Writers in the Storm

by Sandy Vaile

Writing fiction that immerses readers in the setting and actions is a subtle skill that transforms mediocre narratives into memorable stories. But what kinds of descriptions make a story world feel real without slowing the pace?

In The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, he argues that appealing to multiple senses rather than just visual description draws readers into a scene more fully, and they get to experience the world firsthand, so the narrative becomes more dynamic.

Whether you're describing sweeping landscapes, epic fantasy worlds, intricate character movements or tense emotional drama, there are six techniques to create vivid descriptions without falling into dull lists.

Six powerful description techniques 

1. Replace tired clichés with fresh imagery. 
2. Engage all five senses. 
3. Avoid description dumps that slow the pace. 
4. Revitalise descriptions through movement. 
5. Choose meaningful details that add depth. 
6. Choose emotive verbs that affect readers.  

#1 Replace Tired Clichés with Fresh Imagery  

A cliché is a commonly used phrase or opinion. 

We use them all the time in life because they are a communication shortcut and others immediately understand what we mean. But relying on them in fiction comes across as not bothering to put any effort into fresh descriptions. 

Examples of Clichés 

• Cold as ice;
• Butterflies in the stomach; 
• Cut the air like a knife; 
• Lump in her throat; and 
• Black as night. 

To make descriptions fresh and meaningful, consider: 

• The underlying emotion or viewpoint.
• Making descriptions specific to the Point of View character. 
• Choosing one meaningful detail rather than multiple descriptive words. 
• How to use metaphors and similes to change existing clichés. 

Evokative Metaphors and Similes

Metaphors and similes are useful for comparing two things that are not related, creating a fresh and vivid image in the readers mind. They are symbolic likenesses to objects, actions or emotions. Aim not only to make comparisons that describe something but also let them reveal more about the character and their mood.

Examples of Fresh Descriptions 

Cliché - Instead of ‘cold as ice’ try: as cool as a tombstone under a winter’s sky. 

Cliché - Instead of ‘cut the air like a knife’ try: the atmosphere was taut like a bowstring, ready to snap and hit me in the face. 

Metaphor – Love is a battlefield. Or, That runner is a machine. 

Simile - His smile flickered like the dying light of a candle in the wind. Or, As fast as a cheetah. 

#2 Engage All Five Senses

Don’t forget to utilise all of the senses to create multifaceted descriptions. (Not necessarily all in one paragraph.) It’s easy to rely on what characters see, but when you fully immerse yourself in a scene there will be sounds, smells, textures and tastes that can add richness to the reader experience. 

Compare these descriptions:

• Lily wandered through the shadowy forest, the soil damp beneath her feet. (A dark, damp forest is realistic but it’s been done a million times before.) 
• Lilly picked her way between tall pines and over gnarled roots hiding in the forest shadows. The cool air was welcome after the burning sun and brought with it the scent of crushed pine needles and damp soil. (We’ve livened this description up by focusing on specific features of the forest and engaging the character’s sense of smell and feel, to help readers picture this forest.) 

#3 Avoid Description Dumps that Slow the Pace 

When we stop the story to include a large chunk of description in one place, it’s the same as an ‘information dump’. It slows the pace by diverting the reader’s focus from what’s going on in the story. 

While I appreciate beautiful descriptions as much as the next person, when there’s too much in one place it can weigh the story down with unnecessary images of things that aren’t important to the character or plot. By the time readers get back to the action, they might have forgotten the thrill of anticipation they’d felt before. 

This detracts from the energy of the story and is particularly problematic if it happens during a high-stakes or action scene. Effective pacing relies on balancing description with action and dialogue.

#4 Revitalise Descriptions Through Movement

It can be tempting to have characters arrive at locations, and then use narration to describe everything they see. The problem with this approach is that readers tend to lose interest after you’ve listed a few items, no matter how eloquent the prose or vivid the imagery. Worst case scenario, it sounds like a list and totally kills the pace.

