Advice/Help How do I be more original/descriptive with settings?

[Ravenborn]

One thing I realised I have trouble with in writing is describing a place. In my head it goes "oh, he's moving to a library now, it's going to be gothic and fancy, and have cool carvings and ancient books", and I can see flashes of images in my mind's eye but they never stay long enough for me to describe them properly. As a result, I find that settings I write tend to be either very vague or very uninventive in terms of imagery and I don't really know how to fix that since it seems to be an issue with imagination (?)

This sometimes extends to characters too, I rarely go into heavy detail with with clothing because I can't really see a complete image of the character when I write, in my head ;-; It isn't as much of an issue when I draw because I can add details as an afterthought but I'm sort of in a stump with my writing.

Anyone have technical advice with regard to these issues?

 

[Idea]

Now initially in my response I was writing what I typically do for these types of questions - stuff regarding the different mindsets in approaching different degrees of detail. However, after looking up one of your posts and considering the circumstances you described more, I decided the issue here was likely more methodological and rather than mindset. Still, I didn't want to throw it out, so I put it in a spoiler in the bottom if anyone gets curious (sunk cost fallacy and all). Instead, I will try to focus on the practical side of the issue.

Now, without further ado, some concrete tips I think can help here:
---> Don't be a perfectionist: You said you have "flashes of images in your head" but are you trying to chase after those? Are you trying to replicate what you visualize as much as you can? If you are, only to realize in the ends you didn't get something you were satisfied with despite the time and effort you put into it? If so, then it would be best to stop. Try to focus on just a few core things to keep, and don't chase after recreating a reflection of something your mind conjures, because often the mind can conjure ideas that in practice can't be so smoothly replicated even in the best of conditions.

---> Read & Research: This of course is the obvious tip. Reading and researching the particular topics you want to describe more and better is a move that will certainly help you become more descriptive with them, not only because you will have access to more ideas and vocabulary for your descriptions, but also because it should help form a more clear picture in your head.

---> Be Prepared to Take Your Time: There's a trilemma in roleplay very few people can breach: Pace, quality and length. Any two you pick, you end up discarding the third to that degree. Assuming everyone wants quality, and given that detail is associated with length (in the sense that more detail naturally creates more length) this means that some pace is therefore sacrificed. Put it another way, writing a good detailed post can take time, so if you want to up how descriptive you are you should be prepared for your posts taking more time to write.

---> Golden Rule of Consistency: This is a term I made up a while back and it's still one of the most useful tools for me when it comes to generating any kind of content from characters to plots, worlds and the like. It has two components: First, there's internal consistency "You can make whatever rules you want, but they can't be broken, not even by other rules". You can have a world where people can fly by blinking, but you need a reason why someone then wouldn't be able to. This can add as a constraint, and leads to ideas like "if it's too cold in this world to make fire, how do people survive it? What other ways of heating do they resort to or are they just able to withstand extreme cold?". The second part of the rule if "consistency of consequences" and it effectively states that "for every element in the narrative something generated it (and is therefore implied by it) and it has consistent consequences".

So let's say you want to apply this to describe, say, how your character dresses. Well, first there are the constraints of their personality: Do they care for how well they dress? How much value do they put on how expensive things are (positively - caring for luxury- or negatively - actively chasing the cheapest options)? Do they have any particular tastes, or anything they would refuse to wear? Is their practicality or comfort or style a bigger concern? What do all of these things say about the type of clothes they wear, and any modifications to those.

Then there's the implications of the past: How did they get their clothes? If they lived somewhere where hunting was very common, and it was cold, maybe they would wear a lot of fur. If they are from a more developed and wealthy place, perhaps there's more of a focus on textiles. If there is emotional significance in what they wear, maybe it may seem completely off in the context. Also, what happened since they got the clothes? Clothes that went through a lot of armed conflict or staying in the wilderness or in the run would probably looked dirty and ragged, but even seemingly 'savage' clothes might be quite pristine looking around the body of a rich fashionista.

Lastly, you could even take consequences. Once you've decided what they wear, has this impacted them at all? Someone wearing rags probably wouldn't make it into a lot of fancy establishments. Wearing the armor of an enemy soldier, even if needed by an emergency, might get you confused and chased. Even just looking a little funny might have an impact.


