselves within a place. To feel and exist in that place. Polysensual inclusions in writing are important, these refer to the use of senses in writing, but more specifically the use of multiple senses (as opposed to just sight, which is just description) when creating place. 3 By drawing not only on sight, but also on the sound of the crashing waves, the smell and taste of salt in the air, the feel of the breeze on the skin, all of this creates a more meaningful sense of place than simply describing a blue ocean.

POET Two: Immersive technique

The immersive technique is the direct encountering or experiencing of a place. This refers to the use of site visits by the author themselves. This has already the obvious limitation of access. A site that is difficult to access, especially in a Covid world, can limit the availability a writer has to the immersive technique. However, this limitation is confined to very specific places. For instance, I may not be able to visit a market in Delhi easily, but I can visit both in-closed and outdoor markets near my home. No, I am not going to be able to capture the resonance, the very flavour, of the real experience, but there are commonalities that I can access. To divide this into two categories I want to examine immersion in specific place and immersion in general place.

Immersion in specific places

Immersion in specific places refers to the ability to actually visit a location. Mundell refers to this as the primary purpose of this technique and highlights the importance of accessing “an immediate sensory and emotional engagement with place.” 4 This is a powerful experience, to be able to stand in a real place and just be in the moment. This can be especially powerful when we consider very unique opportunities, such as visiting the pyramids in Egypt or to go snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef. Such real experiences would be hard to mimic even through the viewing of film, documentaries and photographs of that place. It is also helpful when visiting such specific places to create your own documents that can be used throughout the writing process using the retrospective technique.

The immersion in a specific place can also be about capturing specific themes, tones and polysensory information that are unique to not just that place, but the specific time you are there. For instance, visiting the highlands of Scotland is very different in summer and winter to the degree that it can feel as if they are completely different places. The contrast of the place to also the writer’s own sense of place is very important. To understand and perceive a different cultural or historical location can be hard to experience without being there, without experiencing the “culture shock” for yourself. These are experiences that make it hard to replicate in any other way.

Immersion in a specific place is also about time. To visit the Cairo souks for the day may give a small snap shot of that place, but to spend a month visiting at different times and with different people would begin to help capture the essence of the uniqueness of these bazaars. Immersion can also offer the access of the collaborative technique, where talking and getting to know the people in a place can help shape an understanding of what it means, its very spirit. Finally, immersion in a specific place can also be a place the writer has lived their life, a place they have seen every season with, a place that is resonate already with their lived experiences. This is an immersion that is hard to replicate for any other writer.

Immersion in general places

However, as mentioned, a writer cannot always access a real place, and not always for a long enough period of time to develop a deep understanding of the essence of place. There are other techniques, such as retrospective if you’ve visited before, or collaborative by accessing other’s experiences, that can be used to off set this. However, this does not diminish the importance of drawing on immersive techniques.

A story is made up of a hundred small places. The larger setting may be Cairo, but there will be cafes, streets, museums, parks, waterways, farms, lounges, kitchens, bedrooms, and more. A hundred little places that all have their own construction and add to a larger real sense of place. An immersion in general places can help support the construction of these. What are the smells and sounds of a café? How does it feel to stand in a park in the middle of the city in the middle of Autumn? What ways do people set up their bedrooms and what does this say about them? An author can engage with real places in an immersive manner wherever they are.

What then is the act of the immersive technique? The act of immersion is captured well in its definition. It is first to have an “absorbing involvement.” 5 What does this mean? It means not being on your phone, not thinking about what to have for dinner. It means actively working through a set of observations: what do I see? what makes this place unique/special/important? what do I feel/smell/taste? what are the levels of sound present; obvious, ambient, distinct, uncommon? The writer needs to be absorbed in the place and focus only on the recording of the place. Later visits it can be useful to then picture how your character/s interact with the place, but for the first visits it needs to be an absorbed involvement.

Secondly, it is “based on extensive exposure to surroundings…that are native or pertinent to the object of study.” 6 This is more referring to being immersed in learning, but this can apply to the writer. We are making an extensive study of place. This refers to the need to return multiple times to the same place to learn its different moods. It is helpful also during these processes of immersion to keep autoethnographic (auto – personal experience, ethno – understand experience, graphy – to analyse) 7 notes of your own thoughts and experiences of the place and reflect upon your interpretation of place based on your own personal history. For instance the emotional tenor of your writing about a particular park could be impacted by the fact you were dumped here by your greatest love. This does not diminish the value of your observations, but it needs to be reflected upon that this could influence your construction of the sensory elements of that place. For instance, when describing the park’s dreary, miserable environment, this is perhaps not the place to set the most uplifting part of your story.

POET Three: Collaborative technique

The collaborative technique addresses some of the issues raised in the immersive technique as it utilises sources and people that already exist. Mundell explains this technique as “tapping into an accumulated stock of place-based cultural knowledge.” 8 This can include the access of intertextual sources such as written or visual artefacts or interpersonal sources such as interviews, conversations and so on. There are three great source accesses that all writers have for collaborative use, and that is the internet, already published stories, and the people in their lives.

This technique is also important as it is the first opportunity for the writer to move beyond their own perspective. Retrospective and immersive privilege the author’s own experiences and context, which is a valuable source for all writers, but is limited when considering the diversity of perspectives and experiences that a story should include. Place is a multifaceted thing, it belongs to everyone and it is not experienced in a singular, linear manner. Collaborative as a technique is important in addressing this concern.

There are of course limitations to this approach. Firstly, a writer needs to learn to operate outside their own echo chamber. A story where everyone has the same background, same point of view, and same experiences is not particularly interesting. A writer needs to read outside of their preferred genres, they need to watch different things, and they need to talk to different people. This can often be framed through the importance of research. Most authors conduct research for their writing. Not necessarily to the degree of being academic research, but they explore sources for historical information, cultural perspective, to find other experiences they have not had. A beginning place is often film and novels as these help show social uses of shared spaces that a writer can draw from. This is also the area where there is an opportunity to apply these techniques to a secondary world story. For instance, it is unlikely that a writer will have an opportunity to experience outer-space for themselves, but through accessing stories, film, even lived experiences of real astronauts, a writer can access shared understandings of this place.

Collaborative techniques also open opportunities to engage not just with place, but with the people that populate them. Ask five of your friends what the beach means to them and they are likely to give you five nuanced experiences. It is also an opportunity to make use of artefacts in the same way that is done retrospectively; that a writer can make use of artefacts such as maps, webpages and photos, to explore a place. To collaborate is to experience place through more than a writer’s own eyes, and this can only enrich a narrative.

POET Four: Vicarious technique

The vicarious technique can be understood through a number of points, but at its heart it is the act of empathising with place. The writer through their vicarious emplacement of themselves into a place, can “mobilise perspective-taking and narrative empathy to help emplace characters within the story.” 9 This is the act of feeling about a place by imaginatively inhabiting the place through the body of the character. We, the writers, feel how this place feels through their own context and experiences. This is where instead of the park being where you were unceremoniously dumped, it is the park the character remembers swinging on their father’s arm in. The place, its setting and environment, may not change, but the resonance of the emotion can change.

This technique is about considering how the place can be used to position the reader’s experience. Mundell refers to this as “how stories resonate for readers, as the body and emotions become shared sites of understanding.” 10 A character that inhabits a place that can be experienced sensuously rather than simple described, works to provide the reader with access to a real experience in that place in that moment in the context of the story. This is more likely to activate the reader’s own empathy and engage them in the story. This technique is largely a part of the act of narrative writing, however, Mundell is right in calling it out directly. A writer needs to actively consider not only the character and the plot in this moment, but the setting and place. How can the setting be used to help evoke the tone? For instance, if the character is scared, this means different things if they are standing in a darkened dead end alley, or are in their kitchen at home, or are on a train during rush hour. The place can inform the plot, but it will also influence the theme and tone of the scene.

POET Five: Nebulous technique

The final technique is nebulous, both in name and approach. This is the technique that refers to, as Mundell states, “such slippery phenomena as dream content, ‘pure imagination,’ subconscious formulations, intuition, the sublime, the uncanny, hauntings, and genius loci.” 11

Many writers have said they drew content for their work from dreams, and indeed the surreal mashups of our subconscious can yield a fascinating sense of place. This technique can also refer to the combining of places that a writer has experienced or researched, or the combining of other’s experiences into a single place. It can also be the changes made to an experienced place to evoke fantastic inclusions in place, such as the appearance of a set of stairs in the middle of a forest that lead…somewhere. The nebulous technique allows the writer to challenge the limitations of the real into what they need for their narrative. This is the opportunity to draw on retrospective experiences and combine them with immersive techniques and research from collaborative techniques to make a place feel new, unique and that it belongs to your narrative.

This is often the purview of speculative fiction, but it can also be used in realism, and is very effective in giving a sense of place the thematic elements needed for that scene. This is also an area important for consideration for genre writers (fantasy, romance, crime, etc.) where a reader has a particular set of expectations around tonal and thematic elements that need to be present in the setting. Although a writer can play with these archetypes and expectations, it is important to be clear in the promises made to readers about setting. For instance, a gritty crime novel means readers expect late night police stations/detective offices, nightlife areas, run down districts, rain or dark cold nights (note the repetition of night). If a writer is not planning on delivering this they need to be very clear at the start, for instance the TV show Death in Paradise already uses the title to call out this setting change. But even in this idealised, azure ocean, setting most of the above settings are still present. The nebulous technique allows for creative freedoms, but it is still embedded within the creation of place and draws from the writer’s experiences of the other four techniques.

Writing place is of central importance to all writers. It is more than a backdrop setting, a cardboard cut-out to frame the characters, it needs to be embedded deeply in a polysensual manner that helps resonate with the reader experience. Meg Mundell offers the POET format for approaching and considering the writing of distinct places. A writer who utilises retrospective, immersive, collaborative, vicarious, and nebulous techniques when developing the settings of their narratives will hopefully find a construction of a rich, meaningful sense of place emerging.

Writers and readers, what do you think about writing about real places?

Works Cited

• Mundell, Meg. (2018). Crafting ‘literary sense of place’: The generative work of literary place-making. The Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature , 18(1), 1-17. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/12375 ↩
• All images are sourced from Creative Commons ↩
• Westphal, Bertrand. (2011). Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces . New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119161 ↩
• Mundell, pp.9-10 ↩
• “Immersion.” (n.d.). Merriam-Webster . https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immersion ↩
• Ellis, C., Adams, T.E., & Bochner, A.P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research, 36 (4), 273-290 ↩
• Mundell, p.10 ↩

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68 Comments

Much as I appreciate a well drawn setting, I feel it needs to resonate with the characters… otherwise it’s like sitting in the theatre after the actors have left.

Place in fiction often lingers more vividly after characters and the intricacies of plot have faded. Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders is my favourite novel for the setting more than anything – the isolated hamlet of Little Hintock. The novel’s central characters reflect the beauty and harshness of the land: the unsophisticated Giles Winterbourne is described as ‘Autumn’s very brother’ yet it is the same unsympathetic forces of nature which bring about his untimely death. Hardy’s Wessex is often idealised but it was, as Hardy showed us, often a brutal place in which to live and work – the young Jude Fawley has a premonition too early in life of rural England’s exhausted sterility. The pastoral world of Hardy’s novels often drained the life out of people just as the harsh deprivations of London did for Dickens’ characters.

I was thinking today of the possession of place which is so deeply ingrained in the British psyche: to possess bricks and mortar, to possess land, and yet English literature’s greatest literary achievements often depict characters who have been excluded from this process for one reason or another. Literature often provides an alternative world where many people can reclaim a sense of place and belonging denied to them if they haven’t subscribed to the mortgaged existence. The cost of not subscribing can often be calamitous and Hardy’s greatest achievement for me in Jude the Obscure was showing so powerfully Jude’s rootless existence and the cost to his ambitions for not having a fixed abode.

There is nothing redeeming about the places described in Jude and Hardy shows how warmth and shelter in this possessive-obsessive land is often found in a warm pub or in a train compartment. (And this cruel government is even make these small refuges inaccessible to swathes of the population.)

I would venture to say that it is place, more than character or plot, which tell us so uncomfortable home truths about the world we live in.

I thought place was a really interesting extra dimension in novels until I read Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers when I was on holiday in Galloway. Sadly the book was as interesting as a railway timetable but I did learn just how many trains used to run across vast areas of the Southern Uplands now completely devoid of public transport.

I tend to not write about real places because I’m way too lazy about trying to get things right and accurate.

Yes: our memories are hearing; taste; touch; smell; vestibular; interioception and proprioception.

Moving through a specific place at a specific time as a specific person – and then doing this with the focus character in the focused plot and their point of view/perspective.

I tend to use Collaborative Placemaking as an author.

For me, it is an issue of scale. I obviously use real places for the large scale (planet, country, state, etc) but as the scale grows smaller it becomes more fictitious.

For example: United States (real), Tennessee (Real), Nashville (Real), Lake Charles St. (fake), Metro Police Station 16 (fake), office of Detective Mark Able (fake), Middle left drawer of Able’s desk (fake), a photograph of his wife Dorothy standing in front of the Hermitage (fake picture of a real place?)

Using real places in fiction can be useful. A terrific aid to the writer in visualising the action and maintaining consistency.

Great writeup. Just remember writers, you are describing a fictional version of that place. You can’t expect the reader to know everything, so make sure to describe it as if it were totally made up.

But then you have to get all the little details right for all the people who live there/. 😛

I prefer fictional area in real place. Like fictional small town in real state.

Thing is, you really don’t need to get all the little details right.

Sure, the big details are important – like knowing whether the village is on the east or west coast so your characters can either see a sunrise or a sunset.

But nobody really cares if you get the distance between two buildings slightly wrong, or if the snicket down the side of the pub doesn’t actually lead to a small stream at the edge of a wood, but to a carpark with a load of bottle reycling bins.

There’s a Jackie Chan movie set in Melbourne (sorry, I can’t remember the name). It’s pretty obvious to locals that when Jackie goes up an escalator on one side of the city he shouldn’t pop up on a street at the other side of the city, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the movie at all.

I like how in one scene in Umberto Eco’s Il pendolo di Foucauilt (I’m not sure if that is the correct title as I am not native English/Italian speaker) there is a dialog exchange between two monks who are walking on a real-life-based street, and the length of the dialog is exactly same as you would actually have realistically if you were to walk there. Though I dont think that amount of dedication is necesarry.

The English title of that book is indeed FOCAULT’S PENDULUM.

[some of us think Michel but this is a much older Foucault – like Middle Ages ancient/medieval].

Very veridical, isn’t it?

Have admired Eco since I was a little girl and NAME OF THE ROSE became popular.

To me, it comes down to what kinds of creative liberties you plan to take in your setting. By that I mean, don’t put the onus on me to know when you are writing fiction and when you are pulling from reality. Don’t use real street names if you plan to make up street names too, don’t use real neighborhoods and also invent new ones, etc.

Be aware, people will try to catch you for pulling from reality without doing your due diligence, e.g. getting simple details about the town wrong, like driving past landmarks in an impossible order (Sleepless in Seattle).

I have used real cities for modern fiction. I set mine in Toronto because I can reference a realistic space in my mind as I write. However I have always liked the tongue in cheek of GTA where they are clearly set in Miami, or New York, etc.

Place makes so much sense as a writer.

It’s the double-edged sword of being aware of who we are and where we are: To be able to know what is, has been and will be disassociates us from our present reality: Our connection between what we are and where we are. But it’s a powerful tool to be able to “reality-generate” and inform on what our future might be and therefore change reality to reflect ourselves?

hmm, that would make a good poem…

The Age of Misrule series by Mark Chadbourne made use of a lot of real places, both well known and obscure – everywhere from Stonehenge to the Saint Lawrence Church and the Hellfire Caves of High Wycombe. It added a lot of interesting flavour to the stories.

If you’re going to use real places in your writing, get them right – use places you can either visit or learn about in extensive detail.

I’ll use real cities or make up my own depending on what serves the particular piece I’m writing.

My Sci fi project I’m currently working on is a combination of both- assuming much of northern California has urban sprawled it’s way into one metro area. The last thing I wrote took place in a fictional small town. In general I’ll use real places by default unless I have some narrative reason to make something up just based on the principle that it’s always best to write what you know.

I find writing places to be extremely difficult, even when I’ve been there or studied it on Street View, so I can only imagine trying to invent a new city from scratch.

It’s just hard to be consistent with scale, detail, and functionality of the location. The final Hunger Games book is (IMHO) a great example of failure in that regard, and it feels like most locations only consists of about five blocks and maybe twenty people total.

Using a real place can also be tiring if it is over explained. I, a Pittsburgh resident, once read a book set in Pittsburgh and every paragraph seemed like going redicilously through the Google Maps streets and landmarks. But if you make up a city you also run the risk of overbuilding the world.

In my own short fiction I have a fascination with geography and location, but I try to take an approach of “do research, get facts straight, then make implications from there.” I wrote a bit about a little town I’ve never been to and I made sure to research demographics, population, etc. to place my character where he would have been and make sure my details lined up with reality. Then, from that information, I built the culture and atmosphere and metaphor of the town outwards from the cold hard facts.

Using an actual place just makes things harder. You have to do more research and people will nitpick the details.

Me, personally, I write about places that I’ve actually been to but don’t know a whole lot about. I have been to the Bay Area but never did some in-depth exploring of the area. I did visit a lot of the little cities in San Mateo County and so most of my writing is based on the places that I have actually been to and know a little about.

I didn’t do a lot of Exploring of S.F. but did go to to Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf quiet a few times. I also did walk Market Street a few times and went to the Westfield mall. So majority of my writing revolves around those areas that I’ve been to and sites that I had seen before. It makes writing WAY more easier when you’ve actually been to a place and heard the sounds and seen the sites in person.

Knowing where something is is not the same thing as being a resident.

I personally prefer generic/imaginary cities unless it’s super iconic, eg Paris, London, Munich.

Yes, me too. Or rather, if someone sets it Smalltown, Ruralia I really don’t need a vast amount of details about the actual Smalltown, Ruralia. It can end up feeling very parochial and even exclusionary if the tone isn’t right.

So I tend to avoid names and go for things like “main road”, “high street”, “upmarket suburb”, “central park”, “town square” when describing geographic features within a real town. But usually mine are invented, even if they’re based on something.

I’ll take Smalltown, Ruralia. I’ll rename it Littletown. I then have the freedom to add and subtract what features I like.

Most of my projects are set in different places of the world and so I did a lot of research with Google Maps/Earth, websites about those specific cities (not always big ones like New York or Tokyo) and there’s some I’ve been to too but it’s more for geographic purposes than to do a complete showoff of the culture and things like that (and my projects are also mostly set in the future so there is place for creation even there).

This is an interesting read! It would be fun to put some more of these ideas in the context of specific genres and see where there’s overlap or divergence in the usage of techniques. I loved where this was touched on in the nebulous section 😊

This is an amazing article that I will be utilizing in future writing projects. It is very well written and is very helpful for a writer. I didn’t even know there was a technique for writing locations, much less multiple.

I use almost exclusively fictional settings. Many of my stories take place in a city, but the city is either fictional or just vague. I don’t live in your standard big city, so I’m not all that familiar with any of them, so I prefer to invent fictional cities. I go the DC route where Metropolis and Gotham are both fictional cities but are based on New York, for example.

