Descriptive Writing

March 24, 2015

The Shire is Only Appealing as a Second-Semester Senior

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– Or The Branching Future and the Fear No One Warns You About –

Build me up (don’t look back)/Tear me down (don’t look back)

– Give Up On Ghosts – Computer vs. Banjo

Hello blog. I missed you.

There comes a point, I think, in everyone’s life where living in The Shire becomes something that looks attractive, rather than mind-numbingly boring. That’s how I feel now – like I would like to just sit in the sun, read, garden, eat food and drink tea with friends, and sleep. Nothing much changes, homes are cozy, and you can live, more or less, without responsibility.

It’s not that this is always the ideal place to live – if we’re sticking with Lord of the Rings settings, Gondor or Rohan would be much more exciting, and Mirkwood would have the party-elves, if that’s what you’re into.

(This is getting a bit off track)

My point is that things that feel familiar, feel like home, things that lack responsibility – those things are attractive when you’re standing at the edge of the graduation precipice.

Picture life like a timeline.

When you turn around and look at your past, you can see a few paths you could have taken and wonder, wistfully, at the might-have-beens.  Each nexus, where your life could’ve changed, has two or three branches, and you can imagine, with relative ease, what would have changed. You wouldn’t have met M if you’d never joined swim team; you would have never gone to Tech if you hadn’t decided to visit a second time.

Easy.

Now, you’re less than two months from Graduation. The end of schooling (for now). You’ve met a ton of new people recently, and you’re going to have to leave them soon. You’re going to have to leave all of your friends soon. Leave Blacksburg, maybe. You’ll need to find a job, but which job? what field? Will you go to grad school in one year or two? Maybe never.

You are standing at the edge of your timeline, and a hundred thousand branches stick out before you.

What if you fail this? What if you move home? What if you date him? What if they leave you? What happens if you stop texting? What happens when they stop calling? Can you do this job or that one, or will you fail out of hand?

Each branch has it’s own branch, and each one has enough what if’s to drown you if you let them.

You will break down. You will cry.

The good news is the you have support right now and you don’t need to retreat to The Shire. You can make it to Mordor, Frodo (oh god this metaphor has gone of track).

What I’m trying to say, audience that is really me, is that you weren’t told about this because the people who have gotten through it don’t remember how it is. Because they’ve survived it, gotten through to the other end, and looked back thinking ‘that wasn’t so bad.’ The mistake they make is that then, they want to tell you that it isn’t so bad. But you haven’t survived it yet.

You will, But right now, it’s not the tiniest bit of fun, imaging all of the nice what-if’s and telling yourself that they will never happen, and looking at the bad what-if’s and praying with every ounce of your shady spiritually that those never befall you. You won’t be able to think of neutral paths, paths that will be okay and will make you happy. There will be no in-betweens.

But you will make it.

You will graduate.

And things will work out…eventually.

March 19, 2013

Dialogue and Characterization

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– or In Which Emily Links You To Many Videos, Part 2 –

BACK TO VIDEO GAMES. Or, at least, back to Extra Credits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO-HhDrN2_g&hl=en_US&version=3

This is an excellent video in the context of video games, but it also an incredible resource for writers in general. There is…not much I can say by way of improving this argument, nor do I really have an opinion on it besides the fact that it’s excellent.

I guess the only thing I have to say is that dialogue should sound like someone is talking. That sounds obvious, but really, your characters should feel like real people. In this video, the presenter talk about acting out your dialogue. This makes sense for video games, but I would also argue that it’s vital to any writing process.

If you write a really elaborate and vital piece of dialogue, and just leave it, you have no idea if the dialogue sounds natural (especially if it’s expository). I frequently have trouble with this, so, I read my passages out loud. This helps, but I really think acting out what your characters are saying, even doing, can help you determine what is natural, and what seems a bit off. It will also allow you to see how others interpret things. For example, say you wrote the following piece of dialogue:

“I can’t believe you,” Amanda said angrily. “What, did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

If you have someone else read through this, you can hear what tone their voice takes on for ‘angry.’ What expressions do they make? Are they gesturing? How? You can describe this character and her dialogue so much better if you have an idea of the gestures and expressions that convey anger. So, you revise:

“I can’t believe you,” Amanda growled, throwing her hands up in the air. Her mouth was set in a harsh frown, her eyebrows furrowed, and her teeth looked on edge. “What, did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

This conveys so much more emotion than just the word angry. Of course, this requires you to have super enthusiastic friends, who get into acting things out, and you shouldn’t over describe, but it can be such a useful tool to have in your tool belt.

