5 MORE Ways to Write Better Descriptions in Your Novel 

On the point of adjectives: I notice a lot of people when they are trying to avoid repetition will simply crack open a thesaurus and substitute words. This isn't inherently bad, but words will start appearing that are noticeably out of place compared to the rest of the work. The more grandiose the synonym the more noticeable, obviously. Also, say with 'red', if nothing is said to be red but practically everything is some synonym, then that also becomes noticeable. I find a good way to help alleviate this issue is not just to substitute a word, but to alter the way its described entirely. "Red" example - Yes, one can use different words to substitute with red, like crimson, burgundy, maroon, scarlet, etc. "His heart swelled at the sight of her full, taunting red lips." Crimson, sure. Scarlet, maybe. Ruby. "His heart swelled at the sight of her seductive lips. Full, taunting, they appeared as tantalizing as ripened strawberries and colored just the same." Perhaps not the BEST example, but the point is that one doesn't have to simply replace a word to break up the repetition. You can describe through simile, metaphor, and such to relay the information in a way that doesn't become monotonous. And further, it's important to not OVER correct and try to never repeat any adjectives, either. There's a balance to be struck.

I can't emphasize enough how description = characterization has really changed how I look at describing things. I'm one of those people who loves dialogue and can't stand describing things, but looking at it in this new light really drives home how important it is and how to make more interesting and cohesive descriptions!

I've been trying to improve my writing for the first time since I put away my pen 10 years ago. I came across your videos, and have been binge watching them in my free time bc they're so fantastic. This video and the previous one are amazingly helpful! Thank you so much!

Great point about a repeated adjective becoming comical like "Crimson." You can also use this to your advantage if you have a character like Marv from Sin City. He could describe everyone and just about everything as "punchable" if the descriptions are coming from the character. And if he were to see his daughter maybe he describes her as "Loveable" or "Huggable" to set up some contrast.

12:16 "The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent..." I could hear the SFX in my head.

The sense that a word appears "too often" and is therefore brought to the forefront is our brain performing the task of statistical analysis. Behind the curtain of awareness, there's an expectation from how often we've experienced each word, and major deviations from that familiarity pop up as mental alerts.

Really liked the one about using / withholding adjectives as a way to emphasize certain points! It also feels like the most advanced and difficult to implement advice out of the five to me

I also think the repetition of adjectives in Darkly Dreaming Dexter helps enforce an idea that Dexter is obsessive on top of his meticulous nature. Changing the structure helps to make it more subtle and less obtrusive to the reader's mind, but it still pushes an obsessive mindset. I'm glad you made this video. I would never have thought of that before. I made a pass applying some of the other tips to my draft, and it's crazy how much of a difference it makes.

Distinct words are such a trap. Triphammer is such a rare word that it was used once in The Shining and once in The Stand and I still noticed it both times. Edit: I like this video even better than the last one! Tips 2, 4 and 5 were especially great, thank you :)

I've seen both adjectives, verbs, etc, but also full on sentences being used/repeated too often. The more unusual the word or sentence is, the less often you can use them. In my own very long book I used a sentence twice. My friend immediately picked it out and said "remove one" it feels repetitive. That was twice in a 360k words long book. So yeah, sometimes even just twice, can be too many. :P

My favorite RU-vid editor girl.

Loved this video! Currently in writing school and am willing to use these tips later. I feel I am a cutthroat author and I love to just get straight to the point, which makes my story very fast paced in general. Something I feel I def have to work on... not rushing writing scenes...

Hi Ellen, Would it be possible for you to make a series of videos about the different story structures like nonlinear narrative for example. I really appreciate your videos. You’re straight to the point and professional. And for me, someone with a learning disability, you make the writing craft very easy to understand. So thanks for being you lol

So glad you’re back!

Love it! The last video was great and I actually really *WAS* hoping for this kind of video. Amazing as always Ellen! I've been working on my attempts at re-writes and trimming down and this and the other 'better descriptors' vid comes at the perfect time!!!

absolutely love the insight regarding using the right adjectives to drive home the point of the description and the idea that's trying to be conveyed!

Ellen, thank you, your videos on sentences, paragraphs and on descriptions, all incredibly helpful!

Love your channel. Your information is useful and concise. Thank you. ❤

Great points! I never thought of the first one and now I'm gonna pay more attention to it in my own writing. Thanks!

Great work Ellen! Loved the part on using adjectives when they add to the theme of the description.

Always a great day when you drop a video!