A lot of fictional things are based on/inspired by “real” things and aren’t expected to be 100% accurate. So writers, live a little bit and don’t barrier yourselves. 🙂

A while ago I had the idea of setting a story in my old high school, but for creative reasons/limits I decided to set it in the same world as my epic fantasy trilogy.

I read a book recently that took place in Washington. The author mentioned people heading from Portland to Washington and stopping in Eugene on the way. You can’t stop in Eugene on your way to Washington if you start in Portland. That one error made me suspicious of other geography and historical points from there on out.

My dad is writing a book right now and all the places are real. The only problem he has is finishing the story, like will the places still exist when he finish it.

The best advice given to me is to write what I know.

Very interesting article! I learned a lot about world building.

Authors have been writing about real places as long as there has been writing!

Real places help bring some realism to stories that I personally enjoy, but that’s just my personal bias.

I like books that set up place well, it allows me to enjoy the action that then happens there. I recall one book “Inside Out” that used place in a unique way that surprised me and made the book memorable. I thought it was occurring in an enclosed place on earth, but it was totally satisfying when it was revealed where we actually were. 🙂 Thank you for your essay, it is a really good resource. Place is almost another character in the story I guess, in as much as you need to keep track of where it is at and how it interacts with the action.

I generally go the demi-real method. My story does take place in California, but fake cities within it.

I would love to read a book set in my city even if the story was insane and made us all out to be evil villains. It would be fun to read!

It’s fun to imagine things happening in our real world. Most people have the ability to suspend their disbelief and understand that it’s just a story.

I’m rereading Philip Roth’s The Anatomy Lesson now where place has a center in the story. Much of the book is about the main character’s past at The University of Chicago. At about the midway point of the novel, he returns there and attempts to regain his youthful vitality.

Character and setting tend to blend together for me. The lines between the two are kind of blurred since an individual and his/her environment inform and mirror each other. Thank you for these helpful tips on how best to improve the immersive experience of one’s writing!

A good example of writing about place is “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness is set partially in the Bodlian, University of Oxford. Just an example off the top of my head.

I think places like Oxford have sort of entered the public domain of places that are acceptable to set a story. Its instantly recognisable and its been around for so long and has been written about countless times before by others. Another story set in Oxford (at least for a part of a story) is Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for example and I can assure you that the Oxford there does not match the Oxford IRL.

Yes, that is another one, although I would agree the “Oxford” in Pullman’s book is more some parallel universe type of Oxford.

I use real places down to the level of picking out hedges and storm drains!

I get pretty obsessed with making my settings match real world places. I wanted a water tower in one of my novels set in upstate New York, so I literally went searching for a neighborhood where one exists just like in my story and based it there. Google Earth has been a blessing.

I love that!

So glad I’m not the only one getting creepy with Google Earth up in here.

I think Patrick White’s town ‘Sarsparilla’ is a great name for a place.

I love learning new techniques for effective creative writing. These five techniques can unlock a whole new type of relationship between writer to reader. I resonate with this article because I always thought that any type of literature grants the readers an opportunity to travel around the world, learn different cultures, and maybe even discover themselves by the end of the story. And that is all due to effective writing techniques.

While it is true that everything happens somewhere, it is not true that every narrative has to include the setting. Setting can be expressed through feelings, and never mentioned at all.

Enjoyed this article, thoroughly!

I think it is interesting that you say that dreams can be a way of adding an element of surreality to the setting.

This gave me a lot to think about. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how to translate this into non-fiction writing? What aspects can we keep/what differences should we be mindful of?

Writing about a setting or place, or about a person (etc) in a place is much more easily (and believably) done if writing about what one knows. Unless the novel is fantasy, it’s generally not easy to imagine a place one has never been and put that in their writing authoritatively.

One interesting counterpoint to this framework could also be to think about the methodology of writing place—once one is enmeshed in the nitty-gritty of pen-to-paper or hands-to-keyboard perception seems to shift a bit. I find it helpful to consider how place can be induced from the pen as well as being approached in a more deductive way based on prior decision-making.

As someone interested in stories about fantastical settings, I haven’t previously tried the technique of visiting places to write about them, but this article has provided me with a new perspective on this technique. I am intrigued by Mundell’s idea of spending time in a place to capture the “feeling” of being in that place, as opposed to only focusing on the objective aspects of it, and how this can be applied to writing about similar settings, real or imagined.

I think there is such a risk writing about real place settings. If the representation doesn’t align with the readers view/expectations you can lose them before they are hooked on the central story arc.

Michael Crummey also gave an excellent lecture about this that was turned into a book called “Most of What Follows is True: Places Imagined and Real” that discusses his experiences and ideas about setting fiction in place.

Thanks for sharing that Emily – I will check it out 🙂

Very interesting topic ! With experience the reader may spot when a scene is juxtaposition of idea bricks (just a decorum) or a coherent piece. It always fascinated me how a writer can put anchors in our head to see a place but only to make us feel something completely different than just a background. It is even perfect at some point when you forget about it and just feel emotions.

Quite a helpful technique for writing a place!

In a way I don’t think the approach is too different to writing fiction in a real place, you would disregard any of the advice that indicates an imagining but the same principles should be the same. One thing that I am engaged in currently is a geocritical review of a real place, and this means not only am I going there and capturing lived experience, I am also engaging with what is already written about that place. For real NF this would be looking at historical documents, local websites and tourist sites, local papers etc. that help capture a sense of how the place has changed and how it is used. I hope that helps a little 🙂

Really interesting and thoughtful piece of writing here. Thank you for contributing. Got me thinking.

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Describing Beautiful Places: Adjectives & Examples

When it comes to describing beautiful places, words often fall short. The breathtaking landscapes, the vibrant colors, and the serene atmosphere are all elements that make a place truly beautiful. As a seasoned traveler and avid wordsmith, I’ve compiled a list of adjectives that can capture the essence of these stunning locations. From picturesque to awe-inspiring, these words will help you paint a vivid picture of the most beautiful places on Earth. So, whether you’re a travel enthusiast looking for inspiration or simply appreciate the beauty of the world, join me as we explore the descriptive wonders of these captivating destinations.

Table of Contents

How to Describe beautiful place? – Different Scenarios

When it comes to describing beautiful places, adjectives play a crucial role in painting a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Let’s explore different scenarios and learn how to effectively describe stunning locations.

1. Scenic landscapes:

When describing scenic landscapes, it’s important to focus on the sights and natural features that make the place beautiful. Here are some adjectives that can help you capture the essence of these breathtaking vistas:

Describing pristine beaches requires attention to the details that make them unique. Here are some adjectives that can help you transport your readers to sandy shores:

Describing Words for beautiful place in English

When it comes to describing beautiful places, there is a wide array of adjectives that can be used to paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. These words help us convey the enchantment and awe-inspiring qualities of the places we explore. As someone who has had the opportunity to witness numerous breathtakingly beautiful locations, I’ve compiled a list of adjectives that can effectively capture the essence of these places.

Remember, the key to creating a captivating description lies in choosing the right adjectives that resonate with your readers and accurately convey the essence of the beautiful places you are describing. By using these adjectives, you can transport your readers to these awe-inspiring destinations and allow them to experience the beauty for themselves.

Adjectives for beautiful place

Positive adjectives for beautiful places.

When it comes to describing beautiful places, there is a wide range of positive adjectives that can help create vivid and captivating descriptions. Here are some examples:

Negative Adjectives for Beautiful Places

Although beautiful places are often associated with positive emotions, there are also negative adjectives that can be used to describe certain aspects. Here are a few examples:

Synonyms and Antonyms with Example Sentences

Synonyms for beautiful place.

When describing a beautiful place, there are many synonyms you can use to add variety and color to your descriptions. Here are some examples of synonyms for “beautiful”:

Antonyms for Beautiful Place

Sometimes, you may want to describe a place that is not particularly beautiful. In such cases, using antonyms can help you accurately capture the essence of the location. Here are some examples of antonyms for “beautiful”:

Remember, choosing the right adjectives is crucial when describing a place as it helps create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Whether you are describing a beautiful place or one that is not so appealing, using the appropriate synonyms or antonyms can enhance your descriptions and engage your audience.

Using adjectives effectively allows us to paint a picture in the minds of our audience, transporting them to these beautiful places and allowing them to experience the sights, sounds, and emotions firsthand. It is through the power of words that we can truly convey the unique qualities and charm of each location.

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How to Describe a Place

by Jill Williamson | Jul 15, 2015 | Writing | 0 comments

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy ( Blood of Kings trilogy ), science fiction ( Replication ), and dystopian ( The Safe Lands trilogy ). Find Jill on  Facebook ,  Twitter ,  Pinterest , or on her  author website . Welcome to Part Two of my four-part series on description. Today we are going to talk about describing places. But first, let’s ponder why we should even bother writing out descriptions. Wouldn’t it be better to leave all this up to the reader’s imagination?

Why Bother Describing Things? Editors and writing instructors vary on their insistence that setting and characters be fully described. Some say to leave it out so that the reader can imagine everything. Others say you need to paint the scene for the reader because if you describe nothing, you have what’s commonly referred to as “talking heads.” The reader sees faces floating in space, uttering strings of dialogue. On the other hand, if you describe too much you can pull the reader right out of the story.

I think somewhere in the middle is best. Give your reader enough details so that they know where the characters are and who is in the scene, then let them fill in the other details however their imagination sees fit to do so.

List the Facts Consider creating a checklist for each scene you need to describe. This will help you remember things when it’s time to go back to that location. You don’t need to create such a list for every location in your story. But I find it helpful to know this for places that my characters spend a lot of time.

The LOCATION is: Use simple words: alley, classroom, gym, bedroom or a specific place if that is important like the great hall at Hampton Court. TIME of day: Morning, afternoon, night—especially if the scene takes place outdoors.

WEATHER/TEMPERATURE: You really only need to share this if it is abnormal or important to the scene. People will assume that the temperature is average and the weather is nice unless you tell them differently. WHO is present?  Early on in the scene, list the important characters who are present, especially any who will have dialogue so that they don’t seem to appear from nowhere.

The FIVE SENSES: Be aware of all the things your character might experience with his or her senses in each location. You don’t have to type them out every time you are in the scene, and you don’t always have to use all five, but keep them in mind and try to work them in here and there. It will give your reader more unique things to remember. -What can the POV character SEE? -What can the POV character SMELL? -What can the POV character HEAR? -What can the POV character TASTE? -What can the POV character FEEL?

Any important objects or features to PLANT for later? Do you plan to have one character throw a pillow at another? If so, it’s important to mention pillows in your initial description of the room. That way they won’t become what Jeff Gerke calls “magically appearing” pillows.

Describing Places Now that you have your list, here are some tips as to how to use it.

– First time : Describe important places early on in depth. You don’t have to go on and on for paragraphs, but make sure that your description is thorough.

– Start big and zoom in : It helps readers if you start the description with big information, then get smaller. For example: The Dayville Middle School “gymnasium” was a half-court slab of pavement out back of the cafeteria. One basketball hoop stood at an eighty-five degree angle on one end. What remained of the net looked more like two shoelaces tied together. (We start with the gymnasium, which is biggest, mention that its outside, mention the hoop, then the net, which is smallest.)

– Repeat important details throughout story . Next time the characters travel to that “gymnasium,” you can repeat important details like the fact that it’s outside and only has a half court. The net isn’t really important to repeat. And you could always add a different detail, like a three-row set of wooden bleachers or that the concrete got puddles when it rained.

– In each new scene, give location, time of day, and characters present . When you move between scenes, the reader needs to know that. Tell them that Mark drove home from school. Don’t have him magically appearing at home without having traveled there. Now, if you’re starting with a scene break, you can skip telling us how he got home. But you still need to tell us where he is. So you’d say that Mark entered his house or that he was in his living room after school. Give us the time if it has changed drastically. And always be sure to tell us what important characters are present. If it’s just Mark and his dad in the living room, make sure we know it. But if Mark was in a class at school, you don’t need to name every kid in the class. The reader will assume there are other kids in the class. Just make sure to describe those who speak. (We’ll talk about ways to describe people next week.)

– Plant important objects or features . As mentioned above, be sure to plant any important objects or features in advance of them being useful. If you write that your character is freezing from the cold, but you didn’t mention the cold until three pages into the chapter, that’s confusing to the reader. Make sure the reader knows it’s cold early on.

Editor Jeff Gerke taught me to imagine my scene taking place on a stage and to think about what necessary set design, props, and actors need to be out on the stage before the scene begins. This always helped me avoid “magically appearing” things when setting up my scenes.

– Use specific words . Always use the most specific word. Specific words in description really help paint a picture in the reader’s mind. You want them to see things in as few of words as possible, so make every word count! For example: oily asphalt, rocky cape, rusty iron bars, freshly mowed grass, a cluttered desk, colossal pillars, etc. All these phrases paint pictures in your mind.

– Avoid too many “ly” adverbs . If you need an -ly word in your description, use it. Just be careful not to rely too heavily on them because it’s cheating. Work hard to find specific words to show your reader the scene.

– Use metaphors and similes . Use these whenever possible. They provide your reader with an instant visual. For example: An impressive stone building loomed over ten stories high. The top tapered into a point, tier upon tier like a square wedding cake. A large staircase marked the entrance. (Can you picture the top of the building?)

– Always bring in the POV character’s voice . The description should sound like your point of view character. That means using the types of words he or she would use.

Here are a few different examples of descriptions:

          “You’re just not imagining it right,” Joel said, walking up and resting one hand on his friend’s shoulder. He held his other hand in front of him, panning it as if to wipe away their surroundings—the green lawns of Armedius Academy—and replace them with the dueling arena.           — The Rithmatist  by Brandon Sanderson

In this example, “green lawns of Armedius Academy” say all we need to know. We’ve all seen school campuses. We can imagine green lawns and sidewalks and buildings and lampposts. And when we need to know more, the author will give us that information.

“No, the Seahawk was a ship like countless others I had seen before or for that matter have seen since. Oh, perhaps she was smaller and older than I had anticipated, but nothing else. Moored to the dock, she rode the swell easily. Her standard rigging, tarred black for protection against the salt sea, rose above me, dark ladders to an in­creasingly dark sky, and indeed, her royal yard seemed lost in the lowering night. Her sails, tied up, that is, reefed, looked like sleeves of new-fallen snow on lofty trees.” — The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

Here we get a nice description of the ship in the voice of our POV character, Charlotte, who clearly knows some things about boats. We also get a nice metaphor at the end.

And finally I have a longer description from Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson that really makes you feel like you’re there. And it’s deliberate that the authors took longer on on this scene since many things will take place there later. They need the reader to see this place well.

          Not far from where Peter lay unconscious, a lagoon connected to the sea. It was, in good weather, a beautiful place—a near-perfect semicircle of flawless white sand, perhaps a mile across, bordered by a curtain of tall, graceful palms. In the center of the curved beach lay two dozen or so massive, sea-smoothed boulders, some of them the size of a sailing ship, forming a hulking jumble of rock that stretched from the trees into the blue-green water. Behind the beach the island rose steeply to a ridge several hundred feet high, jungle-thick with vegetation, forming a curved green wall that cut the lagoon off from the rest of the island.           The lagoon teemed with life—turtles, jellyfish, crabs, and vast schools of lavishly multihued fish. Normally these creatures were sheltered from the surge of the sea by a coral reef; it ran across the mouth of the lagoon from one side to the other, with only a small break in the center, through which the tide flowed in and out.           But the low reef was no match for the waves churned up by this storm. Every few seconds, a towering wall of wind-driven water rose high over the reef and broke upon it with a thunderous crash, sending a surge of churning, foaming water rushing high onto the beach, then back toward the sea, leaving the surf-scrubbed beach empty for a few seconds, awaiting the next incoming surge.

How are your descriptions of places? What do you do well and what do you need to work on? Share in the comments below.

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How to describe to immerse readers (complete guide)

Descriptive writing brings stories and characters to life. Read tips on how to describe places and characters, descriptive writing examples from a selection of genres, and more.

• Post author By Jordan
• 23 Comments on How to describe to immerse readers (complete guide)

Knowing how to describe well is sure to immerse readers in your world. Read a complete guide on describing places and characters, different types of description, descriptive writing examples from popular genres, and more. Use the links above to jump to what you want to learn more about now.

What is description? Definitions and terms

Description is writing that tells your reader what a person, object or place is (or isn’t) like. As Oxford Learner Dictionaries define it: ‘a piece of writing or speech that says what somebody/something is like; the act of writing or saying in words what somebody/something is like’.

Description:

• Creates tone and mood (for example, whether a scene is bright, dark, cheerful, ominous)
• Shows, infers or implies personality and emotion (for example, a character speaking very fast may imply fear or excitement)
• Colors in the story so that scenes that could feel grey or beige become imbued with specificity and the potential for drama, events
• Draws your reader’s attention to significant or important objects and events: For example, a treasure being lost overboard in a sailing expedition may set up a storyline in another timeline where explorers dive for sunken treasure

These are just some of the important uses for description in storytelling.

Descriptive writing: useful terms

Useful terms in descriptive writing include:

• Mood: Describes that which is evocative of a specific state of mind or feeling
• Tone: The general attitude or character of a piece of writing (e.g. ‘The tone of the opening description is cheerful, matching the sense of excitement of guests about to arrive at a party’)
• Tableau (plural tableaux): A picture, as of a scene. For example: ‘In the first scene, we see the tableau of a family dinner at Thanksgiving, where the main characters are all seated together’
• Mise en scène: A French term meaning ‘the action of putting onto the stage’. It’s the arrangement of actors and scenery in a scene. Cambridge gives the example , ‘The general mise en scène – solitary figure, moving down gloomy Victorian streets at twilight – brings to mind Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde .’
• Figurative language: Figurative language such as metaphor and simile (more on this under descriptive writing devices ) is often used to compare, contrast, and breathe fresh life into familiar ideas and images (e.g. ‘He blushed as red as a bottlebrush tree in spring’)

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One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. Kurt Vonnegut

Why is description in writing important?

In all kinds of writing, but in fiction especially, description draws readers in and creates immersive character, specificity. The opposite of bland, beige writing.

Description is important in writing because it:

• Establishes setting to create context. If you describe an old cobbled street, your reader knows they’re not in Dubai’s modern CBD.
• Helps to create tone and mood. The emotional state of a narrator or the emotion of a scene is deepened by evocative description.
• Draws attention to important symbols or themes. For example, in the opening description in Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, the main character dwells on heavy-drinking workers which calls to mind the post-war setting and echoes the story’s core themes of society, class and trauma.
• Makes writing more engaging. Instead of reading being like watching paint dry, description pigments your world.
• Implies and infers. A shrug, a sigh – small gestures and signs may create exact or ambiguous implications, so that description adds narrative suspense to a scenario and creates intrigue.
• Supports plot and story development. For example, a gun concealed in a glove compartment at the start of a story warns us it may fire.
• Distinguishes and differentiates . One character may wear their hair down mostly, another up. The small details that differentiate people and things create realism.
• Evokes emotions or elicits empathy. For example, a kid sitting alone at the back of a school bus may suggest loneliness or exclusion. A tableau has great power to elicit empathy or other emotions, as visual artists understand.

