My Yahoo! + Movable Type Blog

Description. It sounds so simple.  I mean, all we have to do is describe a sunset in a way that's "never" been used.  Yeah, right.  How many sunsets have been described in stories and books over the past 100 years. And you think there's something new under the "sun"?

But the truth is as writers that is our job, to describe something "old" and make it something "new." It's our job to take readers into writing they've never read before, regardless of whether or not they've heard the story. A murder mystery, wife kills husband, been done over and over and yet it never grows old.  Why?  Because the authors have found a "new" way to tell the story. Getting over divorce. Been done.  Getting over death.  Been done.  A child runs away. Been done. Terrorist. Been done. And I can go on and on.

Yet, every one of these stories can be told from a different perspective, a different slant, a different setting, a different ending, in a way that is fresh.

EXERCISE: Below are words we hear all the time. Everyone knows exactly what they are.  But now you have the task of describing them in a way that's never been done.  That's right. Never.

 cold weather

a dog's bark

silk

pencil

kissing

rain

sunset

television

tornado

socks

one brick

Take time on this. Close your eyes and imagine each item.  Or get the item and study it with your hands, eyes, ears, nose, taste, every sense you can.  Imagine something you can compare it to to make it come to life for a reader than cannot hold it or see it. Use that simile/metaphor in your description. 

Don't forget to share a few with us.

Richelle