A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Conversely, isn’t it true that a word can be worth a thousand pictures? Take, for instance, the word ‘tree’. How many trees can you think of? General trees, like the ones one draws in third grade with apples on them; specific trees, the willow by the pond at your cousin’s house. If a concrete word like ‘tree’ evokes countless images in our minds, how many does an abstract word, like ‘beauty’ dig up? Perhaps you think of a person you love; maybe you imagine a sunrise scene over the mountains. Because words can be interpreted in thousands of different ways, their visual representations can be come similarly vast.
As a writing exercise, you may look at this image. What emotions does it evoke? Can you, in any way, relate to it? Are there any minor, hidden details that may be relevant to what is happening in the image?
These questions can be asked not only of a picture, but of a written scene. Imagine, for a moment you are not a photographer, but a writer, and your story has just come to a point where the main character observes an old man playing violin on the streets of Prague. You want your reader to see and feel what your character feels, for the image to form as perfectly in their minds as it does in yours. How can this be accomplished? Descriptive, or illustrative, writing.
These are just a few techniques in illustrative writing:
- Vivid, sensory language (smell, taste, touch, sound, sight, and, of course, emotion)
- Rich, lively detail that includes colors, forms, and movements
- Figurative language such as hyperbole, metaphors, similes, and personification.
- Showing a scene rather than telling it; challenge the reader to see what you see.
Here are some ways a writer might utilize these techniques in describing a scene.
1.) Sensory language: “As I trotted down the quaintly uneven cobblestone street, the sun warming my neck and legs, I caught the sound of a fiddle, or violin being played close by. The source of the music was revealed moments later as I rounded the old stone corner and saw a similing, whispy-haired old man playing exuberantly for a small but quiet and attentive crowd. Curious, I halted, feeling the weight of my backpack on my shoulders ease as I undid the straps.”
2.) Detail: “Behind him, against the scuffed stone wall, sat a black, weatherbeaten case. Its beige interior contained many small, copper and silver coins, and even a few crumpled purple and pink bills.”
3.) Figurative language: “As I stood there, all alone and looking rather friendless, the old musician looked up at me and smiled like a child whilst the erratic summer wind blew his hair in circles about his head. I chuckled – what an unlikely picture! – and dug into my bag, searching for a camera and some spare coins.”
Illustrative writing is not accomplished merely through the abundant use of adjectives and similes. The key to presenting an image to a reader is imagining how you yourself would feel and think about that image. In your own mind, you wouldn’t describe a memory to yourself as “fun”; more likely, you would remember why it was fun, what made it fun, what the air smelled like or how your clothes felt at that time. As E.L. Doctorow once said, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
Sources
Photo: Sonja Nikel, Prague, June 2003
Web Addresses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_modes
http://www.montanalife.com/writing/descriptive_writing_techniques.html