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Types of description: Ways to bring worlds to life

There are many types of description you could use to make your story a tapestry of vivid detail:

Physical description

Clear, precise physical description gives your reader a more detailed sense of your world. Succinct description doesn’t necessarily sacrifice pace, either. It may include elements of physicality such as:

For describing characters, you might describe a person’s:

• Facial features
• Body language

See description examples for descriptions that represent several of the above qualities.

Emotional description

Emotional description suggests a character’s emotional state or mood. Voice and action contribute emotion too (and types of physical description such as posture or body language).

Ways you could show a character’s emotions include:

• Adverbs: These should be used sparingly, though. For example, ‘”Of course,” he said happily.’
• Actions: A useful substitute for adverbs. Compare the above to: ‘”Of course.” His smile reached all the way to his eyes.’
• Deep POV: The way a character describes their surrounds may be indicative of how they’re feeling. For example, ‘I sat down on my stupid bed and opened my homework book.’ This character is clearly not enthused by homework.

Filtering passing description through your character’s viewpoint and state of mind is a great way to indirectly describe their emotion.

As an exercise, take the same scenario and setting, write down four or five different emotions, and have your character describe the same scene so that it is colored by each of those emotions in turn.

Historical description

Historical description is narrative that shows what time and place are like. For example, the way Dickens’ description of Coketown in Hard Times (1854) conveys what a rapidly industrializing town is like, with its miasma of smog:

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness. Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854), full text public domain on Project Gutenberg .

This type of description is especially common in historical fiction which seeks to create an authentic sense of a period or era and its notable features, changes and developments.

Impressionistic description

This type of description is not as concerned with accurate (or rather literal) representation as it is with capturing the essence of the described thing.

Think of this as the way Cubism may represent a person in a portrait as having both eyes on one side of their face.

If you wrote, for example, ‘she was all hard edges and acute angles’ to describe a severe, unforgiving character, you might not literally mean that they’re like a line-drawing. Yet the metaphor in this geometrical description creates the impression of sharpness, hardness, stern qualities of character.

Another example: In this quote from The Great Gatsby (1925) where the character Nick Carraway gives a romanticized view of New York City, he says that to see the city from a specific vantage point is always to see it for the first time:

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925. p. 67.

The narrator does not mean this literally, of course. It is an impressionistic description of what this specific vista feels like, emotionally.

Impressionistic description relies on devices such as metaphor, metonymy, simile, personification and hyperbole (more on these under descriptive writing devices ).

Recommended reading

Read more about types of description:

• Descriptive verbs: 7 tips for avoiding weak adverbs
• Direct vs indirect characterization: How to show and tell
• How to describe clothing in a story (with examples)

For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together. Hilary Mantel

Describing characters: Not shoe size (but where he’s off to)

In her poem ‘Writing a Résumé’, the Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska pokes fun at the characterless language one has to use sometimes in, for example, writing a CV or bio or other document for bureaucratic purposes. She gives dry instructions about what to do (implying the wealth of humanity that we have to skip over in doing this exercise).

It’s a great example of what not to do in writing more rounded, complex – i.e. fully human – characters:

Write as if you’d never talked to yourself and always kept yourself at arm’s length. Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds, dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams. Price, not worth, and title, not what’s inside. His shoe size, not where he’s off to, that one you pass yourself off as. Wisława Szymborska, ‘Writing a Résumé’, Poems, New and Collected (1957-1997)

Describing characters well brings them to life. It’s the opposite of a dry, everywoman CV.

What are some ways you can describe characters better?

• Make first introductions count. A vivid first line, gesture, outfit, attitude – what will cement your character in your reader’s mind?
• Favor concrete over haziness or abstraction. Not, ‘She was kinda tall’ or ‘sometimes, she was mean’. How tall? Under what circumstances was the character typically mean?
• Show more than just appearances. For example, ‘his eyes were blue’. Many people have blue eyes (though the gene is recessive). How blue? and what do the man’s blue eyes suggest about his character (are they kind, alert, critical?).
• Use viewpoint and voice to imply mood and emotion. Part of why Salinger’s teen narrator’s voice is so memorable in Catcher in the Rye is his narration is filtered through how jaded and deeply frustrated he feels.
• Build character description over your story’s course. Does a character’s limp get worse or better, a country woman who moves to the big city lose (or keep) the rural sound of her accent? How might description change subtly (or dramatically) to echo the life your character’s lived?

See the recommended reading below (and the description examples further on) for more on how to describe characters with vivid acuity.

• Character writing: Complete guide to creating your cast
• How to describe a person vividly: 8 ways
• How to describe hands: 6 ways to make characters real
• Describing characters’ first appearances: 6 tips

For me, writing for kids is harder because they’re a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid’s not going to do that. They will drop the book. Rick Riordan

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Describing settings: Making place a character

Illustrating your story’s settings is vital to make your world feel real and lived in (rather than like so much empty green screen). Setting description is a crucial part of worldbuilding.

Types of description that tell places’ stories

There are so many details, like with characters, that define what a place is like. You can describe a place via its:

• Physical qualities. See for example that description dense with smog by Dickens in the example above.
• Environment and Geography. Terrain, biomes – in historical, fantasy and science fiction in particular, geography is often important because it may determine how long travel takes, where character’s can or cannot go, the rules of engagement in war or trade, or other plot factors.
• Architecture. Architectural description may create a sense of scale, wealth, age of a city or society, what raw materials are available, and more. See Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities for inventive descriptions of imaginary cities, as recounted by a fictionalized Marco Polo.
• Historical events. If you narrate a paragraph describing the history of a city, for example, that place immediately gains further historical character.
• Social makeup. What proportion of inhabitants are wealth, and what proportion are underprivileged? Class, culture, religion and other elements of society help us understand a place’s diversity (and often also the lines of difference that explain historical or present tensions).
• Political elements. The political system in a place may have far-reaching effects from public life (e.g. whether there is a curfew or not) and infrastructure to the happiness of its people. Under a corrupt dictator, roads and public services may deteriorate faster, for example, as autocrats redirect public funds to a private purse.

How can you describe place in your story so that it has vivid character?

Ways to describe place in fiction

To create a more immersive sense of place:

• Brainstorm key place details. What you describe will be determined to an extent by the plot and character arcs of your story. For example, if your story is about a sheltered country dweller who travels to the big city, you might brainstorm what would be awe-inspiring (or terrifying) about a big city upon arrival.
• Create vision boards of similar settings. Use Pinterest ( follow Now Novel while you’re there) or another image sharing platform to curate a library of images connected to your story locations. This is a great way to gather visual inspiration for scenes and ideas for objects or moods and atmospheres.
• Use precise adjectives. This applies to character description, too. Find the concrete word that compresses the most meaning (instead of ‘very small’, you might say ‘tiny’ or ‘minute’, for example).
• Think about who, what, why, where and when. Who (or what) would you be likely to find in this place? What is great or awful about it? What is its atmosphere, tone and mood? Why does this place exist? What does it tell us about your world, its where and when (period, era)?

Read more about how to create vivid story locations, places, worlds:

• Story setting and worldbuilding: Complete guide
• How to describe setting: 6 ways to bring setting to life
• Novel settings: 7 tips to get setting description right
• Setting the scene: 6 ways to introduce place in stories
• Vivid story setting description: Examples and insights

The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that’s rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, ‘What if I wandered into this writer’s people here?’ If you’ve done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, that adds an extra dimension that you can’t buy. Tamora Pierce

Descriptive writing devices

Descriptive writing devices such as figurative language bring in the freshness of unexpected comparisons and get playful with language. Learn more about descriptive writing devices that add depth, humor, surprise and other good things to descriptions:

Metaphor and simile: Comparing unlike things to describe

Metaphor and simile compare unlike things to create striking imagery.

The key difference between the two is that metaphor removes the comparison words, simile keeps them in.

Metaphor examples:

• ‘His stork legs poked out of baggy yellow swim shorts.’
• ‘The moon was a silver platter, more beautiful for its antique, tarnished patches.’

Compare to simile which makes the act of comparison more obvious:

Simile examples:

• ‘The spacecraft was as dark as a moonless desert, save for the blinking lights of the control console.’
• ‘She got up from the table without a word, as difficult to read as a seasoned croupier.’

Metonymy: Making part stand for the whole

Metonymy is a figurative device where the part of something stands for the whole (the way we say ‘The Crown’ to refer to a queen, for example).

Examples of metonymy:

• “Mouth over here won’t shut up,” my sister said, casting a dark look my way.’
• “I will call this House to order, and you will be orderly,” the Speaker said, glaring at the back benches.’

Hyperbole: Exaggerating for effect

Another figurative language device, hyperbole is often used for either dramatic or comical (for example, mock-heroic or arch) effect.

Hyperbole example:

• “This sandwich is a masterpiece and belongs in the Louvre,” my brother said, mock-retching at the days-old sub I found under the car seat.’

Personification: Bringing the non-human to life

Personification is another common descriptive device in figurative language. Here, human-like characteristics are attributed to objects or non-humans.

Personification example:

• ‘The old oak stood sentinel over the entrance to the town, cautioning horseback arrivals in its gnarled, ancient presence that this was an old place where people took their time and took even longer to warm to strangers.’

There are many other rhetorical and figurative devices you can use to play with description.

For example, ‘zeugma’, which combines unrelated images in one sentence (e.g. ‘That day changed it all, the day she opened her door and her heart to an imploring kid who rocked up shoeless and afraid and wouldn’t say a word.’) The verb ‘opened’ applies to two different nouns, one use of the verb literal, one figurative.

Read more about writing descriptive sentences and using figurative language devices:

• Writing descriptive sentences: 6 simple rules
• Adjectives for description: 60 precise words
• Artificial intelligence for writing: 10 helpful AI uses

I’m a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction. Jesmyn Ward

Description pitfalls: What to avoid in descriptive writing

Description has its pitfalls. As Rick Riordan says in the quote above, lots of spurious description may lose a reader. Read ideas of what to avoid in description:

Overused, on the nose or dead language

‘Tall, dark and handsome’ – that’s an example of the kind of phrase you might find in a Barbara Cartland or old Mills & Boon title that might make modern readers groan. Sites such as TV Tropes can help you keep track of what is overdone and troped to death.

Tautology (redundant words or phrases)

Tautology is saying the same thing twice in different words. A ‘pleonasm’ is using more words than necessary to convey one meaning. For example, ‘The shower’s wet water was a relief after the day’s grueling work.’ The reader knows water is wet, so the adjective isn’t needed in that sentence.

Lack of sensory details

Effective descriptive writing involves the senses: Sight, touch, sound, smell, even taste. This isn’t to say that every sentence has to draw on all of the senses, but if the reader never hears or feels the touch of anything, the story’s world could read more drab and nondescript.

Telling far more than showing

Although ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a common adage, stories need both.

‘Telling’ is useful for what Ursula K. Le Guin calls ‘leaping’ in narrative. For example, skipping over an uneventful sequence of time. ‘They rode hard for three days and eventually reached the city.’

It’s showing though, ‘crowding’ a scene with the detail of the senses, of what viewpoint characters experience, that really puts your reader in the film-like quality of a scene in 4K definition.

Stereotyping or generalizing

Saying ‘all the women in the bar had dolled up for the night’ might draw readers’ ire, an example of a generalization that is also stereotyping. The idea that all women, men, non-binary people, or other categories behave a similar way (or hold similar interests or behaviors). Think about how descriptions can speak to the variety that is inherent to a space.

There are cases, of course, where certain places are very homogenous in culture, inhabitant or type. A fancy club on a beachfront might attract a very specific type of patron. Yet if context does not help to explain a generalization, it’s best to avoid it.

Watch a concise video with further tips to write stronger description:

How to describe: Writing clear places and characters

What are some of your descriptive writing pet peeves? Let us know in the comments.

Read more about descriptive issues and how to avoid them:

• What is cliché? Cliché examples (and how to avoid)
• Choosing description words: 10 questions to ask
• ‘Show, don’t tell’: Examples from books balancing both

Description examples: Descriptive writing across genres

Here we gather effective description examples across a range of genres: Fantasy, romance, historical, science fiction, mystery, thriller and more. Share one of your favorite descriptions and the author and book title it’s from in the comments and help us grow this resource for description examples.

Introductory descriptions for scene-setting

Description at the beginning of a story can set the scene in a wide variety of ways. See below how it can establish tone and mood (the levity of Pratchett’s style, for example), or the inside/outside of a detective’s world where peace or violence are always just over the hedge.

See in the example from Julia Quinn how description of an activity typical of an era (Regency women doing needlework) can create a sense of time and place. Or reference to interplanetary spectacle or a woman tailing a man create intrigue in a sci-fi and thriller novel respectively.

Fantasy/humor description example

Local people called it the Bear Mountain. This was because it was a bare mountain, not because it had a lot of bears on it. This caused a certain amount of profitable confusion, though; people often strode into the nearest village with heavy duty crossbows, traps and nets and called haughtily for native guides to lead them to the bears. Since everyone locally was making quite a good living out of this, what with the sale of guide books, maps of bear caves, ornamental cuckoo-clocks with bears on them, bear walking-sticks and cakes baked in the shape of a bear, somehow no one had time to go and correct the spelling. Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad (1991), pp. 16-17.

Mystery description example

“Hell is empty, Armand,” said Stephen Horowitz. “You’ve mentioned that. And all the devils are here?” asked Armand Gamache. “Well, maybe not here, here” – Stephen spread his expressive hands-“exactly.” “Here, here” was the garden of the Musée Rodin, in Paris, where Armand and his godfather were enjoying a quiet few minutes. Outside the walls they could hear the traffic, the hustle and the tussle of the great city. But here, here there was peace. The deep peace that comes not just with quiet, but with familiarity. Louise Penny, All the Devils are Here , 2021 (p. 3)

(Regency) romance description example

“Look at this!” Portia Featherington squealed. “Colin Bridgerton is back!” Penelope looked up from her needlework. Her mother was clutching the latest edition of Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers the way Penelope might clutch, say, a rope while hanging off a building. “I know,” she murmured. Julia Quinn, Romancing Mr Bridgerton (2002), p. 3.

Science fiction description example

At 09:46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens – at first in utter silence – it left behind a churning column of dust and smoke. Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1973), p. 4.

Spy thriller description example

The quality of the light was the first thing that struck her when she went to Madrid in the spring of 1960. The afternoon shadows were the deepest and darkest she had ever seen. Like all old men, the doctor was a creature of habit. He always shopped for groceries on Saturday afternoons. She tailed him to a place near Atocha station that sold international food. He bought black bread, beer and slices of cured sausage that resembled Westphalian salami. Patrick Worrall, The Partisan (2022), p. 7.

Character description examples

Read examples of character description across a range of genres. See how voice can describe a character’s age and outlook in Rick Riordan’s example, or how an ensemble description can evoke the character of an era in Doctorow’s Ragtime .

Read how Colleen Hoover creates the portrait of a person through their name and the hyper-specific conditions of their being fired from a restaurant. Or Alice Munro’s portrait of a music teacher who throws recitals she doesn’t call recitals (and an invitee’s attempts to get out of attending them).

YA/fantasy character description example

My name is Percy Jackson. I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that. I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last may, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan – twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff. Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2005), p. 8.

Literary/historical fiction character description example

There seemed to be no entertainment that did not involve great swarms of people. Trains and steamers and trolleys moved them from one place to another. That was the style, that was the way people lived. Women were stouter then. They visited the fleet carrying white parasols. Everyone wore white in summer. Tennis racquets were hefty and the racquet faces elliptical. There was a lot of sexual fainting. E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime (1974), p. 3.

New adult character description example

“There was that guy who did the dishes before you hired Brad. What was his name? He was named after some kind of mineral or something – it was super weird.” “Quartz,” I say. “It was a nickname.” I haven’t thought about that guy in so long. I doubt he’s holding a grudge against me after all this time. I fired him right after we opened because I found out he wasn’t washing the dishes unless he could actually see food on them. Glasses, plates, silverware – anything that came back to the kitchen from a table looking fairly clean, he’d just put it straight on the drying rack. Colleen Hoover, It Starts with Us (2022), p. 3.

Literary character description example

Miss Marsalles is having another party. (Out of musical integrity, or her heart’s bold yearning for festivity, she never calls it a recital.) My mother is not an inventive or convincing liar, and the excuses which occur to her are obviously second-rate. The painters are coming. Friends from Ottawa. Poor Carrie is having her tonsils out. In the end all she can say is: Oh, but won’t all that be too much trouble, now ? Alice Munro, ‘Dance of the Happy Shades’ in Selected Stories (1996), p. 16

Science fiction character description example

Lenar Hoyt was a young man by the Consul’s reckoning – no more than his early thirties – but it appeared that something had ages the man terribly in the not too distant past. The Consul looked at the thin face, cheekbones pressing against sallow flesh, eyes large but hooded in deep hollows, thin lips set in a permanent twice of muscle too downturned to be called even a cynical smile, the hairline not so much receding as ravaged by radiation, and he felt he was looking at a man who had been ill for years. Still, the Consul was surprised that behind that mask of concealed pain there remained the physical echo of the boy in the man […] Dan Simmons, Hyperion (1989), p. 11.

Read more character description examples:

• Character description examples: Creating people not caricatures

Get feedback on your descriptive writing in Now Novel groups from a constructive community. Start now to brainstorm characters and settings in the Now Novel dashboard, a step-by-step tool to outline your story.

Related Posts:

• Story setting ideas: 7 tips to immerse readers
• Story planning and outlining: Complete guide
• Story plotting and structure: Complete guide
• Tags describing characters , how to describe , setting

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

23 replies on “How to describe to immerse readers (complete guide)”

Great article! I particularly liked point #5 and your examples were very helpful!

Thanks, Savannah. I’m glad you found it helpful.

I love this. Thank you so much.

Thank you! I’m glad you found use in it.

My advice is, don’t over do the fancy big words. People don’t want to read a book where they have to refer to a dictionary every time.

Great examples! This really made me think about how I can improve my descriptions.

Thank you, Shay! I’m glad to hear that.

That was so helpful,thank you.

It’s a pleasure, Dalida. Thank you for reading.

Super nice! Love it very much

Thanks helped me a lot. I see now why my writing seems so bland. I use too many weak adjectives bad nice good.

I have a question about how long a description should be. I’m writing a scene of about 1000 to 1500 words, which largely consists of describing the location. Would that be considered too long, even though the character is almost constantly interacting with the location? For context: My characters are inside a secret hallway where they need to solve a puzzle in order to unlock the mechanism on the door leading to another room. My main character then needs to inspect this second location to make sure everything is ready for the upcoming Council Meeting.

Hi Jae Vie,

Thank you for the interesting question. It really depends since some authors spin out description for pages, others keep it clipped to a line or two. It would depend on the style of the surrounding scene (wordy and lyrical; descriptive in a detailed, evocative way, or taut and spare).

If the scene is around 1000 words long, I would suggest keeping it shorter.

Feel free to share an extract in our critique groups for feedback! It’s difficult to advise in the abstract without having fuller context.

[…] Source: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-describe-place-character/ […]

It is very helpful for me thanks

It’s a pleasure, Iqra. Thank you for reading.

“Lieutenant Koudelka returned to curtailed light duties the following month, apparently quite cheerful and unaffected by his ordeal. But in his own way he was as uninformative as Bothari. Questioning Bothari had been like questioning a wall. Questioning Koudelka was like talking to a stream; one got back babble, or little eddies of jokes, or anecdotes that pulled the current of the discussion inexorably away from the original subject.”

— Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold

A few extra descriptive tidbits here making me think. Always good to have a reminder of the senses. Thanks!

Love the extension of the usual ‘like talking to a wall’ simile in this Bujold quote, Margriet, thank you for sharing it. It’s a pleasure, thanks for reading and for sharing your reading 🙂

thanks for posting. I will bookmark this site!

Hi Paul, it’s a pleasure, thanks for reading.

I’m ready to get started please help me I feel my story will inspire individual their lives

Hi Karen, that is great that you want to inspire others. Have you created an outline or do you prefer to draft freely and do organizing/structuring as you go? Either way, feel free to create a member account so that you can access our critique community and get feedback in chat and our critique forum. If you are writing memoir, you may find this article on life-writing helpful. Good luck!

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Describing words for places

Ever feel stuck describing a place in your writing? “Beautiful” and “quaint” just don’t cut it anymore. You want your readers to be transported, to feel the cobblestones beneath their feet, smell the salty air, and hear the bustling city symphony. Fear not, fellow wordsmiths! This blog is your treasure map to unveiling vivid words that paint stunning pictures of locations, from bustling cityscapes to serene landscapes.

Here are 100 describing words for places along with brief explanations and examples:

• Serene – A peaceful and tranquil place. (e.g., a serene garden)
• Bustling – Full of activity and energy. (e.g., a bustling market)
• Picturesque – Visually attractive, like a painting. (e.g., a picturesque village)
• Secluded – Sheltered or hidden away from others. (e.g., a secluded beach)
• Majestic – Grand and impressive in appearance. (e.g., a majestic mountain)
• Vibrant – Full of life, color, and energy. (e.g., a vibrant city)
• Pristine – In its original condition; unspoiled. (e.g., a pristine forest)
• Quaint – Attractively unusual or old-fashioned. (e.g., a quaint cottage)
• Sprawling – Extending over a large area in an irregular or untidy way. (e.g., a sprawling estate)
• Lush – Luxuriant, abundant in vegetation. (e.g., a lush tropical rainforest)
• Charming – Delightfully pleasant or attractive. (e.g., a charming little town)
• Remote – Far away from other places, secluded. (e.g., a remote island)
• Cosmopolitan – Reflecting various cultures; worldly. (e.g., a cosmopolitan city)
• Rustic – Relating to the countryside; charmingly simple or unsophisticated. (e.g., a rustic farmhouse)
• Tranquil – Calm, peaceful, and quiet. (e.g., a tranquil lake)
• Exotic – Strikingly unusual or different in appearance. (e.g., an exotic bazaar)
• Idyllic – Extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque. (e.g., an idyllic countryside)
• Historic – Having great and lasting importance. (e.g., a historic landmark)
• Sleek – Smooth and elegant in appearance or style. (e.g., a sleek modern building)
• Scenic – Providing or relating to views of impressive or beautiful natural scenery. (e.g., a scenic overlook)
• Cozy – Giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation. (e.g., a cozy cabin)
• Bustling – Full of activity, excitement, and energy. (e.g., a bustling street)
• Desolate – Deserted and barren, showing a sense of bleakness. (e.g., a desolate wasteland)
• Enchanting – Delightfully charming or captivating. (e.g., an enchanting forest)
• Barren – Bleak and lifeless, lacking vegetation. (e.g., a barren desert)
• Diverse – Varied and inclusive of different cultures, backgrounds, or characteristics. (e.g., a diverse neighborhood)
• Opulent – Lavish and luxurious, displaying great wealth. (e.g., an opulent palace)
• Isolated – Far removed from other places or people. (e.g., an isolated cabin)
• Gritty – Showing the harsh reality of life, often in an urban setting. (e.g., a gritty cityscape)
• Welcoming – Friendly and inviting to visitors. (e.g., a welcoming inn)
• Mysterious – Full of secrets or difficult to understand. (e.g., a mysterious forest)
• Historic – Having great and lasting importance. (e.g., a historic district)
• Enigmatic – Puzzling and mysterious, difficult to understand. (e.g., an enigmatic ruin)
• Dazzling – Brilliantly impressive or magnificent. (e.g., a dazzling skyline)
• Contemporary – Belonging to the present time, modern. (e.g., a contemporary art gallery)
• Secluded – Sheltered or private, away from the hustle and bustle. (e.g., a secluded retreat)
• Inviting – Appealing and attractive, encouraging visitors to enter. (e.g., an inviting cafe)
• Charismatic – Exuding charm and personality. (e.g., a charismatic town)
• Industrial – Relating to the manufacturing or processing of goods. (e.g., an industrial park)
• Magnificent – Impressively beautiful or grand. (e.g., a magnificent cathedral)
• Enveloping – Surrounding and enclosing completely. (e.g., an enveloping forest)
• Mythical – Relating to or resembling myths or legendary stories. (e.g., a mythical land)
• Urban – Relating to or characteristic of a city or town. (e.g., an urban environment)
• Coastal – Relating to or near the coast. (e.g., a coastal village)
• Squalid – Extremely dirty and unpleasant, often as a result of poverty or neglect. (e.g., a squalid slum)
• Ornate – Elaborately or highly decorated. (e.g., an ornate palace)
• Harmonious – Marked by agreement in feeling, attitude, or action. (e.g., a harmonious community)
• Timeless – Not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion. (e.g., a timeless castle)
• Resplendent – Attractive and impressive through being richly colorful or sumptuous. (e.g., a resplendent garden)
• Remote – Far away from other places, secluded. (e.g., a remote village)
• Inaccessible – Difficult or impossible to reach or enter. (e.g., an inaccessible mountain peak)
• Enigmatic – Mysterious and difficult to understand. (e.g., an enigmatic ruin)
• Hospitable – Friendly and welcoming to visitors or guests. (e.g., a hospitable community)
• Stately – Impressive in appearance and manner, often suggesting dignity. (e.g., a stately mansion)
• Hidden – Concealed or not easily found. (e.g., a hidden waterfall)
• Timeless – Not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion. (e.g., a timeless village)
• Secluded – Sheltered or private, away from the hustle and bustle. (e.g., a secluded beach)
• Charming – Delightfully pleasant or attractive. (e.g., a charming town)
• Rustic – Relating to the countryside; charmingly simple or unsophisticated. (e.g., a rustic cabin)
• Majestic – Grand and impressive in appearance. (e.g., a majestic castle)
• Exotic – Strikingly unusual or different in appearance. (e.g., an exotic island)
• Cozy – Giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation. (e.g., a cozy cottage)
• Tranquil – Calm, peaceful, and quiet. (e.g., a tranquil forest)
• Serene – A peaceful and tranquil place. (e.g., a serene lake)
• Lush – Luxuriant, abundant in vegetation. (e.g., a lush garden)
• Pristine – In its original condition; unspoiled. (e.g., a pristine beach)
• Welcoming – Friendly and inviting to visitors. (e.g., a welcoming hotel)
• Charming – Delightfully pleasant or attractive. (e.g., a charming village)
• Secluded – Sheltered or hidden away from others. (e.g., a secluded retreat)
• Quaint – Attractively unusual or old-fashioned. (e.g., a quaint town)
• Vibrant – Full of life, color, and energy. (e.g., a vibrant market)
• Scenic – Providing or relating to views of impressive or beautiful natural scenery. (e.g., a scenic trail)
• Remote – Far away from other places, secluded. (e.g., a remote cabin)
• Historic – Having great and lasting importance. (e.g., a historic site)
• Picturesque – Visually attractive, like a painting. (e.g., a picturesque landscape)
• Bustling – Full of activity and energy. (e.g., a bustling plaza)
• Vibrant – Full of life, color, and energy. (e.g., a vibrant city center)
• Cozy – Giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation. (e.g., a cozy cafe)
• Tranquil – Calm, peaceful, and quiet. (e.g., a tranquil garden)
• Charming – Delightfully pleasant or attractive. (e.g., a charming village square)
• Lush – Luxuriant, abundant in vegetation. (e.g., a lush valley)
• Contemporary – Belonging to the present time, modern. (e.g., a contemporary art museum)

Now it’s your turn! Share your favorite descriptive words for places in the comments below. Let’s build a vibrant vocabulary together!

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How To Write About Place In Creative Nonfiction

Dec 26, 2017 by Kayla Dean published in Writing

You may have seen the title of this post and thought I was going to talk about travel writing . But that’s not the only genre of creative nonfiction in which you can write about place! A common misconception about writing about place in creative nonfiction is that you have to write about particularly exotic spaces. Consider that debunked : as we previously discussed, you don’t have to be a world traveler to write about your life. Everyone has unique experiences and takeaways that can be gleaned from their work.

Creative nonfiction presents some great opportunities to write meaningfully about the places you’ve lived in and traveled to as well as place your unique stamp on a locale, even if it is well-known. Like Virginia Woolf in London, Balzac in Paris, and Joyce in Ireland, you can write about place, too!

Define Place

In his essay, “How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Writing about Place”   Dave Hood reminds us to expand beyond physical location by including elements like culture, language, values, and customs:

“In creative nonfiction, the place or location where the event or experience took place is more than just about the name of the place. It is also the physical location of the place, the physical attributes, such as the urban setting of crowds, pollution, public transit, traffic jams or the rural setting of open spaces, fewer people, fields, farms, and small communities.”

Don’t just treat the places you write about as a backdrop or an image. Place can be both setting and character, and the implications of that can be far-reaching in our work. When given its due consideration, place can make the early lines of a piece dazzle. Use this to your advantage by brainstorming sublime, unusual, or even pedestrian experiences to provide that ideal impetus for the beginning of your work.

Hood adds that writers should also consider the meaning and significance of a place for them, and includes a great checklist to print out and tape to your desk when writing about place.

Interweave Other Narratives Into Yours to Compare/Contrast

If you haven’t been somewhere, you can’t write about it as if you have. But you can approach writing about a place by summarizing, analyzing, and weaving narratives together from writers who have visited or lived there. Above, I mentioned seminal writers and the places they are commonly associated with. Read writers that are affiliated with the places you want to write about. What point of view did they lend to our understanding of that place? Did they unfairly obscure its reality or open the door to greater understanding?

Right now, the essay form is one of the most malleable there is: You can include other experiences, literary works, historical perspective, philosophy, or science in your narrative. While this may range depending on the publications you wish to write for, it’s possible to lend texture to your work by adding these varied cultural pieces to your own perspective while still relying on moments from your life as a lens. And of course always make sure to cite properly if you quote an author!

Take a Walker’s Perspective

Besides looking at photos, you may feel that you have to stick with your imagination to remember a place. But the vast range of resources online makes it possible for us to envision space beyond even our memories. Just as you might write about a place you’ve never been in a fiction piece, walk it in Google Maps. Has the place changed since you’ve visited? Does it look different in earlier views? This could be potential material.

If you can access the place, it may also be helpful to simply take a walk. Although many of us do write on keyboards indoors, don’t limit yourself to your living room when considering narrative possibilities. What sights, smells, and sounds are out there? How do you feel as a walker on that street? What stands out to you? Asking questions are helpful to a city walker. Also, your unique perspective as a walker can lend a lot to your narrative. It may not feature as the main point, but can do a lot for your approach to the story you want. As Rebecca Solnit writes in Wanderlust: A History of Walking,

“Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities . Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.”

This is not entirely literal: writers are walkers, navigating their own path towards a narrative that works. Sometimes there are snags because we get lost and scrap material, but this does not have to be a bad thing. Solnit helps us understand that we are selecting from those possibilities and should shift to view writing as a freeing rather than frustrating exercise. This might also allow you to come up with new things to notice and new inventions that don’t rely on older realities.

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10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too. 

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind. 

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view . 

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines. 

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

 A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions. 

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined. 

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

 You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship. 

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

 ​​If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue. 

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.” 

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama. 

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid . 

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.” 

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good. 

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. 

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success. 

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps. 

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything. 

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about. 

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well. 

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels: 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers. 

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.  

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural. 

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.” 

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine. 

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure." 

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between. 

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." 

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible. 

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them. 

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through: 

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years." 

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story. 

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is." 

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales. 

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.” 

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be. 

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it. 

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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How To Write Beautiful Descriptions

Want to learn more about how to write beautiful descriptions? Read on to discover our top tips! Describing the world in your story is so important. Beautiful, vivid, compelling descriptions create a sense of place and let the reader in. The way you describe the setting will allow your reader to visualize the world in their mind's eye and also fully immerse themselves in it. In short, getting your descriptions right is pretty important.

So how do you find the perfect words to describe your setting to ensure that you paint a vivid image, while also convincing your reader that this world is real and tangible? Here are some useful tips.

Don't delay

Your reader needs to be able to imagine where your characters are from the outset. So don't wait to describe the place and the world and what they can see around them. You need to start early. A common mistake is to launch excitedly into a scene without grounding the reader first. You need to add descriptive material from the outset, otherwise, the scene will feel placeless, and this will put readers off, even if you do add in some detail later.

Get specific

Writing detailed descriptions is all about being careful with your language and choosing specific words and phrases that help to conjure up images for your reader. If you are vague or imprecise, it will be difficult for readers to do this. Take the opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, for example. 

'Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.'

He chooses super precise descriptions, he gives his readers all the help they need to step into his world and believe that they are there in it too. Don't be generic; instead, focus on exactly what you are trying to capture and find those precise words that work to do just that. 

Be selective

Don't confuse being precise with describing everything you see. While it can be very tempting to share absolutely everything going on in the surrounding areas, this will quickly become overwhelming, if not boring, for your reader. Select arresting and necessary details to create a sense of place. Remember, you are trying to evoke a particular atmosphere, not overload your reader with information. 

Use the senses

Remember, we have lots of different senses, and we are using them all the time. Make sure that your characters do the same. So don't just describe what they see; explain what they feel, taste, and smell as well. This will create a much richer and more lifelike picture for your reader to absorb. 

The following tips can help ensure that you create beautiful and exciting descriptions that work hard to satisfy your reader and allow them to get to know the world in which your characters reside. Without this, it will be like two actors talking in an empty white room. So make sure you pay attention to your descriptions as you write; your readers will thank you for it. 

So now you know how to write beautiful descriptions, why not learn more about what makes writing engaging?

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About Beth Cadman

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Describing a Place| Tips, Techniques, & Examples

Describing a place paragraphs.

When describing a place , you have to be able to use all of the five senses so that the readers feel as if they are there too. An easy way to do this is by using adjectives to describe what you see, hear, touch, taste and smell while you are in the environment . The human brain is a powerful instrument , one that we shouldn’t take for granted.

Descriptive Writing about a Place- Some Techniques to Describe a Place

If you want to describe a place, you will need to use some specific adjectives and verbs . To start, you might want to use general words like “beautiful,” “serene,” or ” majestic.” However, these words alone will not give your reader a clear picture of the place. You will need to be more specific. For example- If you are describing a mountain, you might say that it is “covered in snow” or that it has “a jagged peak.” If you are describing a forest, you might say that it is “dense with trees” or that it has “a thick canopy of leaves.” By using specific adjectives and verbs, you can give your reader a much clearer picture of the place you are trying to describe. So finally let’s sum up –

When describing a place, it is important to include as many sensory details as possible. Describe what you see, hear, smell, and feel.

Be sure to use vivid language to bring the reader into the scene. Here are some tips on how to describe a place: 1.Use all five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste means if you ate something at the place you are describing. 2.Be as specific as possible with your adjectives. Instead of saying “nice,” try “splendid,” “gorgeous,” or “wonderful.” 3.Create a mental image for the reader by including as many sensory details as possible. What does the place look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? 4.Use active verbs and strong adjectives to create an engaging description. 5.Vary your sentence structure to keep the reader engaged. Use simple sentences, complex sentences, and short paragraphs. 6.Paint a picture with your words and help the reader feel like they are there in the moment with you.

There are many different ways to describe a place. Some people might describe the physical features of the place, while others might focus on the emotions that they feel when they are there.

Here are a few examples of how you could describe a place:

Example of Describing a Happy Place like Beach- The sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the smell of salt in the air, and the feel of sand between my toes; these are some of the things that come to mind when we think of a happy place like beach. Example of Describing a Happy Place like Home- To me, home is a place where I can be myself and relax. It’s a place where I am surrounded by people who love and support me. It’s a place where I feel safe and secure. Example of Describing a Happy Place like Park- The park is my favorite place to go to clear my head. It’s a peaceful oasis in the middle of the city, where I can forget about my troubles and just enjoy nature. Here are some examples of adjectives and phrases that could be used to describe different places: Example of Describing a Comfortable Cottage by the Sea Side A small, cozy cottage by the sea: The cottage was small and cozy, with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof. It sat right on the water’s edge, with a small dock where you could tie up a boat. The waves lapped at the shore, and seagulls cried overhead. Example of Describing a Bustling Busy City Street: The street was busy and noisy, with cars honking and people shouting. The sidewalks were crowded with people rushing to get where they were going. The air was thick with smog and the smell of garbage. Example of Describing a Peaceful Forest: The forest was quiet and peaceful, with tall trees shading the path. Birds sang in the branches, and squirrels chattered in the leaves. A cool breeze drifted through the woods, making the leaves rustle softly. Example of Describing an Uncomfortable Place like a Small Room: The room was small and cramped, with bare walls and a single window. It smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been aired out in months. The only sound was the drip of water from a leaky faucet. The air was heavy and oppressive. The floor was cold and damp. Example of Describing a Nice Place like Garden: The garden was a riot of color and scent. Flowers of every hue filled the air with their fragrance. Birds sang in the trees, and insects buzzed among the flowers. The grass was soft and cool beneath my feet. Following are a few links for the examples of describing a place. Click the links below and learn-

1.Describing Place: An Angry Mob

2.describing place: a railway station, 3.describing place: my school, 4. describing place: a visit to a historical place, 5. describing place: hill station, 6. describing place: indian village, people also ask:.

1. How do you describe a beautiful place? Ans : When giving a description of a place, the use of all five senses will help make it come alive. Consider what you see, the sounds that surround you, what you smell and taste, and how it feels to be in this place. Using as many adjectives will create an immersive experience for your readers.

2.What words best describe a place? Ans : The best words to describe a place would be the adjectives that can be used to describe it. These would include words like beautiful, stunning, majestic, and so on.

3. How do you describe a place in a short story? Ans : You can use all five senses to describe a place in a short story. For example, you can describe the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures of a place. You can also use similes and metaphors to describe a place.

How To Describe A Crowded Place In Writing (21 Best Tips & Examples)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve need to write about crowds and crowded places in my stories.

Here is how to describe a crowded place in writing:

Describe a crowded place in writing by focusing on sensory details, emotions, and diverse interactions. Use vivid adjectives, metaphors, and sensory descriptions to convey the atmosphere, energy, and individuality in the crowd.

In this guide, you’ll learn all 21 of the most unique and creative ways to describe a crowded place in your stories.

Capturing the Atmosphere: Conveying the Energy and Mood of a Crowded Place

Table of Contents

To vividly portray the atmosphere in a crowded place, it is essential to focus on sensory details.

Describe how bustling bodies create an orchestra of sounds, like murmurs mingling with laughter and footsteps echoing through the space.

