building description creative writing examples

Writing Nestling

How To Describe Buildings In Writing (20 Important Steps & Adjectives)

In the world of literature, where every word is a brushstroke on the canvas of imagination, the art of describing buildings is a skill that can transform the mundane into the extraordinary.

Buildings, whether they rise defiantly into the sky or nestle quietly in the embrace of a rural landscape, hold the power to become not just settings but integral characters in the stories we tell.

Their architectural features, history, and the emotions they evoke can shape the mood, tone, and atmosphere of our narratives.

In this exploration, we embark on a journey to unravel the secrets of descriptive writing , discovering the nuances of observation, the magic of detail, and the alchemy of words that can bring buildings to life on the page.

So, let us delve into the art of describing buildings in writing , learning how to wield language as a tool to craft vivid, evocative, and unforgettable architectural portraits.

Table of Contents

How To Describe Buildings In Writing

Describing buildings in writing can be a detailed and creative process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it effectively:

Observe Closely

Begin by closely observing the building you want to describe. Take note of its architectural style, materials, colors, and any unique features that stand out.

Gather Information

Research the building’s history, purpose, and any interesting anecdotes or facts about it. This will help you add depth to your description.

Start with an Introduction

Begin your description with a captivating introductory sentence or paragraph that sets the tone and establishes the building’s significance.

Focus on Exterior

Describe the building’s exterior in detail. Mention its size, shape, and overall design. Discuss the architectural elements such as columns, windows, doors, and any decorative elements.

Detail Materials

Note the materials used in construction, whether it’s brick, stone, glass, or something else. Describe the texture and color of these materials.

Discuss Surroundings

Mention the building’s surroundings, including its location in the city or landscape. Describe how it fits into its environment.

Emphasize Unique Features

Highlight any unique or distinctive features that make the building special. These could include ornate carvings, a modern facade, or historical significance.

Interior Description

If applicable and possible, describe the interior of the building. Discuss the layout, decor, and any remarkable details like chandeliers, artwork, or furniture.

Capture Atmosphere

Try to capture the atmosphere or mood the building conveys. Is it imposing, welcoming, historic, or futuristic?

Use Sensory Language

Engage the reader’s senses by using descriptive language that appeals to sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste if relevant. For example, describe the sound of footsteps echoing in a grand marble foyer.

Tell a Story

Weave a narrative into your description. Share stories or anecdotes related to the building, its construction, or its historical significance.

Create a Vivid Picture

Use vivid and imaginative language to help the reader visualize the building. Paint a picture with your words.

Maintain a Clear Structure

Organize your description logically, perhaps by starting from the exterior and moving to the interior, or by arranging details from top to bottom or front to back.

Revise and Edit

After writing your description, revise and edit it for clarity, conciseness, and coherence. Remove any unnecessary details and refine your language.

Read your description aloud to ensure it flows well and sounds appealing.

Seek Feedback

If possible, have someone else read your description and provide feedback. They may offer valuable insights or catch errors you missed.

Polish and Finalize

Make any final revisions based on feedback and your own assessments. Ensure that your description is engaging and free from errors.

Include a Conclusion

Wrap up your description with a concluding paragraph that summarizes the building’s significance or impact.

Cite Sources

If you used any sources for information or historical context, make sure to properly cite them.

Before publishing or sharing your description, carefully proofread it one last time to catch any remaining errors.

Remember that effective building descriptions not only convey physical details but also evoke emotions and convey a sense of the building’s place in history and culture.

Creative Adjectives To Describe Building

Sleek Skyscraper Adjectives: Futuristic, glass-clad, towering, modern, shimmering

Historic Castle Adjectives: Majestic, medieval, formidable, timeless, grand

Quaint Cottage Adjectives: Charming, cozy, picturesque, rustic, idyllic

Innovative Office Complex Adjectives: Cutting-edge, sustainable, dynamic, collaborative, hi-tech

Minimalist Residence Adjectives: Contemporary, streamlined, efficient, sophisticated, uncluttered

Gothic Cathedral Adjectives: Ornate, sublime, awe-inspiring, gothic, intricate

Art Deco Apartment Building Adjectives: Glamorous, vintage, luxurious, geometric, iconic

Floating Pavilion Adjectives: Ethereal, innovative, floating, transparent, serene

Organic Architecture Adjectives: Harmonious, nature-inspired, organic, sustainable, flowing

Futuristic Eco-Tower Adjectives: Sustainable, energy-efficient, avant-garde, green, cutting-edge

The Basics of Describing Buildings

Describing buildings is more than just painting a picture with words; it’s an art of unveiling the hidden stories etched into bricks and mortar. It’s about summoning the essence of a structure, conjuring whispers of its past and the promises of its future.

The basics of this craft involve peeling back the layers of stone, concrete, or wood to reveal the soul of a building. It’s not merely about what meets the eye but how it meets the soul.

The play of light on arches, the whispered secrets of creaking floorboards, and the silent history echoing from faded facades—all these facets weave together to create a symphony of words that immerses readers in the very heart of the architectural wonder you wish to describe .

So, grab your literary chisel and let’s embark on an expedition through the maze of bricks and beams, unearthing the beauty and intrigue that lie within.

Building a Descriptive Vocabulary

Building a descriptive vocabulary is like collecting a treasure trove of words, each one a shimmering gem waiting to adorn your writing.

It’s the art of transforming ordinary adjectives into enchanting emblems, adverbs into magic wands, and metaphors into bridges between the known and the unknown.

As a writer, your palette is language, and with each word you add, your literary canvas becomes more vibrant and alive. These words are your architectural tools, allowing you to construct worlds within worlds, crafting prose that lingers in the minds of your readers like an unforgettable melody.

