Appearances

I've never been particularly good at writing descriptions of appearances, be they for people or places. Or rather, I suppose, I should say that I've never really tried that hard to be any good at it. I feel awkward writing descriptions - I don't really understand how to make them flow with the rest of the story, or give a description that feels natural and not forced or over-detailed.

I've attempted before on here to write descriptions of people's appearance. Long, drawn out analysis of the way a person dresses, and does their hair, the colors of their hair and eyes, the way they carry themselves and what it says about them, and they way their appearances is viewed by the people around them. Trying to get as much about a person out from just the way that they look as I possibly can. And they are some of the worse pieces of writing on my blog. Not necessarily because I did a poor job describing them, but because it's just plain awkward.

Worlds are similar. Trying to describe the trees and the mountains, the rivers and the people and their affect on the land. It just all sounds extremely same-y. You can only say those kinds of things so many times, and unless you are some kind of master of allegory or the like, it's not going to sound that good to begin with. There are authors that are famed for their abilities to vividly and beautifully describe landscapes - I am not one of those authors.

I rely on my descriptions of personality to give an idea of how a person would look. I'm relying on stereotypes - there's nothing inherently wrong with that, as someone people may like you to believe. They exist in the first place for a reason, after all. They let us recognize things and people quickly on the fly, and make judgements about them. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No. It can be, and especially as our world changes and we are no longer a people designed around being fearful and making quick judgements to avoid danger, but it's certainly not a bad place to start as long as we do not allow ourselves to be completely controlled by these judgements and be unwilling to let actions change our minds.

But that's getting off topic.

The point I was originally trying to make on that is that, in my head, characters look certain ways and are in certain places. And I try to make the way they act describe those things in a natural way, so that you reflexively picture them the way I do. To my understanding, for some people that works, though I'm sure that for other people it does not. Which is why I need to work more on describing worlds. Though I must say, it's not a particularly fun thing for me to write.