With that said, please, please watch the video in this post (it may bleed out of the margins again, for which I apologize) and go check out Extra Credits. If I haven’t said it enough, those guys are awesome.

April 18, 2012

Just a Ditch, Really

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– Or Emily is Going To Accost You With More Description –

Yes! Another exercise in description. It’s happening. Hold on to your hats.

 
“It’s just a ditch, really.”

Well, of course it’s just a ditch, if you’re just looking at it. It fits the colloquial description of a ditch – low depression, usually made for draining water out of an otherwise flat field, but in this case they’re probably just totally normal scars in the landscape. Except they’re not. Except that a synonym for ditch is, in fact, trench.

It’s a trench – and what you fail to see for your act of just looking is that they are important and are more deserving of description than your – ever so clever – ‘just a ditch, really.’ This is a trench where people lived, ate, slept, read, and died. Rotted away, in some cases. Drowning in their own fluids in others. It’s a trench, in a country field in the east of France, where soldiers fought one of the worst wars in human history. More than a ditch, really. Closer to a grave, actually.

I could show you a picture, but I don’t want to – perhaps because standing here in a grass covered trench on a narrow brick pathway that, oh, close to 100 years ago now, was covered in at least an inch of water, mud on both sides, and miles upon miles of barbed wire, makes me a tad emotional. Though, that’s as much of an understatement as ‘ditch,’ considering I am about as close to all out sobbing right now as I ever plan to be in public. The history and importance of this place has that effect on me, I think.

You’re going on about how you don’t see the point in memorializing this place and I consider describing the effects of chlorine gas on the body and exactly what that looks like while you are desperately trying to flee the grenades and machine gun fire of the Germans just that side of No Man’s Land, but I don’t. I don’t because you don’t internalize history like I do. The images I would paint would shock you, gross you out, but little more than that. The horror of ancient battle formations meeting brutally efficient new technologies is lost on you, as it is lost on many, because it won’t happen again. A World War III would be all atomic bombs, incineration, and nuclear fallout – history won’t necessarily repeat itself.

But it still moves me to tears, because these trenches, these unassuming ditches in the French countryside, show cased the brutality of the human race, and the terrible things soldiers were made to suffer in the war that began, frankly, because everyone wanted ‘a good war.’ And they got one. Because it was a good war, really, if you just look at it.

 

April 3, 2012

Don’t Let Me Near Art Supplies

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– Or If You Give an Emily a Creative Spark, She’ll Want to Accost You with Description –

This is going to be a slightly different blog post – if  there is even a norm for my blog posts. What follows is an exercise in description, because…well, mostly because I can and I’ve been feeling overly creative lately. It’s not part of a larger whole – it just is, so take it for what you will.

Rain comes very rarely in the desert. You can feel it approaching – you wake up, and the heat seems closer to your skin, the air is still, and clouds black as pitch hang over the horizon. You spent months praying for rain; suddenly, it doesn’t seem so pertinent now. The rest of the caravan wakes and you hope against hope that the storm isn’t hovering over the town you’re steering towards.

This is a false hope, of course. When it rains in the desert, the rain becomes just as all encompassing as the heat. You march forward anyway, everything covered in tarps and children fumbling with ponchos.

The heat is still there, hung with humidity and dust kicked up by the returning wind. The thick air makes progress hard, pulling energy from the bodies of those following you. Fits of coughing rise in the stirring wind. Then, it comes – the deluge of water and wind, freezing in comparison to the heat before. You press forward, urging the caravan to move through the already flooding plains, moving feet and wagons through shifting sand. The heavy drops almost sting when they impact your skin, and you can’t see more than a few inches in front of you. You can’t stop. Lives ride on reaching the town, the oasis in the middle of the salt flats and deserts, and you press forward, grabbing the children that fall around you, desperately trying to keep together. Keep to the path. Don’t get turned around.

And, as suddenly as it came, the rain stops. The clouds roll onwards, and everything stops for a moment. It’s still. The air stops moving, the water stops flowing, and the caravan stops. You press forward still, gathering what water you can, who you can, and move on. The cool air will simmer in the sun; it is better to move forward in it than to pause and enjoy it. And so you move, as you moved through the storm, ever seeking a refuge that is so far off.