Example of Listed Descriptors 

Sue surveyed the sad street with uneven paving along the footpaths, shabby houses with colourful hydrangea bushes out front and driveways filled with weeds.

Not too bad, but readers may feel like they are sitting in their living room, eyes closed, trying to picture the scene you are describing. But it’s not the same as being there and getting to see, hear and smell the street for themselves. 

Instead of halting the story to insert description and list everything they can see, it’s far more immersive when characters move through and interact with their surroundings, enabling readers to learn about the story world  organically, through the characters senses. 

Comparison of Immersive Description 

Sue wandered along the paved footpath, careful not to trip on the tangle of weeds that pushed bricks up here and there, and peered into a yard that was overrun with hydrangea bushes being strangled by kikuyu grass. It was like her childhood memories; only vaguly familiar on the surface. One tentative step at a time she followed the meandering length of an uncoiled hose that snaked along the cracked driveway, pausing to right a forlorn tricycle that had been tipped on its side and forgotten, and brushing flakes of rust from her fingers.

Putting the character in motion gives us more scope to make this description relevant to who she is and what she’s doing in the story. It invites readers into this run down neighbourhood, allowing them to experience what’s in it through the mind and senses of the character, and their perspective of the world around them.  

#5 Choose Meaningful Details that Add Depth 

When choosing which details to include in a description, consider what would have meaning to the point of view character and/or plot. 

Your descriptive choices should go further than what can be seen and:

• Reflect the story’s tone and themes. 
• Reveal character traits, personality, emotional state, motivation and past. 

Rather than randomly assigning a red dress to a character, consider her lifestyle, beliefs and preferences.

• A horticulturalist might wear a floral dress. 
• A vivacious actress might wear a red dress with ruffled sleeves. 
• A woman who is self-conscious about a scar on her arm might choose a long-sleeved dress. 

Let’s look at how we can build on a basic scene and layer in meaningful details that are indicative of the scene you want to portray. 

Example of Layering Meaningful Details   

• Let’s start with a simple description – Matthew stepped into the parlour he hadn’t seen in years. 
• Then get the character interacting with the environment - Matthew stepped into the parlour he hadn’t seen since he was a child and brushed a thick layer of dust from the surface of the coffee table.
• And add meaningful details – Matthew stepped into the parlour he hadn’t seen since he was a child and held his breath as a rush of memories and the scent of decay assaulted him. He trailed a finger through a thick layer of dust on the coffee table, leaving a river of glossy teak in its wake. 

#6 Choose Emotive Verbs that Affect Readers 

When we deliberately choose emotive descriptive words it:

• Reduces our reliance on adverbs and multiple adjectives.
• Tightens descriptions so they are immersive yet succinct.
• Supports the mood in the scene to build atmosphere.

Examples of Emotive Verbs 

• Replace adverbs with specific verbs  - Instead of she walked slowly across the room, try she sauntered across the room. 
• Choose dynamic verbs – Instead of she ran fast, try she sprinted. 
• Enhance the emotional tone - A cheerful summer day or a bleak cloud-filled sky.
• Allocate emotions to inanimate objects – The restless sea surges back and forth, or the abandoned house loomed with quiet hostility.

Transforming dull descriptions into evokative and immersive experiences that bring a story world to life requires carefully selecting meaningful details, showing characters interacting with their environment and appealing to all of the senses to create fresh and vivid imagery. 

What's your favorite example of an evocative and immersive description in fiction?

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About Sandy

Sandy Vaile is an internationally published author with decades of experience in the fiction industry, who empowers female contemporary fiction writers to plan and finish novels traditional publishers can’t resist, through fiction coaching, courses and developmental editing.