--> Give Your Descriptions a Personality: A description doesn't have to be a dry listing of facts about something. It can, for instance, be written to emphasize a particular aspect of the worldbuilding, the tone of a scene, or twisted for thematic association. One of my personal favorite 'flavors' of description though, is character perspective. How does your character think? What does your character know or not know? What feelings or impressions does something invoke in them? Through an awareness of how your character sees the world and their particular familiarity with objects, locations, people, whatever else you may want to describe, you can use their point of view to color your description and as such make it more descriptive.

---> Take Things One Step at a Time: You don't need to describe everything at once. That can easily become a wall of expository text. I recommend the use of a lighter version of the Checkov's gun rule, instead of "only write if it's relevant for the plot", it's more like "write things which are relevant". Relevant can be anything from worldbuilding to ambience in my view, but never describe for description's sake - which also implies whatever you do describe, and however you do it, should have some meaning in the context of the scene (or be foreshadowing for something, but since in roleplay we have less control over what comes next, stick to the relevant to the scene until you feel more comfortable with your descriptions). If you enter into a room, maybe you can focus more on describing the vague overall look, and then on specifically, say, the table and chairs in which your character is going to seat, or the collection on the shelves, etc... You can leave describing the wallpaper and the texture of the curtains to when maybe your character is bored and their gaze is drifting.




So, that's where I'll leave it for today. I hope you find this helpful, so best of luck and happy RPing!

Spoiler: Stuff I Wrote, Discarded, But Didn't Want to Throw Out

First, the fundamentals. I addressed this on several occasions before, but I believe that fundamentally the tendency for a writing style to be more or less descriptive has a lot to do with the tastes and the mindset with which writing is approached. What one really values will often come through in the focus given to it, how much detail is put into things has to do with what one values in story telling. Often if one has trouble writing descriptively, this can be because it is simply not their kind of style, they aren't approaching it with a "detailed mindset". For instance a common mistake when someone tries to force themselves to write in roleplay geared for a more detailed environment (which often means this roleplay will have at least a couple paragraphs of length requirements) is to attempt to fill out a post by adding more and more character action and dialogue, without realizing they are just making their post cacophonic. A detailed approaches focuses on the how and why, and on the surrounding details of things, whereas the who and what tend to be bigger focuses of less detailed writing styles (not to their demerit though. A focusing only on what's relevant for the characters certainly has a strong appeal in storytelling and trims what a lot of people would consider purple prose).

Now, normally, this is the point in which I would say "If you want to change your writing style, keep in mind it may mean having to try to change how you think of things - something considerably difficult to accomplish, and furthermore you may want to consider if you really need to change things to become more detailed. More detail doesn't mean better, it's a matter of appealing to a particular kind of taste and style, and particular kind of taste and style isn't everyone's". However, from the one post of yours I could find (and this may be just because it was an introductory post by the looks of it, but I wouldn't know) while I do see traces of the approach I described before it doesn't seem to me like a lack of descriptiveness is the problem. So perhaps it's more methodological. Still, I am going by a sample of one, so I believe the rest of what I said remains relevant.

 

[Ravenborn]

Hi!

Pardon my formatting since I'm typing this on phone.

If I have this right, this essentially means that the cinematic camera pan that that tend to think about when it comes to writing a scene should not be a general use way of describing a scene (?)

And that what details get picked up, as well as what images they choose to describe it with depends on what the character sees and/or values?

(Also the specific research for specific images is a good one!)

Thank you for your reply btw ^^

 

[Idea]

If I have this right, this essentially means that the cinematic camera pan that that tend to think about when it comes to writing a scene should not be a general use way of describing a scene (?)

And that what details get picked up, as well as what images they choose to describe it with depends on what the character sees and/or values?

I'm assuming you are referring to the "give your description a personality" advice, so let me know if I'm wrong though:

One of the ways of "giving your description a personality" is narrating (and therefore describing) through your character's perspective, and it happens to be one of my favorites. You don't have to use it, and there are other ways of tailoring your description like I pointed out - to put emphasis on certain things, express themes or the tone of a scene etc... Cinematic, or third person omniscient type views aren't a problem, it's not a matter of "should or shouldn't", but more like "if you happen to be narrating from the character's perspective, you can use this to your advantage in terms of increasing descriptiveness".

