Using Photo References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
On Pinterest, I have an entire folder and then even more folders dedicated to my various pieces of writing–be them books or short stories or something else. Through Pinterest, I organize scenes and various visuals, along with characters, animals, and plant life inspirations. For instance, we\u2019ve got this incredible piece of work that I have used for inspiration when creating the city [Name] on Ferges.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n From that (and a few other photos), I created the following for the introduction of the city in my second book, Caerule: <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the sun began to fade, they reached the outskirts of the city. A single rope bridge was the only obstacle between [REDACTED] and the groups of people walking around in the dim light. Crystals were tied to posts, along railings, dangling from branches overhead, casting blues and purples and reds across the people passing through. [REDACTED] gripped her side, her fingers digging into her bandages as she peered out, her eyes wide as she took it all in. Climbing up the branches were homes, crafted near the trunk of the trees, perched on outer branches, all linked by a maze of overpasses, stairs, and winding pathways. [REDACTED] stumbled onto the bridge and this time the entirety of it was secured by thick branches on either side, keeping the whole thing from twisting, and ensuring it hardly shifted underfoot. The coarse rope beneath her hand was dripping with small crystals, tied up in string, illuminating the path underfoot. I\u2019ve noticed that, for me, I tend to create more vivid and exact descriptions when I have a visual reference. This helps me work through describing it and making sure I don\u2019t miss something I may have really attached to (like the glow of crystals, which I\u2019m quite fond of). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The best way to get a powerful description across is to choose equally powerful words for the person, scene, food, or whatever else you\u2019re describing. Doing this can make the specific details or facts about a character or environment shine without you writing more than a few sentences. First, decide what this scene or person is like–is it hospitable, weathered, hostile? Then choose the descriptor words that hold closer to those connotations. For example: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSalene stumbled back, her assaulter almost five-feet tall at the shoulders. Ebony stripes cut its blue-green coat, shattering its silhouette. A long tail snaked from its spine, weaving expertly through the air behind it as paws larger than her face stepped upon the forest floor and made not a sound. It curled its lips back to reveal a mouthful of fangs, dripping with lustful saliva.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n While this is a WIP passage from my current work in the third book of the Viridis Series, with this piece you might see what I\u2019m attempting to do. Words and phrases such as \u201cassaulter,\u201d \u201ccut,\u201d \u201csnaked,\u201d \u201clustful saliva,\u201d give a specific image. Compare that to a passage below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSalene stepped back a few steps, her attacker almost five-feet tall at the shoulders. Black lines striped its blue-green coat, making its silhouette hard to distinguish. A long tail trailed off its spine as it walked across the forest floor without a sound. It curled its lips back to reveal ivory fangs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n While giving the same basic information, without the more powerful descriptors, it comes off plain and unimportant (at least, it does to me). This is a beast attacking our main character, and it should hold significant impact! So choose your words carefully when describing a character, and get across your dangerous point as quick as you can with powerful words. This, of course, is the ever popular writing tip \u201cdo more with less.\u201d I wanted the creature attacking Salene to feel powerful and dangerous, while additionally getting across a basic idea of what it looked like. To me, stripes and large paws tend to indicate a tiger-like creature, and hopefully something similar was invoked in your own mind! <\/p>\n\n\n\n A common mistake that I tend to make myself is using only visual descriptors, and not using smell, touch, or hearing as much. When describing environments, make sure to use smell to invoke a certain feeling. For me, I used it in the following scene:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The moment [REDACTED] awoke, her nose was bombarded with scents: burning wood crackled somewhere to her left, and each sizzling drip spilled sweet maple into the air; cinnamon stained the scent of bubbling milk, audible somewhere over the fire; flowers spewed a strong aroma that choked out the smoke; and the acrid stench of sweat. She grimaced as she tried to open her eyes, her head throbbing. A sliver of light stabbed through the gap in her eyelids and she jerked against the pain. Here, I opened with smells, as that was what the character noticed first. I attempted to not only paint the picture of where she might be, but also attempted to deliver the character’s feeling of being overwhelmed within the prose itself. It isn’t until later that I visually describe the space she’s in. Of course – be careful not to use my example too literally. You don’t want to constantly bombard your reader with an abundance of descriptions!<\/p>\n\n\n\n For describing people, see if the person has a certain smell to them. For my character Sindri, she is most known for the smell of \u201csweat and chalk.