#descriptive prose

Ah yes, the eternal balance between detail vs pacing! This is a balance that every writer still struggles with at every point in their career. 

In general, as you’ve mentioned, detail and long paragraphs and prose is good when you want to slow a story down. Maybe a detailed description of a temperate forest gives you the feeling of a slow, relaxing walk through it. Or describing someone’s work in detail gives the reader the impression that the work day is long and boring. 

On the flip side of that, rows of quick, short dialogue and only very brief description makes the story move much faster. 

What I tend to say regarding detailed prose is that unless there is a mechanical reason to be more descriptive (ie, slowing the pacing), you should only ever take one single paragraph to describe any one thing. If you’re describing a town and then a house in the town, take paragraph to describe the town, and then a paragraph for the house. Readers can get bored and skip text otherwise.

If you’re having serious trouble keeping description brief, try this exercise: 

Establish the purpose of the descriptive prose. What are you trying to convey to the reader? What is the purpose of this description? Write down these goals. 

Use one sentence per goal (if possible). Choose each word carefully and be able to explain why you chose it. Do not convey the same piece of information or impression twice unless there is a mechanical reason for doing so (for example, to vary sentence structure). Choose details carefully to give readers a strong impression of what you’re describing: eg, overgrown cottage roses taking over the wall of a little house, the smell of burst toast in the kitchen while mum’s in the hallway yelling at the kids to find their shoes, or the slow ticking of a wall clock while the receptionist boredly answers a phone. 

eg: 

Once, Tirisfal Glades had been a patchwork of rich farms full of crops and livestock, and the main road had been bustling with people travelling to and from the capital.  As a girl Jaina had been amongst them, and even now she could close her eyes and remember the route to Dalaran by heart. Now, those same fields lay blackened, barren and silent. An acrid green mist hung low to the ground, and not a soul was anywhere to be seen.

When I wrote this paragraph, I wanted: 

1. To convey in the briefest possible way the way the landscape used to be

2. To establish the narrator’s emotional connection to it

3. To describe how much it has changed for the worse. 

That’s a lot of information to convey in 81 words! But because I stuck to the rules above: one sentence per goal, no repeated information except where there was a mechanical reason to do so, I was able to achieve that. 

This is an incredibly narrow exercise if you’re just writing fanfic for fun, but it teaches you some pretty useful skills for other types of writing, too.

The beast I knew only in folkloric snippets. Hedge whispers perverting history to arcana through time immemorial. Perhaps too I had known it in nightmares, shapeless until named, becoming then familiar as a bedchamber.

That morning I was reading the Chaldean magazine in the kitchen over a morning coffee, milk and six sugars. In my humble opinion, the Chaldean is unsurpassed as a publication in the field of paranormal inquiry, I have been a subscriber since its inception as a send-away pamphlet penned and printed by a duo in Marsham. A colleague recommended this coffee brand. Lost City Coffee it was called, from the misty jungles of Bolivia, picked by virgins and crated by warrior kings he told me, imported at a criminally cheap rate (his sister married the Bolivian consulate giving him cause to visit frequently). I pay a flat fee for the raw beans, plus something on top for grinding, boxing and whichever vices this colleague, whose name I will not print, pursues recreationally.

Spectacles grand and quaint oft commence inauspiciously. It was grim autumn when the letter arrived. I heard lifeless leaves exploding beneath the postman's purposeful stride as he took the drive in three swift steps, pushed the envelope inside and was out before the latch struck.

The letter landed with a thud, dubbing me sole executor of the late Lady Renton Sizemore's last will, a grim charge requiring a trip to her home, listed in the Briarscombe country house register as the third most bloodstained holding in England.

I read the clinical words which were writ without sadness with no sorrow of my own. Dislike isn't the word. Lady Sizemore and I, while not enamoured, were quite civilised when last we spoke thirty years ago. I remember the way my father spoke up to her, half the force he was talking to anyone else. Even as a child I noted how meek he became in her gaze, his shoulders usually propped gave slack, eyes which held like steel at compliment or provocation zipped furtively if ever her voice rose.

After meeting her, I grumpily demanded to know why I had not been informed prior if we were to be visiting homes. He claimed to have forgotten the place ever existed, which the infant mind had a hard time accepting.