The aroma in such places can be overpowering – from mouthwatering food scents wafting by to sweat mixing with perfumes.

Paint a picture of the constant movement within a crowded place.

Detail how people weave through each other like dancers on a stage or cars maneuvering through heavy traffic. Capture their varied expressions – excited smiles, furrowed brows, or determined looks as they push forward towards their destination.

Highlight the contrasting emotions that exists side-by-side in these settings; joyous celebrations coexist with quiet moments of solitude as people carve out pockets for themselves amidst chaos.

his contrast adds depth to your descriptions and allows readers to fully understand both the energy and mood present in crowded places.

• Use descriptive language that appeals to multiple senses.
• Compare movements within a crowd to familiar images (e. g., ballet dancers or busy traffic).
• Show different emotions coexisting simultaneously for added dimension.
• Vary sentence structure and length for flow and readability.
• Use metaphors sparingly but effectively when describing crowds (e. g., “like bees buzzing around a hive”).

Painting with Words: Using Descriptive Language to Portray a Crowded Place

To effectively describe a crowded place in writing, it’s crucial to use descriptive language that evokes vivid imagery.

Start by painting the scene with colorful adjectives and adverbs. For example, instead of saying “the park was crowded,” you could say “the bustling park overflowed with people of all ages, their laughter echoing through the air.”

This not only conveys the idea of a crowded place but also gives readers a sense of the atmosphere and liveliness.

Next, focus on using sensory details to bring your description to life. Describe how the crowd sounds, smells, and feels.

You might mention “the cacophony of chattering voices” or “the aroma of sizzling street food wafting through the air.”

Additionally, consider incorporating tactile descriptions such as “shoulder-to-shoulder contact” or “a constant jostle among strangers.”

By carefully selecting descriptive words and appealing to readers’ senses, you can transport them into the chaotic yet exciting world of a crowded place without overwhelming them with too much information at once.

Keep paragraphs concise and straightforward so as not to lose their attention amidst the buzz!

Sensory Overload: Describing the Sights, Sounds, and Smells of a Crowded Place

Immersing oneself in a crowded place can be an assault on the senses.

The sights alone are overwhelming – a sea of people moving hurriedly, their colorful clothes blending together in a blur. Neon signs flicker and flash overhead while towering buildings cast long shadows that create a sense of claustrophobia.

The soundscape is equally chaotic.

Conversations merge into one indistinguishable hum, punctuated by bursts of laughter or raised voices trying to be heard above the cacophony. Music blares from storefronts, intermixed with sirens wailing in the distance and car horns blaring impatiently.

As your nose takes in the smells surrounding you, it becomes apparent why crowded places have such distinct odors.

Stale sweat mingles with perfume and cologne as bodies press tightly together.

Vendors’ stalls emit enticing aromas – sizzling hot dogs coated in mustard, sugary pastries wafting through the air like sweet promises.

In this world where every step brings new stimuli, describing the sensory overload experienced within a crowded place requires attention to detail and evocative language that transports readers directly into its midst.

The Dance of Movement: Depicting the Flow and Bustle of a Crowded Place

In a crowded place, every step becomes part of a delicate dance, choreographed by the ebb and flow of human movement.

People sway this way and that, their bodies navigating through tight spaces with graceful precision.

A symphony of footsteps fills the air as strangers brush past each other in an elaborate ballet.

The space pulses with energy, an electrifying atmosphere that crackles with anticipation.

Conversations blend together into a cacophony of voices, rising above them all is the steady hum of activity. It is impossible to ignore the vibrant rhythm that reverberates through every corner.

Glimpses caught are mere snapshots frozen in time – faces flicker by before disappearing into the melee once more.

Each individual seems consumed by their own mission or purpose; urgency etched upon their expressions as they dart from one point to another in this sea of humanity. Yet amidst this chaos lies an intriguing harmony – an orchestrated chaos where unity emerges from diversity.

Emotional Impact: Reflecting the Feelings and Reactions within Crowded Places

Crowded places can evoke a range of emotions in individuals.

The sheer volume of people bustling about creates an atmosphere charged with energy and excitement. In such spaces, one might experience a sense of exhilaration as they soak in the collective buzz and vibrant activity surrounding them.

At the same time, crowded places can also trigger feelings of anxiety or claustrophobia for those who prefer solitude or spaciousness.

Being engulfed by a sea of strangers may induce discomfort or unease, heightening their awareness of personal boundaries being invaded.

Ultimately, describing the emotional impact within crowded places requires writers to tap into the unique blend of sensations that arise from both exhilaration and uneasiness.

Social Interactions: Illustrating the Interplay and Relationships in Crowded Places

When describing a crowded place, it’s important to capture the social interactions that occur within it.

This can help paint a vivid picture for your readers and bring the scene to life.

Observe how people interact with one another – are they engaged in animated conversations, laughing together, or perhaps lost in their own thoughts? Describe the body language of individuals, emphasizing gestures like handshakes, hugs, or gentle touches on shoulders. These details provide insight into the relationships between people and add depth to your writing.

Furthermore, pay attention to group dynamics within a crowded space.

Are there clusters of friends huddled closely together while others stand alone?

Is there an undeniable bond among certain individuals that sets them apart from the rest of the crowd?

Reflecting on these details allows you to convey a sense of unity or isolation within the bustling atmosphere.

To enhance your description even further:

• Note any shared experiences or common interests that may bring people together.
• Show how different groups interact with each other through friendly exchanges or competitive energy.
• Highlight any cultural nuances and traditions playing out in these social interactions.

Faces in the Crowd: Portraying the Diversity and Individuality of People in a Crowded Place

In a crowded place, faces come alive with unique stories and experiences.

Each person stands out in their own way, adding to the tapestry of diversity that fills the scene. From young children clutching their parents’ hands to elderly individuals navigating through the throng with wisdom etched on their faces, every expression tells a different tale.

Observe closely and you’ll find eyes filled with hope, laughter lines etched deeply into smiles, and brows furrowed with concern.

There are those lost in conversation or immersed in deep thought.

In this kaleidoscope of humanity, no two faces resemble each other entirely; distinct features distinguish one person from another.

As you scan across this bustling space, notice the vibrant range of skin colors: light ivory tones alongside rich caramel hues; jet-black hair contrasting sharply against fiery red locks. Some wear traditional attire passed down through generations while others flaunt modern fashion statements. The unique fusion of cultures finds its reflection here amidst these lively individual characters.

The crowd is not just an anonymous mass pulsating as one entity.

It brims with myriad personalities waiting to be discovered by keen observers who take time to appreciate each face’s distinctive markings – signs that speak volumes about people’s lives without them uttering any words at all.

Tension and Excitement: Conveying the Intensity and Dynamism of a Crowded Place

There is an electrifying atmosphere in a crowded place, brimming with energy that buzzes through every inch.

Bodies move swiftly, colliding occasionally as they navigate the limited space.

The air crackles with anticipation and tension, creating an immersive experience for anyone present.

• Vibrant and Pulsating : A crowded place pulsates with life; every corner bustling with motion, vibrant colors clashing against countless bodies in ceaseless movement.
• Chaos and Disorder : The chaotic nature of a crowded setting adds to its allure—frustrated voices shouting over one another, hurried footsteps echo against floor tiles adorning the complex labyrinth.
• Eyes Wide Open : Observers strain their eyes in order to take it all in—the sea of faces merging into blurred murals of humanity; each face telling its own story.

The sensations are multiplied tenfold as throngs merge together like a single organism — undulating waves flowing spontaneously within predetermined boundaries yet eventually erupting beyond them under forces unseen but palpable to those immersed within it.

Claustrophobic Chaos: Describing the Feeling of Being Overwhelmed in a Crowded Place

In a crowded place, the overwhelming sensation can be like suffocating under a heavy blanket.

The air becomes thick with human presence, causing one’s heart to race and palms to sweat. Every step feels like an obstacle course as bodies press against you from all sides.

It’s claustrophobic chaos, where every movement is limited by the sheer mass of people around you.

The noise adds another layer to this overwhelming experience.

Conversations blend together into an unintelligible buzz, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter or shouts for attention. The cacophony reverberates in your ears, making it difficult to focus on any single sound or conversation.

As you try finding your way through the crowd, visual input bombardment further intensifies the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Bright lights flicker overhead while colorful signs compete for attention at every turn.

Faces blur into anonymous masses as they merge into each other, leaving one feeling lost and insignificant amidst the sea of humanity.

Hidden Corners: Revealing the Intriguing Details and Hidden Gems of a Crowded Place

Amongst the sea of people, where chaos seems to reign supreme, lies a tranquility unbeknownst to many.

In the hidden corners of this bustling place, one can find solace amidst the commotion.

Flower vendors creating vibrant bouquets with delicate precision; musicians coaxing beautiful melodies from their instruments in street-side cafes; graffiti artists adorning crumbling walls with breathtaking murals – these are just a few examples of the captivating details that go unnoticed by most.

While tourists flock to popular attractions, it is in these lesser-known spots that true beauty resides.

Alleyways adorned with colorful string lights guide you through tiny markets teeming with unique trinkets and handmade crafts.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafts through narrow streets lined with cozy bookshops waiting for eager readers to discover their treasures. These hidden gems offer respite from the crowd, revealing an intimate glimpse into the authentic heart and soul of this crowded place.

Intriguing tales await those willing to wander off-the-beaten-path.

Stories whispered by old buildings steeped in history or small family-run eateries passed down through generations.

Exploring these hidden corners unravels secrets only known by locals – an experience that transcends mere observation and allows for meaningful connection amid the overwhelming nature of crowded places.

• Curated flower arrangements at every corner.
• Musicians serenading passersby in sidewalk cafes.
• Vibrant graffiti art decorating forgotten alleyways.
• Narrow streets leading towards cozy bookshops fragrant with freshly ground coffee beans.
• Tiny markets overflowing with trinkets waiting for curious hands.

Escaping the Crowd: Offering Strategies to Find Solitude and Calm in a Crowded Place

Let’s talk about exit strategies for your crowded setting.

1. Seek Out Hidden Corners or Quieter Areas

• Look for secluded nooks or corners away from the main crowd.
• Explore less popular sections of the place, where fewer people tend to gather.
• Find spots with comfortable seating or beautiful views, such as gardens or rooftop terraces.

2. Visit During Off-Peak Hours

• Choose times when the place is likely to be less crowded, such as early mornings or late afternoons.
• Avoid weekends and holidays when visitor numbers are usually higher.
• Research online or inquire at local tourist information centers to find specific time recommendations for each location.

3. Utilize Noise-Canceling Headphones or Earplugs

• Invest in a pair of high-quality noise-canceling headphones that can block out ambient sounds and distractions.
• Alternatively, wear earplugs to reduce external noise and create your own sanctuary of quietness amidst the chaos.

By following these strategies, you can carve out moments of solitude and tranquility even in the most bustling places.

How to Describe Crowded Places in Different Writing Styles

I thought it would be nice to include full examples of crowded place descriptions in various styles.

Description in a Narrative Style

The bustling marketplace was alive with activity as people hurriedly shuffled through the narrow lanes.

The aroma of various spices filled the air, enticing passersby to stop and savor the flavors. Vendors called out their prices, their voices mingling with the sounds of animated conversations echoing off the walls. Women draped in vibrant sarees haggled for better deals while children weaved through the throngs, giggling and pointing at colorful trinkets displayed on makeshift stalls.

Description in a Descriptive Style

In this crowded place, bodies pressed against one another like puzzle pieces fitting together tightly.

The cacophony of chatter reverberated through every corner as individuals scurried past each other urgently. A symphony of scent wafted around; food stands offered an array of tantalizing aromas from freshly baked bread to sizzling stir-fries infused with aromatic spices. Eyes darted about as visitors navigated narrow pathways lined by countless shops that spilled over with merchandise–from handcrafted jewelry to exotic fabrics dyed into an explosion of rainbow colors.

Best Words to Describe Crowded Places

Check out this list of words to describe crowded places in your stories:

• Bustling: The crowded place was filled with people moving quickly, creating a lively and energetic atmosphere.
• Teeming: The streets were teeming with pedestrians, making it difficult to navigate through the crowd.
• Thriving: The popular market was thriving with shoppers browsing various stalls and vendors selling their wares.
• Congested: The narrow street became congested as more people arrived, causing delays and difficulties in getting through.
• Swarming: Tourists swarmed the famous landmark, capturing every angle on their cameras.
• Packed: The concert arena was packed with excited fans eagerly awaiting the start of the performance.
• Jam-packed: The train station during rush hour was jam-packed with commuters trying to catch their trains amidst chaos and noise.
• Crowded-to-the-brim: People spilled into every available space at the music festival, turning it into a crowded-to-the-brim event
• Overcrowded: Due to limited seating, the small café felt overcrowded as customers jostled for tables or stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the counter.
• Abuzz: As dusk fell over Times Square, neon lights illuminated a bustling cityscape—the area abuzz with excitement.
• Densely populated – Large numbers of people are concentrated closely together in this area.
• Humming – A buzz of activity characterizes this busy environment.
• Clamoring – Noisy voices overlap and compete for attention within this raucous setting
• Vibrant – This lively scene is full of color and energy
• Electric – Excitement crackles throughout this energized atmosphere
• Blanketed – Multitudes cover every inch of available space like overlapping blankets
• Cacophonous – An overwhelming mix of sounds creates a chaotic feeling
• Suffocating – The sheer volume of people makes it difficult to breathe or move freely
• Pulsating – A rhythmic beat seems to emanate from the crowded masses, creating an intoxicating pulse.
• Drumming: Footsteps and chatter echo through the air like a steady drumbeat.
• Overflowing: The city streets overflowed with pedestrians during rush hour, their movements almost synchronized in perfect chaos.
• Mobbed: Tourists mobbed the popular attraction, snapping photos and vying for a closer look
• Foreigners every-flaming-where – In this overcrowded bazaar, foreigners can be seen everywhere you turn
• Ant-like: People scurried around purposefully like tiny ants hustling about their work
• Humongous queues – Long lines snaked around as waiting visitors anticipated entrance into the crowded venue
• Invaded :Suddenly invaded by students pouring out of classrooms—a school hallway became congested within seconds.

Best Phrases to Describe Crowded Places

Here are some of the best phrases to describe crowded places:

• A throng of people filled the streets, creating a bustling atmosphere.
• The crowded market was a hive of activity, with vendors shouting and customers jostling each other.
• Bodies pressed together in the concert venue as fans eagerly awaited the performance.
• The train station during rush hour became a sea of commuters, all rushing to catch their trains.
• The park was teeming with families enjoying picnics and children playing games.
• People swarmed the shopping mall on Black Friday, seeking out deals and discounts.
• A queue stretched around the block outside the popular restaurant as eager diners waited for a table.
• Tourists flocked to see famous landmarks, making it difficult to navigate through narrow streets or courtyards.
• The stadium overflowed with enthusiastic spectators cheering for their favorite team.
• As I entered Times Square, my senses were overwhelmed by a cacophony of sounds and an onslaught of colorful lights
• Inside the nightclub, bodies gyrated on the dance floor like sardines packed into a tin can.
• A crowd surged forward at an outdoor festival when fireworks burst forth above them.
• During rush hour subway rides are akin to being trapped inside cans crammed full with strangers
• At music festivals thousands gather together jumping up and down while belting out lyrics in unison.
• Cramped bazaars emanate pungent aromas that mingle from food stalls offering spicy delicacies.
• January sales attract hordes clamoring over each other like seagulls fighting over bread crusts.
• Traffic congestion turned city roads into parking lots
• Escape rooms fill faster than last minute tax submissions—flocks spill into hallways awaiting their turns
• Family fun-fair’s carousel line is more tightly wrapped than a mummy
• Commute spaces during rush hour are overfilled with bodies like cans of jam
• Swimmers in beaches and pools float together showcasing various colorful bathing attires.

Here is a video about how to describe a crowded place:

Final Thoughts: How to Describe a Crowded Place in Writing

Capturing the dynamic essence of crowded places in writing can vividly transport readers into the heart of bustling environments – for more enriching insights, explore other articles on our website.

Read This Next:

• How To Describe A Basketball Game In A Story (17 Tips + Examples)
• How to Describe a Beach in Writing (21 Best Tips & Examples)
• How to Describe a Train in Writing (30+ Words & Examples)
• How to Describe a City in Writing (100+ Best Examples)

Fronteirsin.org (Research on Crowds)

A Big, Bold List of Creative Writing Activities

by Melissa Donovan | Jan 4, 2024 | Creative Writing | 24 comments

Try some of these creative writing activities.

Are you looking for writing motivation, inspiration, or ideas that will give your latest project an extra boost?

Below you’ll find a massive list of creative writing activities. Some of these activities will keep you writing when you’re in need of ideas and inspiration. Others will improve your writing skills and techniques through practice. Some will give you experience with forms and genres you haven’t tried. And others will help you promote your writing once it’s published.

Pick any activity and use it as a creative outlet. Bring a few activities to your writing group or do one with your kids. Use these creative writing activities in any way you want.

Start a Journal

Journaling is an excellent way to maintain a steady writing practice, and there are lots of different journals you can write: gratitude journals, dream journals, media journals, poetry journals, and idea journals, to name a few.

Image Prompts

Flip through some images on Instagram or Pinterest and see what sparks an idea. Don’t place limitations on your writing—just let the words flow.

Character Letters

Writing letters in your characters’ voices can help you get inside their heads and understand them better so you can write them with more depth and realism. Create an ongoing correspondence to explore character relationships and group dynamics within your cast.

Write Your Bio

Write a series of short bios for your social media accounts and a longer one for your author website. Don’t forget to make a bio for your press kit and another to include in your books.

Rhyme and Meter Exercises

Set your inner musician free by composing lines and couplets in metrical patterns with rhymes. Establish the parameters before you start writing, or just let the words flow and note the meter and rhyme afterward.

Memory Prompts

Grab an old photo album or flip through the photos on your phone—or use recall to bring forth memories that you can write about. Use this as an exercise in writing description or crafting a narrative about something you experienced or witnessed—ideal if you’re interested in writing a memoir.

Writing Exercises

Writing exercises keep your skills sharp and your creativity flowing even when inspiration is fleeting. They are excellent for keeping up your writing practice between projects. Pick up a book of creative writing exercises so you’ll have plenty to choose from.

What-if List

Create a repository of ideas by writing a list of what-if questions that could spark characters, plots, and settings for your future works of fiction or provide ideas you can explore in poetry and nonfiction writing projects.

Newsletters

A mailing list is one of the best ways for an author to connect with a readership. Start planning yours now. You can fill your newsletter with behind-the-scenes material from your books or excerpts from your work in progress. Or write a poem or piece of flash fiction for your newsletter.

Character Diary

The best characters feel like real people, which means the writer has fully gotten into their heads and hearts. One way to do that is to keep a diary in your character’s voice, which will help you establish their innermost thoughts and feelings. And who knows? Maybe a character diary will turn into a novel written in first person!

Your Future Self

Jump at least ten years into the future and write a letter from your current self to your future self, write a letter from your future self to your current self, or write a diary entry as your future self.

Try Writing for Comics

Comics are often partnerships between artists and writers. Give the writing side of comics a try. If you don’t want to draw, just make notes about what the illustrations will depict. Focus on character, plot, and dialogue. Flip through a few comics if you need examples to guide you.