Great video Ellen and helpful analysis. Much thanks for putting this together.

You should do a video on “how to light when you have glasses.” Many many RU-vidrs can’t figure this out.

Thank you so much Ellen! I really need to think about using descriptions for characterization, this could be a really improvement! ❤

I write pen to paper & of all things doing it in a paragraph took awhile to get used to. Now I do it w/o thinking about it but it's true. True to read something w/o paragraph spaces & it really throws the reading out of whack. It's harder to do. The best thing to keep in mind about paragraph is that that you start a new one once the point has been made. Think of it like noticing the big dipper of stars in the sky. What does it shine like? What does it remind you of? How does it make you feel? Then look away & move on to the next point. Great video.

Thank you so much! I'm not the most visual reader/writer, so I struggle a lot with writing descriptions. But these tips help a lot :)

Thanks Ellen. Very comprehensive.

Your videos are incredibly helpful.

Hey Ellen Brock, it's guys. Thanks for another great video

You are very helpful and seem so capable and knowledgeable. Thanks!

Man, I just finished a book where the author used 'blanched' to describe someone going pale with fright at least a dozen times and it was always so strange.

I love your channel. Keep up the great work.

Aaah! She's back! 😅

Great video, as always!

Helpful information. This is information I jave not heard before. Thank you.

Great work, thank you so much

So very helpful. Thank you!!!

Just what I needed when my writing looked really stiff and empty, thank you!

Ellen, as is always so helpful.

This tips are great!!! (As always.) Novels are interesting because the writers control the mind's eye / focus of the reader. At the same time, they always need to respect their audiences' time, regardless of the medium. Video games, movies, books, comics, RU-vid videos... all have this same balancing act.

Thank you Ellen

wanted to share - when you mentioned 'a characters eyes' I was reminded of a friend of mine who said she'd been enjoying a really good romance novel and all through the pages, she envisioned the male character having beautiful green eyes because of how he was portrayed as having unusual green eyes, and then towards the end of the book, the author said he had 'blue' eyes - she caught the mistake and found it difficult to imagine him with 'blue' eyes because she'd been picturing him as having 'green eyes' all thru the book and she told me it had left her feeling disturbed - that one little bit about eye color and because it had been inconsistent - I love writing & don't have anything published, but I had to share this from a reader's standpoint - it's something I will always keep in mind and would also suggest talking to friends and peers who read - they can give valuable insights like this

GREAT advice. Per usual.

Thanks Ellen...😢now my work is really out of order. I'll see you in your first video....I need more paper and fresh pens❤❤😊😊

I'm glad you talked about the adjectives, because some people are very stingy about using them at all. But they do serve a purpose, you just don't need them all the time. lol, describing someone's eye-colour, seen from across a courtyard... before mentioning that someone else's walking up to the character from a meter away. :P Stuff like that can make me annoyed and confused when I read.

Excellent. Thank you.

Your videos are extremely helpful🙏🏻 it would be great to see your take on MC description in first person. I know the common mistakes like looking in the mirror, but not sure how to do it right.

Thank you

Can you do a video on mastering character voice? I read Big Swiss and the author crafted that book beautifully both the characters and the humor made the book such a quick read. The descriptions flowed so nicely and the dialogue was extremely natural. I’m having trouble getting that same vibe down for my book. “The First and Last Demon”/ Clem & Wist books by Hiyodori also delivers that same skill of mastering voice. You either have it or you don’t - something a literary agent said when they rejected someones query because of the prose/writing style/voice in the sample chapters.

Definitely and opportunity to make and Old Spice commercial with that first example.

I just started getting into the hobby of writing and your channel is an absolute gold mine of helpful knowledge! I’ve always wanted to write because I feel like I have no trouble coming up with ideas to write about but I have the writing ability of a forth grader at best. But I’m very excited to use your teachings tonight after work. So thank you for your info!

Good fundamental advice.

Thanks!

I admire your knowledge, guidance and advice. I follow you every day. Now, I feel a bit confused about “Abby’s paragraph.” When I read it first, it’s true, all the information was scrambled, but it succeeded in making me see through Abby’s eyes rather than from an outsider. After the information is organized, I lost that connection to Abby. It’s weird because I can easily see the improvement in rearranging, and yet, it makes me feel more distant to her eyes. Do you know how that can be possible? I apologize upfront and also want you to know that under no circumstances I write- not even as an amateur. Please, forgive my curiosity and again, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. 🙏💖

To keep from over-using really specific adjectives, should you go out of your way to make all of the red things different shades of red? And/or just say "red," depending on the tone of the story or whether you think your character would have all of those different shades of red in their vocabulary?

