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writers-potion · 2 days

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Could you give any advice for "descriptive" writing of any scene or action scenes or mapping out the scenery (Mountains, forests, streets etc) - i believe this is a struggle for Non-English speaking writers due to lack of vast vocabulary.

Common Scenery Description Tips

Vocabulary is clearly an important part of description, but it doesn’t have to be a limit. The most important thing about description in fiction is picking the right details to mention:

How does the details add to the mood of the story? A mountain ridge will be dark, gray and foggy if the overall mood is meant to be mysterious/brooding. In contrast, a mountain can be brilliantly snow-capped, lush green and “smiling down” upon the character if they’re out for a light stroll.

How are the contrasts/complementary aspects being brought out?

Are you using the five senses? You can even combine the senses, ie. blue ringing of the church bells

(If you have the POV character) what

Some other tips for setting description:

Use similes and metaphors. Creative figures of speech always get my attention as a reader.

Mention story-specific elements. For example, “The sky was the shade of Zoes’ eyes” or “the mountains looked like a group of trolls sleeping on one another”

Be concise. Today’s readers don’t want to read paragraphs and paragraphs about one landscape. Outline the larger elements in the scene, their location and general mood. Add some details, then move on.

If the same location appears multiple times, differentiate the description little by little as you write, instead of trying to lay out one scene in too much detail at once.

That said, here are some helpful words/phrases:

Forests/Mountains

Color: bone-white, phantom-white, hazy gray

Sound: rumbling, booming grumbling, bellowing clapping, trundling, growling, thundering

Shape: crinkled, crumpled, knotted, grizzled, rumpled, wrinkled, craggy, jagged, gnarled, rugose

Action: sky-punching/stabbing/piercing/spearing, heaven-touching/kissing, snow-cloaked/hooded/wreathed/festooned

Sloping sides, sharp/rounded ridges, high point/peak/summit

Majestic, gargantuan humbling, vast, massive, titanic, towering, monumental, mighty, vast, humbling

Mountains having faces, etc.

Seas

Color: blue-green, crystal-clear crystalline, emerald, frothy, hazy, glistening, pristine, turquoise

Size: boundless, abyssal, fathomless, unconquerable, vast, wondrous

Sound: billowing, blustering, bombastic

Action: boisterous, agitated, angry, biting, breaking, brazen. Churning, bubbling, changing, brooding, calm, convulsing, enticing erratic, fierce, tempestuous, turbulent, undulating

Alluring, blissful, betwitching, breezy, captivating, chaotic, chilly, elemental, disorienting

Deserts

Sight: A landscape of sand, flat, harsh sunlight, cacti, tumbleweeds, dust devils, cracked land, crumbing rock, sandstone, canyons, wind-worn rock formations, tracks, dead grasses, vibrant desert blooms (after rainfall), flash flooding, dry creek

Sounds: Wind (whistling, howling, piping, tearing, weaving, winding, gusting), birds cawing, flapping, squawking, the fluttering shift of feasting birds, screeching eagles, the sound of one’s own steps, heavy silence, baying wild dogs

Smell: Arid air, dust, one’s own sweat and body odor, dry baked earth, carrion

Touch: Torrid heat, sweat, cutting wind, cracked lips, freezing cold (night) hard packed ground, rocks, gritty sand, shivering, swiping away dirt and sweat, pain from split lips and dehydration, numbness in legs, heat/pain from sun stroke, clothes…

Taste: Grit, dust, dry mouth & tongue, warm flat canteen water, copper taste in mouth, bitter taste of insects for eating, stringy wild game (hares, rats) the tough saltiness of hardtack, biscuits or jerky, an insatiable thirst or hunger

Streets

Dusty, fume-filled, foul, sumptuous, broad, bucolic, decayed, mournful, seemingly endless, empty, unpaved, lifeless, dreadfully genteel, muddy, nondescript, residential/retail

Bleach, flimsy, silent, narrow, crooked, furrowed, smoggy, commonplace, tumbledown, treeless, shady

The blacktop streets absorb the spring sunshine as if intent upon sending heaven's warmth back through my soles.

The streets absorbed the emotions in the air, the city as the steady and reassuring mother.

The streets were a marriage of sounds, from bicycle wheels to chattering.

In the refreshing light of early daytime, the streets had the hues of artistic dreamtime, soft yet bold pastels.

Cobbled streets flowed as happy rivers in sunlight.