Dream Vacation

Write a few pages describing your dream vacation. Where will you go? How long will you stay? What will you do there? If you’ve already experienced a dream vacation, write about that instead.

Blurb Your Favorite Books

A book blurb is a short statement endorsing a book, often written by another author. Choose a few of your favorite titles and write blurbs for them.

Focus on dialogue by writing a script. It could be a script for a play, a TV series, or a movie, or it can simply be an exercise in practicing or exploring dialogue.

Imagined World History

Create a fictional history for a fantastical or sci-fi story world. What were the origins of the civilization? What are their customs and traditions? Their laws and beliefs?

Write a Recipe

Start with an introduction that makes the reader’s mouth water, and then deliver the recipe, complete with an ingredient list and cooking instructions.

Propose an Adaptation of Your Favorite Book

Do you have a favorite book that’s never been made into a film or television series? Put together a two-page pitch convincing studio executives that this story needs to be seen on a screen.

Write a Letter You’ll Never Send

Write a letter to someone who’s gone, someone who’s upset you, or someone you admire from afar.

Find Poetry

Found poetry is when we use words and phrases from source material to create a poem. This is most often seen as a page of printed text with various words and phrases circled, or all text blacked out except the portions that make up the found poem.

Write a Speech

Write an award acceptance speech; a campaign speech, or a graduation or wedding speech.

Make an Outline

Create an outline for a large-scope project, such as a book or series of books.

This is Like That

Practice writing similes and metaphors. Similes are when one thing is like another (your smile is like sunshine) and metaphors are when one thing is another (your smile is sunshine).

Make a Chapbook

If you’ve written a lot of short pieces, like essays, poems, and short stories, collect them into a chapbook. Bring it to an open mic and take along copies you can sell or give away, or offer it on your blog, website, or social media as a free or premium download.

Create a Motivation Journal

Fill it with things that make you want to write — positive affirmations, favorite lines from poems, quotes of wisdom, and useful reminders. Crack it open whenever you catch yourself procrastinating when you should be writing.

Give Fan Fiction a Whirl

Write a few scenes in your favorite story world. Create new characters or use existing characters. Just remember — you don’t own the intellectual property, so you can’t commercially publish it.

Write a Critique

A critique should start by highlighting the strengths in a piece of writing, and then it should gently but constructively offer feedback that is meant to show the author how to make improvements. You can critique any work, but it would be ideal if you can find a writer friend to swap critiques with.

Write Log Lines for Your Favorite Stories

A log line is a sentence or two that summarizes a story and entices readers. If you’re working on a project, write a log line about it. Log lines are excellent for crystallizing your vision, and they’re also useful for pitching and selling written works.

Start a Legacy Book

A legacy book is a collection of writings and other materials (letters, photos, ephemera, etc.) that can be passed down as a family heirloom. Write about your family history and document significant or memorable family events.

Speculate the Future

What do you think the world will look like in twenty-five years? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? Write an essay or short story, or create a world-building document for a futuristic civilization.

Write a Film Treatment

Written like a short story in present tense, a film treatment is an overview of an entire film; it’s usually written before the first draft and used for pitching film ideas throughout the industry.

Write a Blog Post

If you write nonfiction, this should be easy; just write a post about one of your usual topics. If you’re a poet or a fiction writer, write about the craft, the industry, or use subject matter from your written works.

Practice Description

Writing description is an important skill. Create a one-page description for a story setting, or describe a location you’ve visited, or write a description of a real person or a fictional character.

Turn Memories Into Magic

Memories can provide a wealth of ideas for any type of writing, from poetry to fiction and a variety of essays. Choose an early memory and write it as a story, essay, or poem.

Social media is ideal for people who can write snappy, witty, and entertaining or engaging vignettes. Social media is an excellent tool for writers to find readers and connect with one another, so mastering a couple of these social platforms is a good idea if you hope to build a career as a writer.

Rewrite What You Don’t Like

Dig through your old, discarded writings and find a piece that had some potential. Then rewrite it.

Analyze a Written Work

Choose a piece of writing (it can be a book, an article, an essay — anything) and then write an analysis of at least 2,000 words (or about four pages).

Read and Resemble

Read a handful of poems by a single poet and then attempt writing a poem in that poet’s voice. This is not an exercise in copying; it’s an exercising in studying the voice of a writer. If you’re feeling ambitious, try it with works of fiction and write a scene in an author’s voice.

Write a Review

Choose a book that you’ve read recently and write a detailed review of it. What worked? What didn’t work? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Remember, a review should help a book find its readers. Who is this book for, if not for you?

Get Busy with These Creative Writing Activities!

What are some of your favorite creative writing activities? Have you done any of the activities on this list? Which ones would you want to try? Can you think of any writing activities to add to this list? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing!

24 Comments

Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. After a very long hiatus from the writing world (mostly because of health) I am feeling a bit rusty. Using some of these ideas will certainly prime the pump! I really enjoy your blog and appreciate the basics of grammar, etc. I find that I have slipped into some old habits just in my everyday writing and your tips help me get back on track.

Thanks, Ann. I’m always touched by comments like yours. It keeps me going when people let me know this blog is helpful or inspiring. So thank you for taking the time. Best of luck and keep writing!

The character journal is a great idea!!!

The problem with the character journal is that it could be time consuming, but I love it as a way to get to know a character, and more specifically, to get inside a character’s head.

All of these ideas are wonderful. I’m especially attracted to the last two suggestions. Both of those activities are fun for me and certainly bound to be helpful concerning my writing skills.

When I must wait in the car (with a sleeping grandchild, for instance) I’m only happy if I can see folks as they come and go.

We play word games on a regular basis and have found it strengthens the writing skills of even those of us who do not call ourselves wordsmiths.

Keep up the excellent work.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Yvonnne. I’m looking forward to the day when the little ones in my family (niece and nephew) are old enough to play word and letter games.

Hi Melissa, Thanks for these wonderful ideas. I ‘m taking a couple of days off from writing my memoir, and will try them out.’Writing as one of my characters’ and ‘sitting in some heavily populated place for observations’ are intriguing.

Those are my two favorites as well. Good luck, Margaret, and enjoy your hiatus. I hope it refreshes you so you can return to your memoir.

Love the character journal idea! To keep my vocab going I choose pages out of the dictionary/thesaurus to keep my brain working. It also does wonders for my muse. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this list.

I write a lot of scenes and backstory for my characters, which are never included in the book. Exploring the characters outside of the narrative has proven to be very helpful in better understanding them.

Hi, Melissa!

Well, I’ve been absent for quite a long while. But I have been busy. A spec piece submitted to my local daily newspaper landed me a column. (Who couldda guessed?) I also write theater reviews for them; write what you know has never been more true.

Consequently, I find that my creative writing has slowed quite a bit. The sequel to my debut needs, maybe, two more chapters yet there it sits, though a production company asked for it. Even reading the preceding few chapters doesn’t help me get into the character’s heads in order to finish the thing.

Got any ideas?

Congrats on landing a column, Paul. That’s awesome. I’m not sure why you’ve been unable to finish your sequel, so I can’t offer any specific suggestions, but you can start by fguring out why you’re not finishing it (no time, lost interest, etc.), and then you can probably rectify the problem.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing these great ideas.

You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting!

It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut. Every writer needs to step away.

I live near the University of Oregon. Every now and than I take a walk through campus. I try to time it during a busy school day. I wish I could bottle the youthful energy that is floating in the wind.

If any of you live near a school try it.

Thank you for the list. It helps a lot.

Yes, breaks are great refreshers for a creative mind. You’re lucky to live near a beautiful place for walks.

I don’t speek english so, sorry if i write wrong, but i need to tell you that your blog is amazing. Your write it’s soo good and make me wanna write. I have 15 years old and i love write, maybe I become a writter when I grew up, and I don’t know how to make my ideias go for the paper but your blog has helped me. Thank you!!

Hi Isabella. Thanks for sharing your passion for writing. I’m glad you’re enjoying this blog. Keep writing!

Thank you for your useful ideas! You have inspired me to try out new formats. I’m not a professional writer, it’s more my hobby. But still, I want to improve myself by writing texts and short stories.

You’re welcome. I’m glad this inspired you, and I’m thrilled that you’re working toward improvement. That’s wonderful!

Hi Melissa! I just wanted you to know that I recently bought some of your books and I absolutely love them and carry them around with me everywhere. Keep up the amazing work! Best wishes, Sandra Harris.

Wow, you just made my day, Sandra. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has said about my books. I’m so glad you like them. Keep writing!

Thank you for those amaing ideas. I’m not exactly stuck, as I know where my latest book is going, but I’m a bit lacking in motivation right now. Some of your suggestions might just get my juices flowing again.

Hi Vivienne. You’re welcome. I’m glad you found some motivation here. Keep writing!

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Teach homeschool teens to describe a place with vivid vocabulary

by Kim Kautzer | Dec 7, 2021 | Teaching Homeschool Writing

“Descriptive writing is an art form. It’s painting a word picture so that the reader ‘sees’ exactly what you are describing.” ~Brenda Covert

What’s the big deal about writing descriptively? For one thing, it’s much more than page-filling fluff. Descriptive writing imprints images into the reader’s mind , making you feel as though you’re “right there.” It ‘ s all about engaging the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to transport the reader and stir emotion.

By choosing vivid details and colorful words , good writers bring objects, people, places, and events to life. Instead of merely telling you what they see, they use their words to show you.

Writers use this powerful method to make their pieces memorable—even brilliant—rather than dry and boring. In many ways, description is the most important kind of writing you can teach your children. Why? Because it supports other reasons for writing such as storytelling , informative reports, or persuasion .

Even if your child never aspires to write stories or poetry, description is a wonderful skill to develop. Without it, all other writing falls flat.

1. What It Means to Describe a Place

Vivid writing is especially important when your middle or high schooler needs to describe a place  — whether describing a vista for a travel guide or fleshing out a scene in a short story.

Master storyteller Charles Dickens was gifted at using description to create a mood.

But students don’t have to be a Dickens to add color, depth, and interest to their writing. Here, a 14-year-old draws on all five senses to describe a place and create a mood.

With a few tips and tools, homeschool tweens and teens can effectively describe a place too.

A Desert Example

Suppose they’re planning to write about a desert. They’ll need to describe basic desert features, of course: sand, rock, hills, and dunes. But deserts aren’t all alike, so their word choices will need to reflect the kind of desert they want to write about .

For example, if they choose a desert in the southwestern United States, they’ll probably describe plants such as sagebrush, Joshua trees, yuccas, or saguaro cacti .

But if they’re writing about an oasis in the Sahara Desert, where vegetation is much different, they’d instead describe date palms, oleanders, acacia trees, succulents, and desert grasses . Their description of either desert scene will spring to life when they tell about these places using rich and appropriate details.

2. Where to Find Vocabulary to Describe a Place

How can you help your homeschoolers study a subject and choose strong words that make their writing sparkle? Whether they decide to write about a desert, city, rain forest, or pond, these ideas will help students find words that form the foundation of their descriptive piece, narrative story, or report.

Search Engine: A Homeschooler’s Best Friend

Search engines such as Google make a great resources for inspiration. In addition to collecting general terms about the location’s flora and fauna (the desert, for example), teens can find concrete, specific nouns and adjectives that add color to their writing. Suggest they begin their search by looking up terms like these:

• desert landscape
• desert features
• desert climate
• desert plants
• desert animals
• desert description

What if your teen wants to describe a city instead of a desert? City words are trickier to find, and they may have to hunt more. Try some of these search terms:

• describe city sights
• describe Chicago, describe Pittsburgh , etc.
• “describe downtown” (use quotes)

Other Sources for Descriptive Vocabulary

While search engines can lead students to a wealth of information, don’t discount the value of print media such as magazines and books. Also consider  digital media such as TV documentaries or YouTube videos about the subject.

When describing a place, visit in person , if possible. But if not, can you explore a spot with similar features? Many children are visual and tactile learners. If they want to describe what a sidewalk looks like, send them outside to explore the sidewalk on your street. It will help them describe the texture, color, and appearance of a city sidewalk, even if you live in a suburb.

3. Expanding Descriptive Vocabulary

As your teens search the Internet, ask them to keep an eye out for adjectives that describe desert or city features (or whatever place they want to write about). Encourage them to come up with words on their own, but also to watch for words they meet in articles or photo captions.

When kids don’t understand some of the words, pull out the dictionary and make it a teaching moment! And show them how to use a thesaurus (we love The Synonym Finder ) to find other words that say the same thing. A focused thesaurus, such as the ones below, will also help their vocabularies grow.

The Rural Setting Thesaurus gives teens the inspiration to effectively write about nature, home, and school settings. The Urban Setting Thesaurus helps them draw on all five senses and jogs their memory to help them create believable scenes in city spaces.

4. Descriptive Examples

Some desert adjectives.

Desert: harsh, dry, arid, sparse, severe, hot Rock: sharp, rough, jagged, angular Grasses: windblown, bent, dry, pale green, brown Sand: coarse, fine, glittering, shifting, rippling, sifting, white, golden Sky: pale, intense, cloudless, azure, purple, crimson Cactus: tall, short, squatty, spiny, prickly, thorny , bulbous Date palm: tall, bent, leathery (leaves), frayed (leaves)

Some City Adjectives

City: active, bustling, noisy, busy, clean, dirty, windy Traffic: loud, congested, snarled Buildings: old, shabby, rundown, crumbling,  modern, futuristic, sleek, towering, squat Buildings (walls): brick, stone, marble, glass, steel, graffiti-covered Monuments, statues: stone, copper, carved, ancient, moss-covered, faded, green, bronze Sidewalk: concrete, cement, slick, cracked, tidy, littered, swept Paint: fresh, weathered, peeling Signs: neon, weathered, worn, bright, welcoming, flashing Buses, cars, taxis: belching, crawling, speeding, honking, waiting, screeching People: hurried, bundled, smiling, frowning, eager, rushed

Use these suggestions to encourage teens to come up with ideas to describe a place of their own. You’ll both discover that hunting for words can become a favorite prewriting game ! And as your kids dabble more and more in descriptive writing, I’m confident their words will soon begin to “ show” more and “tell” less .

Do you struggle with teaching and grading writing in your homeschool? Does your middle- or high schooler’s writing need a boost? Consider adding WriteShop to your curriculum choices for this school year! The first seven lessons of WriteShop I specifically teach descriptive writing . This important skill is then practiced in the remaining informative and narrative writing lessons. In addition, WriteShop teaches—and offers practice in using—a wide array of sentence variations that enhance a student’s paper with fresh style and vigor. When combined with strong, dynamic word choices, sentence variations give dull writing new life .

For younger children, WriteShop Primary introduces K-3rd graders to activities that widen their writing vocabulary. Book C  contains three  specific descriptive writing lessons. WriteShop Junior for grades 3-6 also provides many opportunities for students to incorporate description.

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My Writing Life: Awareness, Reflection, Inspiration

Thank you for visiting my literary site. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the ride. I blog about books. If you believe in the power of books to transform lives, you are in the right place. Join me in my reading adventures. To avoid confusion let me clarify that I do NOT have Instagram or Facebook. This is my only site. I publish between two and four posts per month.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Description of places in creative writing.

13 comments:

I like it when atmosphere is threaded thru the story rather than in separate chunks.

Good point. I like it too when I write my stories.

I agree, Julia, that reams of description are not necessary to create a sense of place. I was once told that mentioning one little detail - maybe a duck swimming on a lake - can fire a reader's imagination and drop him into the location.

Certainly. A single line can be good enough to fire the reader's imagination. This is exactly the message I tried to convey even though I ended up using longer examples. Thanks, Sally.

These were beautiful selections, Julia. They plunged me right into the scene. Thanks for stopping by my blog. Cezar is much better.

I'm very glad to know that Cezar is much better! Hugs.

Beautiful examples you've provided us, Julia. I love description as a reader, especially if it transports me to new places.

As a writer you do a fabulous job with your vivid scenes, Kimberly.

Thank you for writing this post, I am currently taking my GCSE's and for English we have to write a creative writing piece. Your post has really helped with what I am supposed to do.

Taylor, thank you so much for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your feedback and I will take it into consideration.

hello i am currently studying level two english an di am studying creative writing:description which means i must have a purpose behind the description , would you know any tips to help me out with this?

??.........????

Your work is very inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

I appreciate each and every comment. Thank you.

What is Creative Writing? A Key Piece of the Writer’s Toolbox

Not all writing is the same and there’s a type of writing that has the ability to transport, teach, and inspire others like no other.

Creative writing stands out due to its unique approach and focus on imagination. Here’s how to get started and grow as you explore the broad and beautiful world of creative writing!

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is a form of writing that extends beyond the bounds of regular professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature. It is characterized by its emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or poetic techniques to express ideas in an original and imaginative way.

Creative writing can take on various forms such as:

• short stories
• screenplays

It’s a way for writers to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a creative, often symbolic, way . It’s about using the power of words to transport readers into a world created by the writer.

5 Key Characteristics of Creative Writing

Creative writing is marked by several defining characteristics, each working to create a distinct form of expression:

1. Imagination and Creativity: Creative writing is all about harnessing your creativity and imagination to create an engaging and compelling piece of work. It allows writers to explore different scenarios, characters, and worlds that may not exist in reality.

2. Emotional Engagement: Creative writing often evokes strong emotions in the reader. It aims to make the reader feel something — whether it’s happiness, sorrow, excitement, or fear.

3. Originality: Creative writing values originality. It’s about presenting familiar things in new ways or exploring ideas that are less conventional.

4. Use of Literary Devices: Creative writing frequently employs literary devices such as metaphors, similes, personification, and others to enrich the text and convey meanings in a more subtle, layered manner.

5. Focus on Aesthetics: The beauty of language and the way words flow together is important in creative writing. The aim is to create a piece that’s not just interesting to read, but also beautiful to hear when read aloud.

Remember, creative writing is not just about producing a work of art. It’s also a means of self-expression and a way to share your perspective with the world. Whether you’re considering it as a hobby or contemplating a career in it, understanding the nature and characteristics of creative writing can help you hone your skills and create more engaging pieces .

For more insights into creative writing, check out our articles on creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree and is a degree in creative writing worth it .

Styles of Creative Writing

To fully understand creative writing , you must be aware of the various styles involved. Creative writing explores a multitude of genres, each with its own unique characteristics and techniques.

Poetry is a form of creative writing that uses expressive language to evoke emotions and ideas. Poets often employ rhythm, rhyme, and other poetic devices to create pieces that are deeply personal and impactful. Poems can vary greatly in length, style, and subject matter, making this a versatile and dynamic form of creative writing.

Short Stories

Short stories are another common style of creative writing. These are brief narratives that typically revolve around a single event or idea. Despite their length, short stories can provide a powerful punch, using precise language and tight narrative structures to convey a complete story in a limited space.

Novels represent a longer form of narrative creative writing. They usually involve complex plots, multiple characters, and various themes. Writing a novel requires a significant investment of time and effort; however, the result can be a rich and immersive reading experience.

Screenplays

Screenplays are written works intended for the screen, be it television, film, or online platforms. They require a specific format, incorporating dialogue and visual descriptions to guide the production process. Screenwriters must also consider the practical aspects of filmmaking, making this an intricate and specialized form of creative writing.