\u201d Sweat because, well, it\u2019s a war, who has time to shower? And chalk because of a certain spoilery reason. You\u2019ll have to read the book to find out the mysteries of chalk (lol). <\/p>\n\n\n\n As alluded to before, make sure not to overwhelm a reader. You can disperse your description throughout a scene. You don\u2019t need to see everything in a room all at once, you can wait, you can seen more as the characters interact with the space as to not only not overwhelm the reader, but continue to build intrigue in the scene. For instance, here\u2019s an example of this in my own work: <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Aris planted her feet in front of the Gold council, a severed arm in a jar to her right. It floated in a clear liquid, bubbles suspended and frozen against its flesh. A human steward held it with his copper-colored hands, discomfort written on his face with downturned lips and a scrunched nose. The arm in containment was freckled and pale, calloused fingers limp and unmoving within the glass. It had spilled most of its demonic blood upon the wanting Sobek dirt, but Aris had seared the edge of it with a hot blade, cauterizing the wound that had rewarded her with a most valuable prize. As you can see in these several snippets, over an entire scene, I continue to add more highlighting descriptors of the room paired with the dialogue and plot taking place. Silva’s abundance of wealth catches the light of advertisements outside. The wood door makes no sound when opening, implying it is well taken care of. As the scene goes on, we know where the council members are city, what they are doing in their chairs, and their distance from Aris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u201cLet us not forget that it is because of you that this monster existed within our city\u2019s borders,\u201d growled the human, who sat directly in front of her in the \u2018u\u2019 shaped table. His name was Dameon. \u201cYou were the one who put us all in danger by not reporting the monster sooner. It could\u2019ve snapped here and taken out numerous civilians.\u201d”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Don’t be afraid to let your descriptions be woven through your scene. Set it up beforehand so readers have a basic idea of where they are – such as indicating Aris was in front of the Gold council, and she was accompanied by a steward – but place highlights throughout, such as the window above the council members, or the wood door behind Aris. Experiment, and see what works best for you and your readers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, I am certainly no expert on this. I don\u2019t believe anyone really is. We\u2019re all doing what we believe works best, so find a way to write that works best for you! If my tips help, wonderful. If not, then go out there and find what helps you become a better writer. Thanks for reading this far, and have a great rest of your week! <3 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Full transparency, in my rough drafts, most my descriptions are vague shorthands for myself and myself only. Because descriptions can be difficult for me to get right, I tend to leave them for my second drafts, where I can properly go through the steps I take to make sure a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[629],"tags":[633,632,559,567,631,12,630,114,97,634,37,566,604,603],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/pexels-photo-3631711.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27tjX-tP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1853,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions\/1853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/image-1024x654.png\")
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She had never seen such a city before\u2014it was like Nevar, but without toxic clouds, without billboards flashing lights, without vehicles and drunks and fake trees. These were real. Her pace quickened, nearly tripping over her own feet as she hurried closer. These were real trees, these were real lights, this was all from the land, from this planet, without a single thing wasted.
This was beautiful.
The air in [REDACTED]\u2019s lungs, the freshness of the breath, the crisp, after-rain smell lingering in the air. […] She could see birds roosting atop pointed roofs, each slanted to allow rain to drip off the sides. She could see bugs buzzing through the air, some with glowing bodies, some bumping into the crystals as if they were in a violent battle. She had seen the trees from Dagmey\u2019s hut, seen the bugs and the animals, but here? A whole city built upon nature, built upon each other, without a single thing in sight that was made of steel, or crafted from nigferra? Maybe it was the lack of sleep that made her heart thunder in her throat, maybe it was the smile that somehow seeped into her chest and warmed her muscles to run.
Ahead, there was a large platform held up by the branches of three different trees all reaching out to the space between them, allowing for the circular arena to serve as a sort of entrance, a place to stand and gawk and as soon as her foot hit it, as soon as she climbed upon it, stumbling into the middle, she did just that. She stood, and she stared. She spotted a few victers leaping from one platform, spreading their arms, and gliding down to another. There were snippers, outside a building forty feet above and about a hundred feet away, identifiable by their four arms as they chatted and drank something in wood mugs. A kodarian approached from the left, across a wood walkway wide enough to accommodate four people and then some standing side-by-side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nLet Word Choice Do The Leg Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Use More Than Sight<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Screaming agony flared up in [REDACTED]\u2019s torso, chewing away at her stomach and ribs. Her muscles grew rigid as she gasped, her toes curling, her hands reaching for her gut. Her eyes snapped open and dots blurred her vision. She blinked and tried to look down, see what was tearing her in two. Searing lights drew tears to her. Her stomach growled, demanding food. Her throat burned, her mouth was dry. Strands of her hair stuck to the bridge of her nose.
Why did everything ache? Was she hurt on the battlefield? […]
She looked around the room, her eyes brimming with tears of panic and fear. She was in a small cottage, with wooden floors and walls, all of which were tied together with vines and held cracks between each plank. Small crystals hung from the ceiling by ropes, along with several potted plants and jars full of odd liquids. A fire was set up in the middle of the room, atop a flat stone. Above, the smoke filtered out of a small hole in the roof. [REDACTED] was on the floor on a mattress, but other than that, there was a single chair in the room and no other furniture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nLess Is More<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
[…]
Her name was Silva, and age was beginning to crease the ebony flesh around her eyes and particularly around the horns, which were decorated at every inch with gold jewelry. They caught the light from one of the many windows nearly eleven feet up the wall behind the council members. The smog-covered morning of Nevar drizzled through them and neon signs stained what little sunlight the planet received with blues and purples.
[…]
The guard behind Aris turned and opened the massive wooden door. It swung easily, hardly making a sound.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n