"Some things" he searched for the right words "are lost in time. You're young now. Everything is new. Your brain cannot yet differentiate between what is pertinent and that which is merely unexperienced. When you are old like me or older even" which in purity I didn't believe I could or would ever be "a word you read on a sign or catch broadcasted over a speaker or hear whispered on the wind, spied in bubbled writing on a traincart flank, you will remember a thing or a place which you loved so much and swore never to forget, and however many days were languished in this place, you will realise it was lost." I sniffled that it sounded sad and he told me that it was, but only a bit. "Bittersweet, lad. Sad you forget, glad you remember, content it ever was."

Why I was suddenly favoured for this sensitive task that required more mental finesse than anyone gave me credit for out loud puzzled me greatly. This was no flippant request to send your best man as soon as can be spared, I was summoned by name. Typically correspondence came via the agency, who set the most able body to task. This was different. Delivered to my home address.

Without a signature I was at first sceptical, but it bore an official seal and a title was supplied in lieu of a name, which I thought perhaps was proper in such circles. Whoever wrote it went on to confirm they had spoken with my seniors already and any absence from the office was on the books, so to speak.

Once the money was apportioned I was to ensure no stone went unturned, apt phrasing. Cairn Cottage stood oppressively atop the mound some two hundred winters, a plundered megalith shielding against the bracing gales. Up there the flowers bloomed blighted, grass grew sideways and only the sturdiest roots survived. Without the megalith's girth the winds might have toppled the twisted demesne, but she held firm now as old.

Mystics, druids and spiritualists alike extolled the house's phantasmic virtues. Fringe groups scrambled to reserve exclusive use for ceremonies. Lady Sizemore didn't care, provided she was soundly remunerated.

Upon receipt of instruction, I spurred my carriage toward Cairn Cottage, the house in whose shadow no local walked without rosaries. Although my visit was primarily administrative, there was another matter pertinent to my interests. One muttering which above all others inspired fear. A tale told to me by my father by the amber glow of a dying fire, crackling its reluctant passing. Worse than druids, he said a beast lived on the Moors. A hulking creature, whose snarling teeth bared in fullness of dark glowed like spears of starlight. However the rumour started it long sprouted legs of its own, more exciting with each recounting. I intended to find the single primal ember, the lone truthful element, stripped of frill and frock, fancy and folly, bereft of myth, or loyalty to tradition. Was there something in the fields by night? If so, was it dangerous?

First came Sperrin, a grizzly hamlet outside the estate's confines. For a penny a local boy in drab rags with golden locks bowl cut like a medieval page promised to find a suitable nook for my trap while I visited Lar's, a nearby tavern which was not entirely charmless. It offered low quality vintage at honest prices to low quality individuals. If the circuitous reels they plunked and the endless laments the older men wail through tears can be considered music, there's a ceile every night. A curious rustic flattery is about its inhabitants and rusted horseshoe decor. Most tantalisingly, the croppy boy who took my horse told me this was a prime spot for talk of the beast.

No matter how far you walk, or even how much it curls, your feet always remain on the ground, even while your jewlery or any clothing on you drifts in the direction of the “true gravity” as if your feet and the rest  of your body obey different laws.

You observe a litany of doors but only four are within your line of sight.

*Oak door

*Closet door

Closing your eyes doesn’t free you of the smoke’s effects. Rather, it highlights its assault on your nose. The poor thing smarts with the pungent scent of purple.

By the time you recover, Sock is gone.

Your surroundings are gone.

Your screen is gone.

Hell, even your clothes changed. Luckily, they aren’t gone but they lost all color to the point of being a shade of white or grey. All your other belongings appear to be suffering the same effects.

Sitting on your ass, dumbfounded, you stare down endless hallway.

It reminds you of corkscrew pasta with how it spirals.

*Walk

*Observe

[…] but such beautifully constructed things merit more than ignominy of festering into a trash can.

Polyporus heteroclitus, a bracket fungus, is best picked young because, “As it ages it becomes offensive.”

[…]

Worse still was Tricholoma sulphureum: “No amount of cooking removes its unpleasant flavor. I have tried to eat enough of it to test its qualities but was satisfied after strenuous efforts to mark it as INEDIBLE.” Yet McIlvaine was pressively tolerant of ither species listed as TOXIC in today’s guidebooks. […]