Description Details: Let Your Phrases Multitask

Do your detail phrases multitask?
Do your detail phrases multitask?

Part 3 of 3: Add Detail to Your Descriptions

Here’s Part 3 of 3 on adding detail to your descriptions. Part 1 taught you the importance of using detailed sensory images, motion verbs, and concrete nouns to evoke a reader’s emotions. In Part 2, you learned how to layer details in appositive, noun, and verb phrases.

Phrases Multitask (Do Double Duty)

Today’s post continues the layering, showing you how to add adjective, adverb, and prepositional phrases. You’ll see that phrases often multitask, acting as one type of phrase in one sentence and a different type in another sentence. Continue reading Description Details: Let Your Phrases Multitask

Layer Details Like a Police Sketch Artist

Police Sketch Artist

Boise, Idaho, Police Sketch Artist Tonya Newberry

Part 2 of 3: Add Detail to Your Descriptions

As promised, here is Part 2 of our powwow on adding detail to your descriptions. In Part 1, we discussed the importance of using detailed sensory images, motion verbs, and concrete nouns to evoke a reader’s emotions.

One Detail at a Time

Think of your story as a blank slate to which you are adding details one at a time. It’s similar to the way a police sketch artist sits down with a crime victim and together they try to render the face of the attacker. The artist takes out pad and paper (or computer, nowadays!) and the subject describes the shape of the villain’s face and the size, shape, and color of his eyes. Next, she gives details about the size and shape of the rogue’s nose, mouth, eyebrows, and ears, and whether he had any facial hair or scars or identifying marks on his skin. Finally, the victim describes the criminal’s hair color, length, and style. At each step during the process, the artist adds another layer to his drawing until the likeness appears just as the crime victim remembers her attacker.

This is what you’ll do with your description—add layers one at a time until the description is just as you picture your character or scene. Continue reading Layer Details Like a Police Sketch Artist