She writes romantic suspense for Simon & Schuster US and in her spare time is a motorbike-riding daredevil with a sense of adventure. She is lucky enough to live in the McLaren Vale wine region, so there are plenty of excuses for cheese platters and bubbles. 

www.fearlessprose.com 

Image by Paul Stachowiak from Pixabay, text added by Lynette M. Burrows

by Lynette M. Burrows

Relationships are a large part of what your readers relate to because we can’t escape them. We all have relationships with other people. Whether they are friends, acquaintances, enemies, or lovers, your characters’ relationships can break a reader’s suspension of disbelief or indelibly mark your reader’s heart. This is the second of a two-part series to help you treat relationships in your story as their own entities and how to create character relationships that will make your readers want more.

In Part One, we discussed treating your primary character’s key relationships as an entity of its own, types of relationships that are possible, how many relationships to cover in your story, and how to make the most of those relationships. This month we’re discussing what makes the relationships you create between your characters believably real to your readers. 

Please note: I use the phrase parties or pair when discussing the relationship. Be aware that this is for clarity, but relationship entities can have any number of individuals with in it.

Commonality

In any relationship, the two parties have something in common. It’s often the reason they are together, why they like each other. Commonalities can be they’re interested in the same esoteric art. They share a hobby, a craft, or a skill. Perhaps they bonded over being the “new kid” in school, or a dislike of the same thing or people. The stronger or more bonded the relationship, the more things they share in common. 

For each significant relationship you show on the pages of your story, know what that commonality is and what it means to each character. It does not need to mean the same thing to both parties. In fact, it’s often more interesting in one character has a stronger feeling about that commonality than the other. 

You can also increase tensions. Perhaps the bond happened in the past and during the story, one of the two parties realizes she no longer feels the same way about their relationship.

The Glue Between Them

The commonality between the parties in a relationship is mostly about “why they connected.” Differences in personalities, trials and tribulations, growth of an individual, and outside influences challenge every relationship. If the relationship you’ve created is a long-erm or a forever-more relationship, there needs to be a sense of what keeps the parties bonded. What is the glue that binds characters together?

There are many things that can bind a relationship, including:

Family relationships

Family relationships are often determined by marriage or shared parentage. Families are also people with whom you have no shared genetics, but you grew up together (Foster kids, adopted, the sibling from another mother). Sometimes the friends you make become family. Think about how family relationships work in your life.

Psychological (and sometimes physical) needs

There are three universal psychological needs all humans have: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They are necessary for our well-being. Often we have difficulty identifying our psychological needs correctly, but our needs steer us to make connections in order to fulfill those needs. In this, opposites really do attract.

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are bound by their need for each other. Watson provides Holmes with a sense of humanity, a voice of reason, and occasional inspiration. Watson also has medical knowledge that Sherlock lacks. Holmes is a source of fascination and excitement for Watson. But Watson also needs a sense that he’s serving a greater purpose. He not only helps Holmes, he helps keep the greater community safer, and he records the cases Holmes solves to inspire and teach others.

In Lord of the Rings, Sam has been Frodo’s gardener for a long time. As they journey, Frodo depends on Sam to care for him. Without Sam’s loyalty and hope, Frodo wouldn’t have finished his task. Without Frodo’s example, Sam would not have developed the courage to try new things and neither of them would have survived.

In the movie, Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart’s character has both legs in a cast and depends on his nurse’s help. He physically cannot do most personal care tasks by himself. The thing to remember about this kind of relationship is that both parties need to derive something from the relationship. In this example, at first the nurse does not have psychological needs that get filled by the relationship, but she gets gainful employment and a client she likes and respects.

Time Already Invested 

This refers to those situations where two parties have been together so long that neither of them can think about separating from the relationship, even when it’s not the same as when it started. Think old married couple type of relationships. You know, the friendships where you’ve known each other so long that you complete each other’s sentences. 

Routines and Rituals

Routines and rituals are not the same thing. Routines are regular and necessary interactions for the relationship to work. A ritual is something significant to the relationship and each of the parties.