If you were to apply this to a more cinematic perspective, I would consider this: They say a picture paints a thousand worlds. Indeed, a 3 second clip of someone riding a horse from one end of the camera to the other can net you a ton of information - how they are dressed can communicate who the character is, the speed, facial expression and body language might indicate their state of mind or the tone of the scene, the general look of the location can give an idea of the setting, and that's probably the tip of the iceberg. All of these things can translate into a descriptive focus, though the span of time would be different in-scene (the movie can and often must communicate this in an extremely short span of time through the visuals, so they can condense all this information in those 3 seconds - but if you spent as much time describing these things as you could mine from them, the reader might feel it was excessive for nothing to have happened in the meantime. You'd likely skip to the part of the rider arriving at a city or something right after the description, and while the description is happening they would be riding, implying the description is covering the time of them riding).

 

[Coward]

Quick tips to tack on to Idea's good post:

1. Scene building can easily do double duty as character building, which has the added benefit of removing the dryness of scene description. Compare these:

The paint on the narrow window frames was old and flaking.

Kit launched himself up to sit on the narrow window frame, and immediately started worrying at the loose paint with a fingernail.

Sentence 1 is a list of facts. It's tolerable in small doses, but should be reserved for crucial information to avoid overwhelming the reader. Sentence 2 has some advantages: it gives Kit something to do, gives us the same facts about the setting, and tells us something about Kit's personality.

2. Look up image reference instead of just facts, it'll give you the detail no one bothers writing about. If you want to save all your images for a scene in one place I love PureRef (a free reference boarding program) PureRef - Download

 

[GojiBean]

Hoyo Ravenborn !

Good question(s)!

I always set myself a few questions to answer about the setting of a given scene before I write anything, and they are as follows:

What time of day is it?

Poorly phrased as the following may be, the time of day does much more than simply tell you the time of day. In fact, it does all of the following:

* Gives you an idea of exactly where your light source is (giving you an angle to work with)
* Gives you an idea of the color of lighting (atmospheric differences relative to the sun's position change the color of visible light we perceive)
* Gives you an idea of how many people will already be awake and going about their day
* Gives you an idea of what the temperature might be like (providing you know the basic climate of the region, ask the GM if you're uncertain)
* Gives you an idea of any activities the locals may be engaged in around you (shopping, taking kids to school, driving, chatting on the sidewalks, sipping coffee at the coffee shop, etc)
* Gives you an idea of your character's most likely mental and physical state given that everyone reacts differently to the passage of time

From each and every single point listed are a bunch more points I could list. So, for but a single example, let's talk about the angle of your light source in the first point. If it's dawn with the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon, then the horizon line will be affecting the amount of light that you actually receive. The lower the sun is on that horizon, the more the light is passing over your area rather than at it meaning anything you receive is indirect and weak.

For instance, let's say the sun is just barely peeking over the horizon to the point you can't even really see the sun itself so much as the first light it's shining on the Earth. What's in its path? Mountains in the distance? A city skyline of buildings and/or skyscrapers? If so, how many are directly in the path of the sun's light before it reaches your character? And if your character is sleeping soundly waiting for their alarm to go off, what happens first? The light hitting their face through the open window, or the alarm waking them because of all the buildings blocking the sun's light from reaching your window making your world perceivably darker than that others might receive were it not for those pesky skyscrapers?

The more you paint the time of day into your head, the more questions you can ask to fill in gaps about the descriptive nature of just the light level, its angle, how much directly reaches you, etc. Couple that with the various elements of atmospheric effects on the color of that light, what the time of day does to affect the activity level of the world around you and what it does to your character's mental and physical state, the more descriptive you can be regarding the immediate surroundings of your character.

Where does my character start in this scene?

The starting position of your character in any scene sets the stage for anything/everything that happens between them and their destination. In the case of your example, you spoke about a gothic library kind of building. Well, before you get to it, what's in its path or nearby around it? Any other landmarks like a coffee shop, fire station, costume store, etc?

It may sound trivial to think about what's not your destination. But giving life and description to the environment surrounding your destination helps give it some character and some obvious sub-cultural impact on the area.

For example, your gothic library. Let's say that it used to be situated next to an old run down coffee shop which should have been demolished long ago, but the owner has stubbornly refused. However, just before the RP started the owner of that little coffee shop died. The shop was immediately demolished without him, and one of the biggest reasons was the library owner making the case that it's an eyesore and lowers the value of the library itself. However, now the library is rumored to be haunted by the old man's ghost. And whenever people see the library as they're walking down the street, they get this strange ghostly chill down their spines.