Parties

Some extra tips for locations like parties, where lots of action is going around practically everywhere:

Focus on the important characters - where they are, who they’re with.

Provide some overall description of the structure of the party scene (a pool, a two-storey house with yard?), then move on to details.

Don’t try to describe everything.

whirlwind of laughter and music, a symphony of joyous chaos.

It was a gathering that shimmered with the glow of twinkling lights and echoed with the rhythm of dancing feet.

The air was alive with excitement, buzzing with conversations and the clink of glasses.

Every corner held a story waiting to unfold, a moment waiting to be captured in memory.

It was a tapestry of colors, a mosaic of faces, each adding their own brushstroke to the vibrant canvas of the night.

Laughter cascaded like a waterfall, infectious and unstoppable, filling the room with warmth.

The night was a carnival of senses, with aromas of delicious food mingling with the melodies that filled the air.

Time seemed to slip away in the whirl of the party, moments blending into each other like colors on a palette.

The energy of the crowd was electric, pulsing through the room like a heartbeat, binding everyone in a shared moment of celebration.

It was a celebration of life, where worries faded into the background, and the present moment was all that mattered.

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belovedapollo · 2 days

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from the archives, some old memories ✉️

reblog is ok, don’t repost/use

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old-school-romantics · 2 days

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John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

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poetricismic · 2 days

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Wonder what we could have become if the past had been happier...

Poetricismic

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novlr · 1 day

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“Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.” — M. F. K. Fisher

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ik-kudi-da-khwab · 2 days

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I'm used to feeling left out

it feels like a circle at this point

make new friends->get close to them-> give them all your love and time-> they start to fade away-> they act fake-> and they leave

it is so tiring ,it is so devastating

it leaves me broken everytime

#writers and poets #my writing #writerscommunity #writers on tumblr #writing #desi tumblr #hehe :3 #writeblr #feelings #editorial

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east-pressure · 11 hours

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#furby #bucky #yoongi x reader #header #nblw #writers and poets #nina kayy #miguel o'hara x reader #lip gallagher #minho #片山萌美 #red fox #aaron hotchner x reader

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shriekingpyre · 1 day

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DESCENT TO THE VALLEY / AN ELEGY: LATE SUMMER'S BLEEDING OUT, ryn selene

tips / subscribe

[full text below the cut]

an elegy dedicated to death in the summertime.

july ended kneeling by the bedside wondering if i was praying right. it was the season when sunbleached memories plagued:

down by the creek, signs of god. saltwater fingers trapped in a sharkbite snarl. crane your neck. i’ll demonstrate. creation myth, horror flick. the killer’s weak to the impulse. matching scars: his collarbone, my hip. aching jaws and unzipped jeans in the backyard. stumbling through boyhood, eternal collapsing omen. all the lies my sister never told me.slow rain turned flashflood. sunburnt hands, feverish dreams. drowning in misguided love. violence cycling over. stop pulling your punches. this is our way to heaven. life grew wider, / inevitable, / in the wrong place.

unfinished summers stretch into days spent waiting for a sign. stained letters deemed holy text. frenzied whispers echoing along empty backroads and highways. the still silence of our truck. passenger side chainsmoking wishing time would erase.

final destination: the desert. my own private holy land.

i search for my god. / i find him at a grave. / he recites psalm 139:7. / outgrown resentment, has he scratched that itch yet? / this eden of mine robs me of love and devotion. / am i in the right place? / i miss the silence. / i miss a god who would listen. / this isn’t the heaven i wanted, i believe it does not want me either. / this desert is vast. / take me out of eden, i miss my god. / the only thing worth saving is death. / what if i’m the apple instead?

was it worth it?

tags: @geryone @hauntedwoman @hangsawoman

#poetry #poem #poems and poetry #original poem #writing #writerscommunity #writers on tumblr #writers and poets #poets on tumblr #poems on tumblr #mine

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pink-heart-writes · 1 day

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"There is a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart I might not make it. It's easier to be alone because what if you learn that you need love and then you don't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is, death ends. This? It could go on forever."

— Meredith Grey

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jamespotterbbg · 22 hours

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for the hell of it (for the plot). a poem.

i see your ghost everywhere I go an empty seat in the back of my car missing from your spot on the couch in my house in my heart i see you fade in and out of being flicker in my eyes, taunting me sometimes I pretend you're there i smile toward the seat in the back of my car but it always fades because there's little to smile at when you're no more than a ghost a flickering memory and an ache in my heart -k.c.

and as requested, tagging @wistfulenchantress , @gardenofrunar , @justyourlocaldisaster

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writers-potion · 3 days

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How do I accurately include diversity, and not make it look like I’m just putting it in there for the sake of it?