For example, for a busy working couple, one partner may be in charge of fixing breakfasts through the week, because the job doesn’t start until later in the morning. The other partner then fixes breakfast on weekends. Or in a relationship between friends, their routine may include gathering at one of the parties’ homes for a card game every Thursday night.

Rituals are things like a certain birthday toast made between friends. For a romantic couple, a weekly ritual might be date night or a candlelight dinner.

Shared History

Shared history can include shared trauma, an experience they shared that makes them feel disconnected from everyone else, or the day-to-day struggles of life. Friends might share the same teachers throughout elementary school. Or they might have worked the same after-school job. Perhaps they served in the army together.

Meaningful Differences

You don’t want any pair or group of characters to be too similar. Their differences in style, speech, and behaviors help your readers identify them. This is true particularly in relationships between your characters. You don’t want the individuals in a relationship to be alike, but making them different just to be different isn’t enough. The differences must be meaningful. 

How do you make meaningful differences? Let the differences between your individuals complement or challenge the relationship in ways that reflect the theme or are integral to the plot. You can express their differences in many ways, including in their strengths and weaknesses, their personalities, their skills, the way they resolve conflicts or approach new experiences or idea and their typical way of reacting to people and events.

Give Them a History

Every relationship, even new ones, has a history. This is more than a shared history. This is the history of how they met, things they did together, and times they bonded more or they parted ways for a bit. The reader needs to understand the history of the relationship, but if you dump in the whole history, it will distance your reader instead of draw her in.

There are many ways, other than using an info dump, to reveal the history of a relationship.

An Inside Joke or Code

We humans look for shortcuts everywhere, even in relationships. In a relationship, the shortcut is often an inside joke or a code word or phrase. 

An Ongoing Thing

Many relationships have an ongoing thing they do or say. It can be an argument, typically over something silly. Such as a memory a couple repeatedly shares with others, but one party always insists the event happened in the winter and the other party always replies, “but it was June.” 

 Familiar behavior

This refers to how the parties in a relationship address one another. Maybe they use nicknames like honey-bun and Tweety. Or they may use a formal way to refer to one of the party who isn’t present, such as “Me and the Missus.” It’s a way of addressing one another that no non-group member uses.

Familiar behavior also includes the tone of voice used, how often they touch (or don’t touch) one another, how they touch—is it intimate or casual? 

In long-term relationships, the parties know each other’s likes, dislikes, and habits. You can convey this by having one party cut the other’s sandwich into asymmetical parts because she knows that’s how party B likes it. 

Nonverbal Communication

We humans use nonverbal communication every day. Parties that have known each other for a long time have developed several ways to communicate nonverbally. You can use sustained eye contact or a “knowing look” to convey that two parties have known each other for a long time. A pat on the hand can mean calm down.

Doing something uncharacteristic for that person can also be a form of nonverbal communication. Think about things like how your character would feel if the partner who is habitually late every time, shows up early to an event that is important to her. 

How the Relationship has Changed

Time changes us all. Friends, frenemies or enemies…no relationship is remains unchanged either. Hint or show your reader how the relationship has changed since your characters first met. Don’t tell us about every minute change, only give your reader the significant ones. Sometimes a hint that it has changed is all you need.

Meaningful Scenes

A meaningful scene can be a big event or a tiny one. The meaning or significance comes from what your viewpoint characters think and feel about the event and how it influences the relationship between the characters and or the plot. A small but significant scene happens between Frodo and Sam at Bilbo’s birthday party. Sam pines after Rosie from a distance and Frodo encourages him to ask her for a dance. The scene in Little Women where Amy burns Jo’s manuscript is a more significant event to both characters. They each have to grow enough to move past their own hurt and anger.

Complicate Things

The members of any relationship do not always get along. In any good relationship, there is tension, minor and major disagreements, and moments where the platonic or sexual love between the parties is strong. 