If you’re interested in this style, understanding creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree can provide useful insights.

Writing for the theater is another specialized form of creative writing. Plays, like screenplays, combine dialogue and action, but they also require an understanding of the unique dynamics of the theatrical stage. Playwrights must think about the live audience and the physical space of the theater when crafting their works.

Each of these styles offers unique opportunities for creativity and expression. Whether you’re drawn to the concise power of poetry, the detailed storytelling of novels, or the visual language of screenplays and plays, there’s a form of creative writing that will suit your artistic voice. The key is to explore, experiment, and find the style that resonates with you.

For those looking to spark their creativity, our article on creative writing prompts offers a wealth of ideas to get you started.

Importance of Creative Writing

Understanding what is creative writing involves recognizing its value and significance. Engaging in creative writing can provide numerous benefits – let’s take a closer look.

Developing Creativity and Imagination

Creative writing serves as a fertile ground for nurturing creativity and imagination. It encourages you to think outside the box, explore different perspectives, and create unique and original content. This leads to improved problem-solving skills and a broader worldview , both of which can be beneficial in various aspects of life.

Through creative writing, one can build entire worlds, create characters, and weave complex narratives, all of which are products of a creative mind and vivid imagination. This can be especially beneficial for those seeking creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

Enhancing Communication Skills

Creative writing can also play a crucial role in honing communication skills. It demands clarity, precision, and a strong command of language. This helps to improve your vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, making it easier to express thoughts and ideas effectively .

Moreover, creative writing encourages empathy as you often need to portray a variety of characters from different backgrounds and perspectives. This leads to a better understanding of people and improved interpersonal communication skills.

Exploring Emotions and Ideas

One of the most profound aspects of creative writing is its ability to provide a safe space for exploring emotions and ideas. It serves as an outlet for thoughts and feelings , allowing you to express yourself in ways that might not be possible in everyday conversation.

Writing can be therapeutic, helping you process complex emotions, navigate difficult life events, and gain insight into your own experiences and perceptions. It can also be a means of self-discovery , helping you to understand yourself and the world around you better.

So, whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting out, the benefits of creative writing are vast and varied. For those interested in developing their creative writing skills, check out our articles on creative writing prompts and how to teach creative writing . If you’re considering a career in this field, you might find our article on is a degree in creative writing worth it helpful.

4 Steps to Start Creative Writing

Creative writing can seem daunting to beginners, but with the right approach, anyone can start their journey into this creative field. Here are some steps to help you start creative writing .

1. Finding Inspiration

The first step in creative writing is finding inspiration . Inspiration can come from anywhere and anything. Observe the world around you, listen to conversations, explore different cultures, and delve into various topics of interest.

Reading widely can also be a significant source of inspiration. Read different types of books, articles, and blogs. Discover what resonates with you and sparks your imagination.

For structured creative prompts, visit our list of creative writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing.

Editor’s Note : When something excites or interests you, stop and take note – it could be the inspiration for your next creative writing piece.

2. Planning Your Piece

Once you have an idea, the next step is to plan your piece . Start by outlining:

• the main points

Remember, this can serve as a roadmap to guide your writing process. A plan doesn’t have to be rigid. It’s a flexible guideline that can be adjusted as you delve deeper into your writing. The primary purpose is to provide direction and prevent writer’s block.

3. Writing Your First Draft

After planning your piece, you can start writing your first draft . This is where you give life to your ideas and breathe life into your characters.

Don’t worry about making it perfect in the first go. The first draft is about getting your ideas down on paper . You can always refine and polish your work later. And if you don’t have a great place to write that first draft, consider a journal for writing .

4. Editing and Revising Your Work

The final step in the creative writing process is editing and revising your work . This is where you fine-tune your piece, correct grammatical errors, and improve sentence structure and flow.

Editing is also an opportunity to enhance your storytelling . You can add more descriptive details, develop your characters further, and make sure your plot is engaging and coherent.

Remember, writing is a craft that improves with practice . Don’t be discouraged if your first few pieces don’t meet your expectations. Keep writing, keep learning, and most importantly, enjoy the creative process.

For more insights on creative writing, check out our articles on how to teach creative writing or creative writing activities for kids.

Tips to Improve Creative Writing Skills

Understanding what is creative writing is the first step. But how can one improve their creative writing skills? Here are some tips that can help.

Read Widely

Reading is a vital part of becoming a better writer. By immersing oneself in a variety of genres, styles, and authors, one can gain a richer understanding of language and storytelling techniques . Different authors have unique voices and methods of telling stories, which can serve as inspiration for your own work. So, read widely and frequently!

Practice Regularly

Like any skill, creative writing improves with practice. Consistently writing — whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly — helps develop your writing style and voice . Using creative writing prompts can be a fun way to stimulate your imagination and get the words flowing.

Attend Writing Workshops and Courses

Formal education such as workshops and courses can offer structured learning and expert guidance. These can provide invaluable insights into the world of creative writing, from understanding plot development to character creation. If you’re wondering is a degree in creative writing worth it, these classes can also give you a taste of what studying creative writing at a higher level might look like .

Joining Writing Groups and Communities

Being part of a writing community can provide motivation, constructive feedback, and a sense of camaraderie. These groups often hold regular meetings where members share their work and give each other feedback. Plus, it’s a great way to connect with others who share your passion for writing.

Seeking Feedback on Your Work

Feedback is a crucial part of improving as a writer. It offers a fresh perspective on your work, highlighting areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Whether it’s from a writing group, a mentor, or even friends and family, constructive criticism can help refine your writing .

Start Creative Writing Today!

Remember, becoming a proficient writer takes time and patience. So, don’t be discouraged by initial challenges. Keep writing, keep learning, and most importantly, keep enjoying the process. Who knows, your passion for creative writing might even lead to creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

Happy writing!

Brooks Manley

Creative Primer  is a resource on all things journaling, creativity, and productivity. We’ll help you produce better ideas, get more done, and live a more effective life.

My name is Brooks. I do a ton of journaling, like to think I’m a creative (jury’s out), and spend a lot of time thinking about productivity. I hope these resources and product recommendations serve you well. Reach out if you ever want to chat or let me know about a journal I need to check out!

Here’s my favorite journal for 2024: 

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Inspiring Ink: Expert Tips on How to Teach Creative Writing

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What Are the Best Places to Write? 15 Tips to Create the Perfect Writing Space

Of course, it doesn’t really work that way. Even though I’m a neatnik sort of person who enjoys interior decorating, my office experiences never quite look like the Pinterest version. There’s dust, there’s crumbs. Even worse, there are distractions. There’s, you know, the  Internet . And no matter where I write or how I design my writing space, there’s always the reality that writing isn’t actually all that glamorous.

But that’s good news, actually. The very fact that writing does not require a high-maintenance setting means we can, in fact, do it anywhere. As nice as a study lined with bookcases of leather-bound first editions might be, or a little desk on a porch overlooking a beach—these aren’t necessarily the best places to write for most of us. After all, the best  place to write is any place we actually  do write.

So how can you optimize  your writing space to help you get in the zone and stay in the zone? Colleen F. Janik brought this up recently:

I would love to hear a discussion of what the perfect writing area looks like, one that draws you there every single day. I have an office with a desk near the window, which I thought was perfect. But it’s not. I’ve made a very crafty, pretty memo board to put all my notes. That didn’t do it. I collected some great black and white World War I photos and had them framed and matted and put on my wall. That was good for a while.

I guess what it comes down to is that my characters become strangers to me and I am barred from entering the land where they dwell. How can I maintain that close relationship with these humans I so lovingly created?

Now, first of all, I’ll admit we can sometimes blame our external settings for writing blocks that are the result of other problems—whether personal issues like exhaustion or burnout , lack of motivation, or just good old plot block . But certainly our space can play a role.

Because I’ve experimented quite a bit with different writing spaces over the years, this topic immediately tickled my fancy. Today, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned in optimizing my own space.

TLDR: Honestly, my single biggest takeaway is going to be that what’s best on one day may not be best on the next day. Although it’s nice to have a dedicated writing space set up just how you like it, using your imagination to create flexible options might be the best solution.

5 Ingredients to Create Your Optimal Writing Space

Some writers can write anywhere. Some are particular. Some prefer silence. Others prefer background noise. There is no one perfect formula that suits all of us. But there are some common factors we can each consider in tweaking our available spaces to support us in our writing goals. Here are my top five.

(Please note that some of the links to recommended products are Amazon affiliate links.)

1. Optimal Lighting

Lighting is a powerhouse contributor to ambiance and mood. Consider whether you feel more inspired on bright, sunny days or gray, rainy days. Although you can’t do anything about the weather, you  can  recreate lighting patterns within your space by choosing bulb wattage and tone (warm or cool) to help you get into the right mood.

You need to be able to see what you’re doing and to protect your eye health. (At the same time, you might consider blue-light glasses or a blue-light filter for your computer to help with the glare.) The right desk lamp can make a huge difference in controlling writing spaces that otherwise offer limited options for change. Even just adding candles (preferably soy or beeswax to avoid air pollutants) can raise the vibe of your room and signal to your brain that it is now entering “writing space.”

If you can, you’ll also want to consider your proximity to a window. For a while, I had a desk that faced a gallery of windows. On the one hand, I loved it. But aside from the distracting squirrel that liked to dive-bomb off the roof, I also dealt with major glare for a few months in the early winter when the sun hit the windows just the wrong way. Depending on the orientation of the room, putting a window at your back can also be problematic, since the sun may then glare directly off your computer screen.

Lighting is crucial for creating the best places to write, but facing your desk to a window offers pros and cons to consider.

Desired degree of privacy is subjective. Some writers do their best work in crowded spaces, such as trains or restaurants. But if you get distracted easily or lose your train of thought when interrupted, you’ll probably do best in a closed-door environment where you can filter out visitors—or at least slow them down.

3. Visual and Auditory Control

Being able to control noise—both visual and auditory—can be important. Some writers prefer silence; some prefer music; some like the TV on in the background; some like people talking around them. Whatever the case, you want to be able to “turn it on” when you’re ready to write. Music has always been key for me. My brain is so used to hearing certain types of music when writing that I have a hard time dropping in without it.

Visual noise can also be important. Some writers thrive in cluttered spaces; others prefer clean minimalism. Either way, you’re looking for efficacy, not aesthetics. Although a Pinterest-worthy office can be gratifying, if it interferes with grounding in and writing , then it’s not worth it.

4. Comfort and Ergonomics

By the same token, value comfort over style. Make sure your desk, your chair, and your computer are the right size for your body and ergonomically placed. If your writing space looks great, but you hurt when you spend time there, you’ll end up writing in the living room or the kitchen instead—or, worse, not writing at all.

5. Availability of Tools and Resources

Finally, you’ll want a space that keeps all your most-used tools and resources at your fingertips. This might mean bookshelves or files. But it can also mean having all your files available on your computer or in the cloud, so you can access them easily without having to break your train of thought.

Set your writing space, so you have what you need within easy reach.

5 Ideas for Awesome Alternative Writing Spaces

The above ideas cover the standard writing space, the sort that usually comes to mind when we think of a writer’s office. But what if the “standard writing space” just isn’t working for you? What if, like Colleen (and me, on many an occasion), you show up at your optimized desk—and you just can’t settle in?

As much as I love a functional office, the following five alternative ideas are actually some of my favorite places to write. For me, they’re not feasible or even preferable all the time, but whenever they’re right, they’re  right . I’ve done some of my best writing by leaving behind my designated writing space.

1. Writing Outside

This is my all-time fave. When the weather isn’t too cold or too muggy, I like to take my writing into the wild. I’ll set up a little bistro tale outside, maybe on my front porch or maybe in a little nook in some trees, put my coffee in an insulated mug, and head out. I’ve written outside as late as November (with the help of gloves and a down vest), until my fingers got too cold to hold the pen.

One of the best places to write is… outside! I take my iPad with Scrivener notes, insulated coffee mug, outline notebook, and ergonomic pen —and I’m ready to go!

Being outside is both grounding and refreshing. I love being surrounded by trees and critters while I write, even if I’m not paying much attention. More than that, isolating myself from my normal life inside the house, including my office desk where I do “business stuff” and Internet connectivity in general, almost always sends me straight into story headspace.

Outlining Your Novel (Amazon affiliate link)

One thing I will note is that taking my writing outside has always worked best when outlining , since I do that in a notebook. When it’s time to work on the first draft, I’ve tried typing on various tools (see #4 below), but none of them are ergonomic enough to stave off back and neck pain.

2. Writing in the “Dark”

When the autumn nights get cold and long and I can’t sensibly take my writing outside any longer, my next best choice is to make my indoor writing space as dark as possible. I will often put on just a single light spotlighting my desk (or fairy lights) to create  a small cozy space. The sense that it’s just me and my writing existing in this little island of warmth helps me zoom in and focus.

3. Writing at a Dedicated Desk

This is one I haven’t yet been able to try, but it’s on my bucket list. Sooner or later, I need my computer in to be able write, whether it’s because I need an ergonomic setup for my keyboard or because I need access to all my notes. But because the computer also happens to be connected to the Internet, not to mention connected to all my other  notes (about business or personal stuff), it’s also the single greatest distraction to my writing.

This is why, at some point, I plan to create a second writing space with a smaller desk that is ergonomically favorable for writing by hand and a second computer that contains only writing programs and notes. The idea is not only to remove myself from all the other distractions at my work desk, but also to train my brain to recognize this dedicated space as  writing space (rather than a space for also checking email or blog comments, or browsing YouTube or Pinterest, or shopping for socks or toothpaste…).

4. Writing With Tools Other Than Your Regular Computer

Even when you don’t have the choice to create a writing space that is separate from the rest of your digital life, you can still distance yourself from all the distractions of your computer by utilizing other tools. This is one of the main reasons I enjoy writing my outlines longhand in a notebook. Even if my computer is within reach, the act of writing rather than typing puts a degree of separation between my mind and all the other things I could be doing on the computer.

I’ve also played around with digital typewriters, including the old AlphaSmart and the FreeWrite . The big drawback to both is that they aren’t particularly ergonomic. Even if you position the keyboard at an ideal height for your wrists, you still have to bend your neck to look down at the little screen. These tools can also be annoying when you’re trying to reread or edit what you wrote. I don’t use them frequently, but I’m glad to have them for those occasions when I either need a break from my computer and/or want to take my typing on the go.

5. Writing in Public

Finally, you may want to try taking your writing on the road with you. Writing in cafes and other public spaces is part of a long literary tradition. This isn’t my favorite approach, but I’ve tried it with success on several occasions when writing at home just wasn’t working for me and I needed a change of scenery. Earphones and the same tools I use when writing outside are all I need.

5 Tools to Help in Less Than Optimal Writing Settings

Not all of us get to write in those swoony offices/libraries on Pinterest. Even if we do have the chance to create a writing space that is exactly how we want it, we can sometimes find that, in fact, it isn’t as ideal as we imagined. So in the interest of #reallife, let’s round out the discussion with four simple tools that can help us block out distractions and zone in on our writing even in situations that are not the best places to write.

1. Sound-Proof Headphones

Can’t beat this one. Whether or not you’re into listening to music while writing, sound-proof headphones can be a WIP-saver. They’re also great for when you take your writing out in public because you want the company but not the noise.

2. Do-Not-Disturb Apps

If you find your greatest distraction when working on the computer is… the computer, any one of a host of do-not-disturb apps can help you create a writing-safe space  on  your computer. When writing, I always turn my phone to airplane mode and will often disable my Internet connectivity altogether (it’s off right now). I have previously used the app Freedom to schedule Internet blockages at certain times and from certain websites. Lately, I’ve been looking into Forest , which helps you track your progress, as well as giving you the incentive of real-life planted trees.

>>Click here to read  Creativity vs. Distraction: 13 Tips for Writers in the Age of the Internet

If your space is particularly limited and you’re unable to access privacy, you can always do it the old-fashioned way and find a corner. For me, putting myself in a small space is helpful in itself. Facing into the corner will also help block out visual disturbances (as well as cluing in others to the fact that you really don’t want to talk to them right now). Add in sound-proof headphones, and you may not even know you’re not alone.

Don’t have a corner handy? Grab your hoodie and blinker yourself from distractions. This isn’t foolproof, but it does give off those “leave me alone” vibes that come in handy for all writers sooner or later.

5. Flamethrower and Machete

Okay, just kidding (mostly). But my metaphorical flamethrower and machete (plus liberal threats) have always worked wonders for me.

Creating the best place to write will be an entirely subjective experience for each one of us. We each have to get real with ourselves about which elements help us write and which ones don’t . From there, we must work with what’s available to us in our personal spaces and immediate vicinity. The perfect writing space may vary day to day depending on your mood. What’s important is coming up with a suite of one to three feasible options you can easily slide into without much thought or preparation whenever it’s time to start writing.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What are your best places to write? Tell me in the comments!

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K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally-published author of the acclaimed writing guides Outlining Your Novel , Structuring Your Novel , and Creating Character Arcs . A native of western Nebraska, she writes historical and fantasy novels and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

Great post! I definitely like my privacy when writing… I feel like it’s for my eyes only until I’m ready to let people read it. But the other day, I was stuck in a waiting room for a couple of hours, and I actually enjoyed writing there.

I also like to grab my notebook and curl up somewhere, whether on my bed or even on top of my desk (yes, I probably looked crazy, but there’s something about a different vantage point that gets the creative juices going). I’m not sure how much longer it’ll take before that desktop starts to feel awfully uncomfortable (I’m 17 so it’s not a problem right now).

Being an introvert, I think the parts about being in a corner and wearing a hoodie applies to more of my life than writing, so it’s safe to say I’m well versed in the art of looking non-approachable. (I also like corners at social gatherings because I can observe all the people and interactions while totally not looking like a creep.)

Yes, there’s nothing more distracting than knowing someone can read what you’re writing over your shoulder!

I agree that the place to write is most important, it must promote the right vibe. I’m a keen gardener so I love to write overlooking my garden and flowers provide the ambiance of peace for me, I relax and am capable of allowing my thoughts to come naturally without trying. I also have the dining table space for my laptop during evenings where the light over the table is the best place to be and for some reason I don’t want to be in isolation, alone in a small room, having the television quietly in the background, comfort is so important to be able to focus.

Hi K With a lap tray you can create a ‘desk’ for a laptop or tablet on any bed.

Oh, yes, this is a great addition!

A good, practical post for writers. I have tried many of these ideas. I have tried a variety of writing places, but always come back to my desk, my computer, and my (ergonomic) chair. I spent extra on the chair to get something highly adjustable so I could get it just right for my (aging) body.

I find warm light helpful especially helpful. I have a small lamp on one of the shelves on the wall the desk backs against.

Of course, I listen to music when writing. I choose upbeat music (e.g., Two Steps From Hell or Hidden Citizens) for extra energy or when writing an action scene, and quieter, ambient music (e.g., Ludovico Einaudi) for slower scenes. I have never tried soundproof headphones, but now that you’ve brought it up, I think I will.

Thanks for the post. Do good; be kind.

Totally second you on all three points. I spent a good deal of money on an ergonomic chair from Hermann Miller. So far it’s lasted me about a decade (and followed me through two moves and counting) and has been worth every penny.