The first example you gave was a version of "And then.....and then....and then....."

How would you balance the tip about grouping related descriptions together with the tip about putting descriptions in order of when they'd realistically be noticed? Realistically, some chatacters, especially ones who are maybe hyperactive or who are narrating with stream of consciousness, will notice something about the house, then the garden, then the house again, then the sky, then the garden again. How do you identify when this kind of disorder, while realistic, is getting too confusing?

Something about destinct adjectives, I've been wondering, has anybody thougth of intentionally using them as a sort of pointers to hint to the reader that two different things/scenes in the story have something in common by using the same distinct adjective twice?

This is a lot to ask, but it would be great if you made a video on tips on tenses and the right usage of tenses.

can you please suggest a great book on comedy writing for sketch and sitcom

While reading, I notice a distinctive word or phrase being used a second time. A third time and I'm underlining it in red. 😄

I am super aware of using the same adjectives when I write. I'm the same way about repeating sentence structures. It never occurred to me that I could just ignore that naggy sensation and fix it in the edit.

Hello Ellen do you have any book recommendations that talk more about this subject? Thank you for the video it was informative and well presented. Thank you 😊

20:55 "Throwing in extra adjectives can muddy or confuse the point..." Damn, I do this when I talk.

Would you mind recommending some wonderful books on essay, paragraph and sentence structure?

🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

I believe 90% of description is superfluous. Thus, I try to keep my description to a bare minimum.

Do you know of any tool that detects repeated distinct adjectives?

So I took a swing at the house/cobblestone/garden thing. Like how would I lead the reader to the house? I took some liberties but it's fictional, right? So (changing to first person): The gate was familiar. I'd run through this gate many times as a child. That was long ago and the gate has weathered much. Layers of paint have seeped in to the splintered pickets. The hinges creaked as I opened to the cobblestone walkway. Uneven, and more than once, I twisted my then young ankle. Time has rubbed them smooth making them all the more treacherous. Only steps down the walkway, I stop to run my hands through the prairie grass. Decorative and well cared for, the tall grass serves to block the frequent gusting winds that often plagued the garden. Today, the long stemmed sea of snapdragons gently swayed in the light breeze. Yellow, purple and scarlet shoots reaching to the blue sky. They gently bump in to one another, shaking loose the light glistening of dew left from sunrise. I could stay for hours but my attention leads to the house. I hear the rattle of pots coming through the screen door. It's been a long time since I'd been here and the house seems much smaller than I recalled. A single story and an outsized picture window, I see the easy chair and fireplace where I'd spent many winter hours leafing through magazines and gardening catalogs. The chair hadn't moved nor the kitchen table just beyond. I ease to the front door. The jingle of silverware and with a running faucet mute the low volume of the radio. I hear Hank Williams, as I had many times so long ago. I knock.

NYC

You might be describing a Tarantino film.

I've noticed a recurring word for Sandersons writing. He seems to be so into his worldbuilding, he often uses "awesome" to describe power or something of particular interest to him (mostly power, though). I find it throws me completely off. It does not convey anything and is way too modern a word for his supposed time-period, imho. It also gives me the impression of a ten-year old describing comic-book (or movie) scenes, completely overwhelmed by what he saw and with flailing arms.

Second

Third?

For the passage with "Abby stood at the white gate", I like the first version better. It feels as though it's following her impressions, from big (house and sky) to small (stove and dew drops) and from near (gate and walkway) to far (details seen through the window). The amount is what's excessive, and that's not helped by organizing it as though Abby were writing a book report instead of looking around. It is helped, slightly, by having one tactile detail to remind us that we're getting the character's experience instead of just an oversized heap of description -- and that's what you decided to cut.

I need to have been a doctor. Is the sentence correct?

i AM STUCK ........ CANT MOVE AHEAD FOR MORE THAN 4 MONTHS. I hate everything i have written now ...

I'm looking forward to you showing how AI can assist fiction writers.

TBH, the advice about favoring generic words made me cringe. As a reader, I'm equally fine with "her cheeks were stained red" AND "a soft rubicund glow suffused her skin". To say one is better than the other is odd. It feels like you're the type of reader who personally favors one and therefore that style seems more natural to you. All my published short stories use a literary style and I've never been told by an editor to use basic words.

Thank you Ellen