For example, Frodo and Sam didn’t agree on whether to bring Gollum along on their journey. Frodo grows to distrust Sam and Sam grows more determined to protect Frodo from Gollum. When Gollum betrays Frodo, Sam does everything he can to save his friend and Frodo gains a new understanding of friendship.

You can also add incorrect assumptions, misunderstandings or conflicting motives to complicate the relationship. 

Time Apart

Testing your character relationships with time apart gives you opportunities to deepen character development, create tension, explore how each individual grows, and how time apart plays with their emotions. Make the time apart about the relationship. 

Give the characters time to reflect on their feelings about the relationship. Use that to help your characters get new perspectives on themselves as individuals and as part of a relationship. Use uncertainty and longing, internal conflict, and / or external obstacles to heighten the stakes, add complexity to their understanding of the relationship, and test their commitment and resilience.

Make the Relationship Matter

Making the relationship matter to your characters will make it matter to your readers. But how do you do that? 

Develop an understanding of the deep-down needs of the individual characters in the relationship.

Figure out how the other party in the relationship will meet that need.

Make the relationship challenge the individual members of the group.

The key to making the relationship matter is to let the relationship develop over the course of the story. Use dialogue and body language to convey what the relationship means to the individuals. Show the growing intensity of connection and meaning through changes in the dialogue and body language. 

The bottom line is connection. Connect your reader to your characters and show how the connections in your characters’ lives matter to them. Since your reader cares about your characters, they care about the people important to your characters.

Create a Relationship Arc

Finally, when you treat a relationship as its own entity, it needs an arc similar to a character arc. Figure out if the relationship will fall apart or still be strong at the end of the story. No matter the fate of that relationship, it does not need to have all the above attributes to be irresistible to your reader. In fact, too much detail may work to make the relationship appear unbelievable. Whatever you determine is the glue that holds your story relationships together, be certain it is strong enough to be believable within your story world. 

Ask yourself the following questions.

• Does the relationship get stronger or get destroyed by the end of the story? 
• What situation will make or break the relationship?
• How has the character of the relationship changed at the end of the story? 
• How has each party’s feelings and understanding of the relationship changed?

Creating Irresistible Relationships

Readers know their real-life relationships are complex so when they find fictional characters in similar situations, they can't get enough. 

Even in a story about a man alone on an island (Cast Away) there is a complex relationship. Tom Hanks plays Noland, whose connections in life are superficial. When he gets stranded alone on an island, his need for a relationship grows so intense, he turns a ball into a companion named Wilson. We infer Wilson’s personality from the dialogue and behaviors of Noland. We relate to Noland and feel his desperation not to lose his only companion. We grieve with Noland when he does lose Wilson and we cheer when after Noland is rescued he realizes he has hope and the skills for a better, more connected life in the future.

For your story to matter to your reader, they must care about your characters. Seed in bits and pieces that hint of complex relationships that matter to your characters and you will have character relationships your readers find irresistible.  

How do your favorite character relationships (in something you’ve written or read) show their complexity?

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, creativity advocate, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. This alone makes her uniquely qualified to write an adventure or two.

Her Fellowship series is a “chillingly realistic” alternate history in 1961 Fellowship America where even the elite can be judged a sinner and pursued by the Angels of Death. Books one and two, My Soul to Keep, and  If I Should Die, are available everywhere books are sold online. Book three, And When I Wake, is scheduled to be published in early 2025.

Lynette lives in the land of OZ. She is a certifiable chocoholic and coffee lover. When she’s not blogging or writing or researching her next book, she avoids housework and plays with her two Yorkshire terriers. You can find Lynette online on Facebook or on her website.

As an indie author you will have a tool kit. Whether it is for writing, publishing, formatting, or advertising, there are so many ways to do what needs to be done to publish your book. Today we are going to talk about part of the publishing tool kit.