When I write scenes, which take place in an airport, funeral home, diner, etc., I go to those places with notebook in hand. I spend time listening, sniffing for particular odors, studing people’s expressions, their tone, their clothing style, their moods, and any distracting sounds. Once I get the feeling, I jot notes. I may even pick out the attributes of one or two people to fashion my character around.

That’s a great idea. Of course, most of my stories are set in worlds that are not our own… But when I wrote my dieselpunk Storming , which is set in my Nebraska hometown in the 1920s, I had lots of fun rambling around and visiting settings in person.

One place to write is in “the prow of the house, where light breaks and the windows are tossed with linden,” (Richard Wilbur, The Writer). But that would probably be too distracting for me. My most productive time for writing was a four year period about ten years ago, when I was getting up at ten to five everyday to work on a bachelor degree in literature followed by a creative writing masters course. From 5am to around 8am, the world is quiet, the desk illuminated by one lamp, and I was never disturbed – I had strong black out curtains. It felt like the moment writing should be done, not doing the actions of living but meditating on living. Imaginatively, that moment after waking up sitting at the desk was like staring into a tranquil pond, everything slightly magnified and distorted but crystal clear, before my thoughts and mood became silted up by the currents of the day. Due to a back problem, I had a kneeling down chair, and this enabled me to lean over the desk more and use more of the desk space without actually having to reach forward. This allowed me to sustain the work for a longer. If I relaxed and leaned back I fell off, so I was always leaning slightly forward applied to the work. After the first three creative hours, I then went to work at my part-time job in admin, or did work on the computer typing up notes. It was tiring starting that early, but it was very satisfying. I cannot replicate this feeling of “writing in the dark” before I go to bed. In the morning my dreams are still lurking and although feeling sleepy, my energy levels are high after a night of sleep – in the evening I am just tired. Importantly it was a completely separate, relatively small, cheap sturdy desk in an alcove, with cork boards all around on the three enclosing walls, and a large piece of thick blotting paper, about A2 size, covering the desk and pinned with thumb tacks in the corners (yes pinned into the wood) – so I could scribble on it doodles and thoughts. When the sheet was full, I rolled it up and put a new one down. I could spill coffee on it and it didn’t matter. The whole space was brown and undecorated except by the yellow light of the desk lamp and the different colour doodles and post-it notes. When I put my pen down, it did not matter if I did not come back for two days. When I did, the pen was still there where I left it, nothing changed, I could pick up exactly where I left off. Since moving house, I have tried to maintain that, but the current house is quite small and although I have tried to create a dedicated writing space in the shed, I have not been able to establish a routine so am using my work desk in the house for writing. At the moment I take notes anywhere and enjoy sitting in the garden when warm enough, or in hotels on vacation, making notes, sometimes just making word paintings on what is happening, mostly notes on theme and plot, characters, dialogue, or ideas for poems that are inspired by what is happening – this is on small notebooks or my iphone or ipad mini (on the train) – I cannot seem to fix on one medium. For the “proper” sustained writing I have to be sitting at a desk in an isolated quiet space preferably without a view. The only music I can write to is instrumental Jazz, in hotel bars… anything with words or with a distinguishable rhythm throws me completely.

You raise a good point, in that timing is often as important as setting. As I mentioned in the post, I like writing in the “dark.” But timings are tricky, since I’m not a morning person and am usually too mentally spent to write by evening.

I have the desk, actually several desks. I have two rooms dedicated to writing and/or hobbies. Where do I get most of my writing done? Corner of the couch in the living room, laptop on lap. If it’s just a short scene, I’ll grab a cushion and plop the laptop on it. If it’s going to be any length of time, I use the lap desk. My “little voice” tells me that’s not the best for my back or neck. Never have all the tools I need…but it is still where I have my best writing sessions.

Hey, wherever the words flow, I say! 🙂

I’m still figuring out my best writing space, so these insights are giving me a wonderful way to work on that. Thanks for posting!

Hope you find the perfect spot!

Thanks for this post today. For me, the proverbial cafe is hands down the most productive place I write. Every time I sit in a Starbucks or similar coffee shop words tumble out. (Funny thing, I don’t drink coffee). The train is a close second. And the noise-canceling headphones are a must. Like you, music helps me zone-in. But I cannot write with a TV set playing. But you’ve inspired me to try the woods.

No, I hate the modern trend of TVs in restaurants and cafes. It’s so hard to look at anything else…

The Machete is the best. Works every time.

Hear, hear.

I quite enjoyed this post! It’s always fun for me to hear what other people have tried. The hoodie tip is wonderfully relatable.

I live (and work my 9-5) in a small space, so finding ways to make distinctions between the daily grind and writing has been a puzzle to work through.

Currently, I don’t use my work desk for writing, unless I’m reviewing edits. Aside from the discomfort of continuing to sit in the same spot where I have already spent most of the day, I have a hugely difficult time staying focused with a bright screen in front of me, to say nothing of the internet. Someday I hope I can have a dedicated writing space, but for now, I take my chunky little AlphaSmart to my couch, sit in a different spot than usual, and light a candle. Edits happen on paper first (though I’m looking into a dedicated e-ink tablet for this, so I don’t have to use so much paper), which helps minimize the time I’m obliged to spend on the computer.

My writing “office-in-bag” has been an effective exercise in making do with what I have, as well as choosing my tools very carefully, while still creating mental distinctions for writing.

Yes, since my “job” is maintaining this site and other related tasks, I work from home with basically no boundaries between “work” and “writing.” It has always been a challenge to carve out spaces and times that are specific to the fiction.

I once visited Dylan Thomas’s house in Wales. He had a little writing shed by the sea front where he could look out to the sea for inspiration. I would love to have something like that but I can only dream.

Sounds wonderful. Hope it had heat though!

I don’t think it did.

Ah well, time to crack out the gloves and coffee mug. 😀

My writing space is so perfect, a corner of my bedroom. I have a large window to my left facing east, filled with towering mountains, snow capped a good deal of the year. Another smaller window wraps around the corner and is on the wall my desk faces, but off to the left side of the desk so I’m not facing the glare. The windows are low, the bottom the same height of my desk, a beautiful view from both. They have shades to help when we have blue skies and blinding sunshine reflecting off a foot of snow like today. The mountains are always right there and in summer green grass and a rail fence. It’s a peaceful spot.

That sounds… perfect. 🙂

My personal experience is that obsessing over my writing space is a way to avoid the actual writing. If my writing space is good enough (even if far from perfect), and I’m motivated, I’ll write.

I’ve also tried disconnecting the internet during my writing time… funny thing is, it doesn’t make me write, if I’m looking for distraction to avoid the hard work of writing, I’ll distract myself without the internet. What I have found somewhat helpful is having a computer background just for writing. When I have that background on, I only allow myself to write, not do anything else on the computer.

Totally hear you on obsessing about the space being a procrastination technique. One thing I learned was that if I had a problem with my space, I needed to set aside time that was *not* writing time in order to address it.

Thank you for this inspiring, helpful post! It was so helpful to hear that you don’t always work in the same spot. That’s not necessary. I think I’m going to experiment more with lighting, like candles. Also, someone said mornings are best for him, and I tend to agree that I’m most inspired/productive early in the day. I have to admit that I do tend to use my writing space decorating as an excuse for not digging in and getting the book done. I tend to be creative in other areas, and the decorating part is so fun. I can see that you have found the ‘magic’ of creating the mood that transports you to that other world. I love this subject and think you could write an entire book on the subject—complete with great photos. You include some of these great comments that were shared here today. That would be so amazing.

Thank *you* for inspiring the post! 🙂

Privacy is definitely a must when it’s time to write. I have a lovely window, a small desk lamp, and whiteboard I scribble my ‘to do’ list on. It’s all great. However, the biggest distraction has got to be the Internet. Alas, its alluring glow has pulled me away from many important missions I tasked myself with, only to find I’ve wasted the whole hour. So, I use a timer. I set it to 15 min for ‘goof off’ time, and when the timer is done, its done–then it’s time to go to work.

Yes, the Internet–bless it–is a whole beehive of problems unto itself.

I have a Freewrite Traveler. I love it, but I do touch-type, so I don’t need to crane my neck to be able to look down at the screen. 🙂

I touch type as well, but I make a mess if I can’t correct as I go. :p

I love writing a first draft long hand, outdoors among nature, not caring how many mistakes I make. Later indoors I can do any editing on computer. For me the two don’t mix very well. For a while I tried working by laptop outdoors but it’s hard to concentrate on revision when you’re being bothered by flies and mosquitoes! Then you have to worry about battery power/ screen lighting and unexpected error: your file’s gone – computers ruin the experience of being outdoors, for me anyway.

Yes, there is definitely the potential of way more distractions outdoors. It doesn’t work year-round for me, for sure.

Re computer light: Make sure you set your screen resolution to 1280×720. I was getting headaches all the time before I did that and couldn’t work for more than a couple hours at a time.

If you live in a household where you can afford it, having a second computer for writing that you don’t hook up to the internet helps a lot too. It also makes me feel safer knowing there’s no risk of losing anything to viruses or hacking.

My favorite thing to do for working in public is go to a library. College libraries are the best because they’re filled with people working on assignments or studying, which can be motivating and help keep you on task. And their research materials are usually dryer so they aren’t as much of a temptation. (Bonus points if they use the Library Of Congress system, which is so impossible to navigate when you’re used to a public library that you can restrain yourself from going to your favorite sections!)

Ah, yes, that reminds me that I have actually written in libraries as well. And I agree, it’s a great atmosphere.

I have decamped to the living room for winter, though it’s not ideal it is warm. Much better when the man is out at work. I am new to the writing game 4 years, though have been writing poetry most of my life – work always got in the way and I never thought of myself as a writer. I have an atalier (studio) and have been painting also most of my life, but I cannot paint at the moment – carpal tunnel sydrome – recent op., though I can still type of a fashion.. I tend to hand write when I’m stuck – I can touch type faster than I can write – so handwrting tends to slow me down to think things through. I have not yet mastered the ‘outline’ and tend to have my characters lead me, they too develop when I throw something at them, though I normally have some idea of their morals lifestyle etc.. I suppose I’m lucky in that I can write almost anywhere at home. I cannot write in bars or cafes, but I can observe and squirrel away little affectations at the back of my mind and note it down either there or when I get home. I did a writing course about 4 years ago and someone gave me your site address – I have learned so much from you (and still am learning). and would just like to say a big thank you.

Warm is always ideal, IMO. 😉 Great to hear you’re enjoying the site!

We just bought a house in Germany and I am fortunate to have my own office now. I have space enough for my computer desk on one side, and I have a smaller writing desk under the window. I still like to write with pen and paper and I find that is sometimes easier for me when working on my character’s background and details.

I used to struggle with internet distractions when writing on my Mac. I allow myself three hours in the morning to take care of anything online. I use Apple’s focus modes in macOS to turn off distractions when I launch Scrivener, Omni Outliner, and EndNote. I do the same on my iPhone. I find that helps and still gives me the option to research online if I need to.

Congrats on the move! And, yes, I love options that let me distract myself from distractions. The trouble is I can always turn things back on. 😉

Using a fountain pen and paper releases my creative instincts like yours. No batteries, no cords, no distractions. Just keep a stack of blank writing paper handy, number and date every page, and not the book to which it belongs.

I do not live in Germany, but in the foothills of Colorado, where I look at the mountains all of every day—a good alternative.

What a wonderful post and I love all the comments too. I am going to have to try to write in scene places for inspiration next! My preferred places to write are either: the recliner at home perched with legs crossed, or in the corner of a Starbucks with breaks to people watch.

I get too distracted people watching. I have to do that in its own time!

Mrs Weiland, You mentioned that what on one day is a great place to write, might not be the best place tomorrow. Myself (my opinion), I like routine. To write in an unfamiliar place is very distracting to me and I have a problem concentrating. Different atmosphere, sounds, aesthetics, table and placement, and etc. I write in a favorite coffee shop across the freeway in Albany, Oregon. It is Allanns Coffee. They have a quaint little shop in front called the Beanery. I love it there and go there every day. The shop is huge and not many people go there. (Why, I have no idea.) I find that if there are too many differences in the environment, I spend more time daydreaming those differences than writing. Does that make any sense. Of course, that’s just me. There are probably a thousand people who disagree, and that’s OK. I enjoy your blogs and knowledge. Keep writing.

I’m totally a routine person, and generally speaking I do best when I’m in the same environment every day. But in struggling with massive writer’s block these last few years, in addition to moving twice and having to create new routines in new spaces, I found that what always used to work wasn’t working anymore. I had to get creative there for a while.

Lighting is a must, kind of. My best space during the day is a small room with windows facing north and west. I need a desk lamp to focus on the page. Being on the north side in Colorado, an electric heater is comfortable on cold days.

Privacy is plus and minus. I like to write uninterrupted and arise at four o’clock in the morning before my wife and dog. The fresh mind and results of subconscious development over night flow creatively in a gush. If I am in a location near a TV, my mind is shattered. The demanding programming and sound modifications to grab our attention is destructive in the extreme. I can write well in a restaurant with activity as long as I do not need to interact with people. I worked in an office in a cubicle too long.

I can handle clutter but when there are no distractions, visual or auditory, my mind eventually throws off the shackles and ventures into creative, unexplored spaces. I find Indian drums and flutes playing in the background are compelling but not attention stealing. Quiet good music helps at times, but I have been a musician and anything too gripping pulls me away like the internet does.

Case in point—this post.

Comfort helps. Resources available help, although most of my historical fiction research is Internet-based. Paper drafts, diagrams, and other hard copies are organized into labeled white notebooks.

Places. Many are good, but I usually need more time writing that I can allow outside. I write notes in the dark with a lighted pen that does not disturb my wife. I built a small desk just like Kate’s. I put nothing on it except pen and paper, and reluctantly a laptop occasionally. The surface proclaims “Write on Me”.

Other tools are first, a portable digital voice recorder. I dictate on hikes, in the car, at the gym, and in a comfy chair at home. I use Dragon 15.6 to transcribe the recordings into text. I sometimes dictate directly to the computer or correct manuscripts as well.

No other tools.

Too long a post, I am sure. Thanks to any one reading this far.

I know some people who write best with background noise, like a TV. But I’m like you: I can’t concentrate if there is too much going on around me.

I use Cold Turkey as an internet blocker I have the premium which is a one time expense and enables me to set a sophisticated schedule. I tie a scarf around the door handle when I’m not to be disturbed and I hog the living room in my apartment. My desk is there. I don’t write in the bedroom because my partner needs to use the bedroom, but he doesn’t need to use the living room in the day time. In the past going to resorts out of season (like in ‘the Shining’ mwah ha ha!) has proved to be a good way to write on the cheap. Although I usually choose the mediterranean not ski resorts. A little bit of boredom can be a help when writing. So resorts should be beautiful but boring. Neil Gaiman’s advice is gold. you can write, you can stare but you can’t do anything else.

Haven’t heard of Cold Turkey before. I will have to check it out.

I prefer ambient sounds to music. for some reason the best thing for me is thunderstorms (ocean sounds have a tendency to make me start thinking about what the ideal beach cabin would be- no good at all).

Ah, rainstorms are the best!

I’m thinking of experimenting with dictation onto a windows tablet running Word software which has a speech to text function. there are some walking paths near my home that might be suitable for this, isolated enough to be able to dictate for reasonable spells without being overheard, as I’m self conscious. I’ve got good headphones for it. I might try to jig up something so that I can hang the tablet so that it will sit comfortably 90 degrees to my chest so that I can check that it is doing the speech to text translation sufficiently well. It works holding the tablet in my hands.

I’ve played around with dictation, but never felt comfortable enough that the thoughts just flowed.

Here is what is working for me. I dictate on hikes, in the car, restaurants (a little but it can bother other people). I transcribe to LibreOffice Writer or MS Word. Sony digital voice recorder – ICD-PX470 Sony microphone for recorder – ECMCS3 Lavalier Dragon Dictation Software – https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html (expensive but works well.) Individual Professional is what you want because it transcribes recordings. The Home edition does not transcribe wav or MP3 recordings.

Thanks for including specific tools. I know lots of people find that helpful.

Great Post. I’m already prescribed to you so how do I get the free ebook ? I thoroughly enjoyed reading the post and the comments were the icing on the cake.

Tanya, you can email me here, and I’ll make sure you get it: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/contact/

Parking lot of a grocery store or shopping mall. You still have privacy but also the theatrics of human life. Not ideal for long periods of writing, but if you just want a weird space for a short period, parking lots. For me, they spawn a lot of goofy ideas, then I can do my shopping.

Multi-tasking–I like it! 😀

I have two different types of writing desks ten feet apart. The smaller one is dedicated to reading and scrawling; the larger one, with the roll top, is for typing, using an ergonomic keyboard.

My late father wrote thousands of missives on each of these desks, often by hand, using his trademark blue paper. He never published the novels he once envisioned, nor even his memoirs. But he left his desks to me.

Troy Thompson

I have written in many spaces. Sometimes on late shift at work when the only thing you hear is the fans blowing. A white noise takes over and can put you to sleep if you are not careful. I have taken my laptop to the park but it has to be quite there for me to get anything done. In my house at my desk with head phones playing music that suites the book I am working on. I fall into a state where I am alone. The noise around me disappears into that white noise and the world I live in folds up and my fantasy world unwraps itself.

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Creating writing - describe a place you think is beautiful.

creative writing

describe a place you think is beautiful

plan= scenery,animals,senses

The sky glistens as the sun begins to set,the enlightening fireflies light up the sky. As the birds shriek past my ears, the sound of the calming waves delights me and makes me feel at peace. The smell of the salty sea intoxicates my lungs. As i sit on the edge of the rocky cliff, i truly appreciate what beauty nature is!

 My eyes peer over to the valley, where i can here the noise of laughter from young children playing along the beach creating lifetime memories ; as the paranoid mother shouts at them to come back home in time for dinner. While others would find this annoying and abrupt, i feel a flashback of the beautiful times i once had here as a child.  As another day ends, while the night begins, the darkness ascends across the beach. The fireflies evoke a sense of a magical atmosphere creating a feeling of peace and relaxation.  As the owl sings in the moonlight, i thoughtlessly stare at the forest. Packed to the brim, full of wildlife, as the squirrels scurried to there nests for their nights rest. In the undergrowth of the tropical forest, the succulent and humid air brings a  fresh and reviving scent to the  atmosphere. 

Untouched golden sand covers the shores,way out into the distance. The breeze of the gentle wind skimming my skin, gives a refreshing coolness opposed to the warm weather of the day. i get up and begin to walk over to the sand, as my feet sink into it, it feels as if i am  walking on clouds. The white foam of the sea softly sprays itself against my face, making me reminisce the old times of my childhood, when we used to play amongst the beach. 

This is a preview of the whole essay

As i inhaled the fresh scent of he sea, a whirling pool of memories flooded in, from the good times of my childhood. Playing amongst the beach and splashing each other with sea. Who would of thought one distinct scent could bring so much happiness to someone!

The elegant palm trees sway to the breeze; as if the trees are dancers, choreographed by the wind. As the night sky assembles among the mystical destination. The stars shine through the black marble. And as i glance up towards the sky i realise what a beautiful place this is!

Document Details

• Author Type Student
• Word Count 403
• Page Count 1
• Subject English
• Type of work Homework assignment

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