I love this so much! Great points. I want to do the thing where I brainstorm how to describe things around me now. 😀

Oooooooooooooh! YES! This article is like the silver rays of moonlight knifing through a cloud covered night.

You lit a candle in my mind, a candle among many others of different colored flame. And this one carried its light to each candle, and helped it burn a little more brightly… I think a lot of us authors tend to try to use the abstractions to impress the reader. And from my experience it doesn’t work too well. And we need to remember that the idea is not to impress the reader, but give them an image they can’t ignore… one that has them understand it.

Huh. Interesting perspective. I’d be really interested in what you think of The Book Thief then, because it has better characterization than 99% of books in my humble opinion.

I agree the examples seemed a little over-the-top. 😛 I haven’t read The Book Thief, either, but maybe there’s more of a balance when you read the whole book?

These principles seem helpful, though. I’ll have to practice this sort of thing for when I get to the line-edits of my NaNo project.

I just wanted to add a thought here: I don’t think this sort of prose would be a detriment to a book if it’s used the right way. I haven’t read The Book Thief, but I’m thinking the author used this type of prose to reveal something about the POV character. Having distinct lines like this would improve characterization, and perhaps even make what’s happening in the plot more easy to visualize. If every single line was like this, that might be a bit difficult to read through, but if used the right way, I think this type of prose could really strengthen a novel.

As an editor who specializes in style, I thought I’d jump into this conversation. You’re right that these kind of descriptions would bog a story down if they fill every page or are inserted only for embellishment. But I think you may have overlooked this sentence in the introduction of the article: “You must pay careful attention to the impression you hope to leave and relax your writing muscles when a moment is less significant.” The key is to have a purpose for the way you phrase each sentence, so that means some will be simpler and more straightforward than others. Concreteness will also take different forms depending on the author’s goals and the type of story. And when you’re trying to communicate important details or enhance characterization (as K.M. mentioned), the techniques Daeus describes will make your text more vivid and memorable.

What Brianna said. 😉