Writing Diverse Characters - Things to Remember

Honestly, there's no definitive answer to this.

Your characters are people with clear goals, desires and a role to play in the plot. As long as they aren't just sitting there with little else but their race/gender/disability, etc. as their ONLY personality trait, at least you're on the right path.

As for representing a diverse character realistically, here are some things you can consider to get started.

Do's

RESEARCH. There are plenty of blogs/YT vids/websites that exist to help you! Meet people!

Get beta readers.

It doesn't have to be explicit. Racial identities become quite clear early on through the setting, name, and initial description(hair, eye/skin color, body shape, etc) without having to drum it into the readers each time. Gender diversity can be conveyed through the use of certain pronouns without awkward declarations.

Character first, diversity second. Please don't intentionally create a diverse character and then think about how you can push them into the cast. Have a working character, who happens to belong to a particular group.

Read works that have represented a group well. There are plenty of non-fiction works, movies and documentaries that capture the lives of people around the world with a good eye.

Use the correct terms/language

Include different types of diversity

Don'ts

Race/gender/diability is NOT a personality trait. Please. Telling me that you have a Korean girl tells me next to nothing about the character herself.

Using sterotypes. Now, it's all right if your character has a few sterotypical traits, but definitely not if sterotypes are the only thing they have.

Diversity is not a "shock factor". Suddenly revealing that a character is actually gay and has been in the closet all this time as a refresher so that it draws readers' attention? Not a good idea.

One diverse character does all. This can often be seen in female characters of slightly dated works where one woman will play the role of supportive mother, sister, femme fetale and sexy Barbie at the same time. Don't write a diverse character who basically does everything a diverse character can possibly be. All that it proves is that the writer is lazy.

Things I personally hate seeing:

Weird pronunciation of languages. As a Korean person, I always get turned off by works (mostly badly written fanfics, yes, I read those...) that try to transfer Korean dialogue directly onto the page without even checking for the correct way to spell them out. A similar example would be pinyin for Mandarin. Please, this makes the character sound stupid throughout...

Character sticking out almost painfully. If your character isn't from the region but have lived in it for a long time, what reason do they have not to blend in?

Relying on variety shows/dramas as reference. Media representation of diverse characters that are meant for entertainment is not the best source for authentic research. I die every time someone lists a number of Korean rom-coms they've watched for "research". IT DOES NOT COUNT.

As a last note, remember that there's no limit to the kind of characters a writer can writer. Accept that our job as writers is to step into other people's heads, not seeing things from one (our) perspective - and it is not going to be easy.

Hope this helps :)

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thebigfriendlygiant · 2 days

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"I look at your photos in black and white. Even then do they still captivate me and make me fall in love. Even in black and white, you still make my world more colorful." - K2J

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jorgema · 1 day

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Efímero es aquel romance que solo se sostiene de la emoción.

— Micropoema || @jorgema (Verdad en Poesía)

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fleurral · 8 hours

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for someone who loves words, i find it difficult to put my thoughts together. i have so much to say but the alphabets seem to stay alphabets alone—no phrase expressed, no sentence constructed. i wanted it to be coherent. i wanted it to be in-depth. i wanted it to be meaningful yet noncomplex. i want the words to linger and not just touch. stuck and not just hit. absorbed and not just flipped over. however, for someone who loves words, i cannot identify the right words to utter. it feels like no term can justify the feeling i wanted to memorialize. no idiom is that deep. no speech is that articulate. it is like there are not enough words in this world to seize the emotions i bear. though i love words, i am afraid i cannot find the words that are worthy to depict my experiences. with that, i am also afraid that such experiences will remain as memories in my mind—most likely to be forgotten and left behind.

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svr-poetry · 16 hours

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“Her eyes are fluent in a language his soul speaks.”

#love quotes #quotes #love #writers and poets

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skylark-234 · 20 hours

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#dark academia #literature #poetry #life quotes #poem #original poem #writers and poets #book quotes #life #bookblr #books and reading #books #reading #writeblr #writing #chaotic academia #light acamedia #spilled ink #oscar wilde

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