One of the things you’ll be asked when you start publishing a book on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is what keywords and categories you want your book listed in. This is where it comes in really handy to know your genre and other authors you want to target. This is an important step because it tells Amazon where to place your book on their shelves. And you want to be on the right shelf.

Note: When you publish with a publisher, whether they are a small press or a large press, you will never see the KDP dashboard, only the publisher can see it, so you won’t have any control over where they place your books. As a self-published author, not only do you have control, but if your book is not doing well in one category, you can go in and tweak it and put it in another.

How do you find the "right" keywords and categories?

You’re allowed 7 keywords and 2 categories. So, what is the best way to find those categories and keywords?

There are two ways to go about this…

1. You can go to Amazon and type your genre in the search bar.

I did a search for Vampire Urban fantasy. You can see in the screen shot below that along the left side there is a section called Departments. You can click in those departments and look at the books that show up on the main screen. This will help you narrow down your search and find the books and authors that yours would fit in with. By clicking on books you think yours is similar too, you can look at what categories they are placed in.

That’s the hard way…

2. The easy way. You can purchase an app called Publisher Rocket.

It is a one-time purchase of $199.00. If I could only buy two programs to help me publish, this would be one of them. We’ll get to the other in another post. Publisher Rocket takes all the work out of searching for keywords and categories.

I am going to add a bunch of screen shots to show you how easy it is.

Some Definitions

When you open up Rocket this is what you will see. I’m going to go through what each of those items means.

Keyword Search

The name says it all. This is where you would type in your genre and have Rocket generate some of the keywords you can place your book into. But as you can see in the screen shot, it not only gives you the keywords, but allows you to click on Analyze and it will show you a whole bunch of other information.

Competition Analyzer

This one will show you how much other authors are making in the specific search you typed in. So, I typed in Vampire Urban Fantasy and this is what came up. There was a lot more, but I cropped the picture.

Now if you want to go deeper, I would take the highest ranked and highest selling books and click on them. See what categories they are in, what their blurb looks like, and try to mimic what they are doing.

Category Search

This one will help you find your categories on amazon. It does help to have a basic idea of where you want to start with this one. Screen shot one shows you the front screen before you start digging in.

This second screen shot shows you what happens when you enter a search term. I picked science fiction and fantasy because it is what I write.

Now my book doesn’t fit in all of those categories, mostly the romance, so I wouldn't use those, but I would go through this list and find the best ones that fit my book.

AMS Keyword Search

This the section you would use when you are running AMS ads through Amazon. Once again, some great information in here. It gives you the titles, authors, AISN numbers, and the ability to export all of this into a spreadsheet to use for your ads.

I come to this section often to get new keywords for ads.

Final Thought

I am not trying to sell Publisher Rocket, but like I said it is one of my favorite tools. If you enjoy research, then you can skip Rocket and do all the same in the Amazon search bar. You will not get all the sales information, but you can get everything you need to set up your keywords and categories.

Note: Amazon says you can only have two categories on KDP, but if you email Amazon with a list of other categories you would like your book to be placed in, they will add up to six more.

This seems like a lot of information, so I am going to end this post here and take a nap.

Are there any other authors out there who have some other handy tips and tricks to help find categories and keywords? Please share them down in the comments!

About Jenn

Sass. Snark. Supernatural Sizzle. 

Award winning author of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Vampires, Greek gods, and a bit of Demon Destroyer fun for everyone.

Jenn Windrow loves characters who have a pinch of spunk, a dash of attitude, and a large dollop of sex appeal. Top it all off with a huge heaping helping of snark, and you’ve got the ingredients for the kind of fast-paced stories she loves to read and write. Home is a suburb of it’s-so-hot-my-shoes-have-melted-to-the-pavement Phoenix. Where she lives with her husband, two teenagers, and a slew of animals that seem to keep following her home, at least that’s what she claims.

Website: https://jennwindrow.com/

Top photo purchased from Depositphoto. All others are from Jennifer Windrow.