What gives it that visual trigger? Is it the creepy gothic clock tower at the top that looks like eyes watching you as to walk/drive by? Is is the spiky roof layout? Is it the long, thin stained glass windows? Is it the almost eerie "tilt" look that comes from the two towers on either side being uneven almost as if they were playing a game of "who's shorter" with the now demolished library being the shortest of the bunch? Is it the way the street curves with the library sticking out more than the buildings around it almost making it look like it's swallowing them up as you move around and change your visual angle?

There's so much to think about and so many options to choose from as to why a particular part of your scene looks and feels the way it does. And a lot of it will have to do either with the surroundings, such as the street curve or other buildings in my example, or it will have to do with a bit of in-world lore surrounding it, as in the case of the supposed ghost of the coffee shop owner haunting the library now in death.

Knowing what's around the focus of your scene and trying to breathe some extra life into it will greatly enhance how descriptive you can actually be since it gives you more to work with.

How alive can I make everything?

The best scenes in writing and visual media are those which feel alive.

How do you make a scene come alive?

Get descriptive.

Ridiculously descriptive.

But that's the problem, right? How do you get descriptive?

Simple!!

Think about the basic building blocks of everything that you consider worth noting in the scene. For example, let's think about a typical city street scene where the characters are standing outside of a major shopping center and just shooting the breeze. Not terribly exciting, but how alive can you make it?

Let's list the building blocks:

* The street - What does it look like? Is it clean and smooth, or old and cracked and in obvious need of a re-paving? Or somewhere in between?
* The sidewalk - Same questions as above.
* The cars - About how many are parked and how many are driving around in the street? How many are "new" cars versus older cars? Any standouts like a Ferrari Enzo parked in front of the Apple store across the street from where your characters are making one of your car-guy friends' mouths water?
* The crosswalks and street lights - Nothing terribly special about the presence of these, but they're part of everyday life and play a role in painting the landscape. So, what are they like? Are they also new and polished with brand new security cameras on them to catch red light runners and/or accidents? Or are they older and lacking such security measures?
* The people - And I mean those not in the group of the RP who are just walking around. Are you seeing any particular outfits or faces which stand out? Perhaps there's a middle-aged guy who's all gruff and grimy and looks like he belongs more on a farm than in the city? Or a really hot chick that drew your character's eye as she walked by and gives him a momentary side glance to meet his gaze? What does she look like? Long hair, thick eyelashes, full lips, cute arched eyebrows, slender neck, tight waist, etc? If you can describe this chick, you can describe anything else in the scene with the same level of detail.
* The shopping center - This is the focal point of the scene. So what's here? What shop serves as the entrance they're using? What's immediately left and right? What's beyond that? How far does your character look? How far do they care to look? Which shops are they looking forward to? Which ones are they not looking forward to, but know they'll be dragged into?

The questions I asked are just the beginning of describing the scene and breathing life into the setting. You can go much further into each one. For example, just about the first point regarding the street, how does it smell? Can your character smell it? Can they see a haze on the surface due to the warmth of the sun? Or is it clear? Do cars going by kick up any little asphalt pebbles indicating the disrepair? Or do they just go by cleanly? Does the cars going by cause any wind disturbances to people or their clothes (this one can be funny, if a little cheesy)? Does your character notice any little rhythmic counts of how many cars go by one at a time, or is it just chaos with the cars all zipping by en masse? I could go on, but you get the point.

In Conclusion

All of these elements will add to the life you give your scene.

Knowing how to describe a scene is one thing. But knowing how to give life to a scene is another.

Description alone will not give life to anything if you don't know how to focus as much on the things which largely go unnoticed as much as those which are immediately obvious.

So ask yourself these kinds of questions and descriptions will never be a problem again!

Cheers!

~ GojiBean

 

[Hootle]

Something I find very helpful when I'm writing a post is music. It allows me to really get into everything ranging from my character to the setting and everything that's happening. Everyone is different but it might work for you, to help you keep in your head those images long enough for you to convey them to your audience.

I think you should ask yourself, what are you trying to say? What do you want to say. Sometimes a little detail is okay. Everyone has different ways of making it work. There's really no right or wrong way. If you are, which you are, looking to do more use adjectives to set the tone for the setting. Look at it from a different perspective, your character perhaps. You could use real world pictures or let your imagination run wild.

Ultimately, it's up to you how much you want to do. It's your world and your characters, do as you see fit.