So, embark on this lexical adventure, for in the realm of descriptive vocabulary, you are the alchemist, turning words into pure literary gold.

The art of showing, not telling

The art of showing, not telling, in writing is akin to inviting the reader to be an active participant in the story . Instead of simply spoon-feeding information, it’s about creating a rich tapestry of details, actions, and emotions that allow readers to draw their own conclusions and immerse themselves deeply in the narrative.

It’s the difference between saying, “She was nervous,” and vividly depicting her tapping foot, trembling hands, and the stammer in her voice as she tried to explain herself.

When writers master this technique, they open a door to a more engaging and evocative storytelling experience, where readers can feel, see, and hear the story as if they were right there, peering into the characters’ souls.

In essence, it’s the magic of letting the reader discover the story, one carefully woven thread at a time.

Techniques for Describing Different Types of Buildings

Unlocking the techniques for describing different types of buildings is akin to wielding a set of keys to a captivating world of architectural diversity.

Each building, whether it’s a humble cottage or a towering skyscraper, has its own unique personality waiting to be unveiled through your words.

It’s about the careful selection of your descriptive tools, crafting descriptions that transform simple bricks and mortar into living, breathing characters within your narrative.

Just as you would use a different brushstroke for a tranquil rural landscape compared to a vibrant urban scene, your words must adapt to the architecture at hand.

From the quaint charm of residential structures to the imposing grandeur of historic landmarks, these techniques empower you to capture the essence of buildings, turning them into protagonists in their own right, ready to leave a lasting impression on your readers’ minds.

So, embark on this architectural adventure and let your words become the architectural blueprints of your storytelling dreams.

Residential structures

Residential structures are the silent witnesses to the intimate stories of our lives. Each one has its own character and charm, whether it’s the cozy embrace of a cottage nestled among ancient trees, the modern elegance of a city apartment with a skyline view, or the timeless charm of a suburban home with a white picket fence.

Describing residential structures allows writers to capture the heart of daily life, where the walls hold the echoes of laughter, tears, and countless memories.

From the warm glow of a hearth in a rustic cabin to the sleek lines of a contemporary penthouse, residential buildings offer a canvas upon which authors can paint the dreams and aspirations of their characters, making them feel like homes to both the reader and the inhabitants within the pages of a story.

Commercial and industrial buildings

Commercial and industrial buildings stand as the beating heart of bustling economies and innovation hubs. These architectural giants are not just structures; they are the pulse of productivity and commerce. From the towering skyscrapers that house corporate empires to the sprawling warehouses that harbor the engines of industry, they symbolize the relentless march of progress.

Describing commercial and industrial buildings grants writers the opportunity to evoke the dynamic energy of the business world, where glass and steel frames house the dreams and endeavors of countless individuals.

It’s in these structures that the spirit of ambition, innovation, and hard work is encapsulated, where the hum of activity reverberates through the walls and the promise of success lingers in the air.

Whether in the gleaming storefronts of high-end boutiques or the labyrinthine depths of manufacturing plants, these buildings become canvases on which writers can paint the intricate tapestry of modern life, where commerce and creativity intersect.

Historic or landmark buildings

Historic and landmark buildings are the time capsules of our shared human history, standing proudly as enduring testaments to the past.

These architectural marvels are like guardians of memory, their weathered facades whispering tales of bygone eras. Whether it’s a medieval castle with its imposing battlements or an ornate cathedral with its soaring spires, each of these structures carries within it a unique narrative of culture, heritage, and evolution.

Describing historic and landmark buildings is akin to unlocking the doors of time, allowing writers to transport readers to different epochs, where the echoes of history resonate through the stones and arches.

The intricate carvings, stained glass windows, and intricate masonry work become not just decorative details but windows into the souls of generations past, reminding us of the enduring power of human craftsmanship and imagination.

Describing Buildings in Different Settings

Describing buildings in different settings is like navigating a vast and ever-changing landscape of architectural dreams. It’s an art of adaptation, where the buildings become chameleons, seamlessly blending into their surroundings and reflecting the essence of the environment they inhabit.

Whether it’s the steel and glass monoliths that rise from the concrete canyons of urban jungles, the rustic cottages nestled in the tranquil embrace of countryside meadows, or the fantastical spires that punctuate the skyline of otherworldly realms, each setting demands a unique lexicon of words and emotions to convey its character.

As a writer, you become an architect of words, crafting descriptions that breathe life into structures, making them not just a part of the backdrop, but integral players in the grand symphony of your storytelling.

It’s a journey that leads you through a myriad of landscapes, from the familiar to the fantastical, and in each one, the buildings become not just structures but portals into the very soul of the setting itself.

Painting a picture of idyllic countryside scenes

Painting a picture of idyllic countryside scenes is like dipping one’s brush into the palette of tranquility and serenity.

It’s the art of summoning the essence of pastoral beauty, where rolling hills meet endless horizons, and quaint cottages nestle amidst fields of wildflowers.

Describing the countryside is an invitation to embrace the symphony of nature’s colors and sounds, from the golden hues of sun-kissed wheat fields to the gentle murmur of babbling brooks.

The landscape comes alive with the vibrant characters of grazing cattle, fluttering butterflies, and the whispered secrets of ancient oaks. Each stroke of description is a stroke of connection to a simpler, more harmonious existence, where the rhythms of life are dictated by the rising sun and the setting moon.

In these scenes, writers have the power to transport readers to a realm where time slows, and the heart finds solace in the tranquil embrace of nature’s perfection.

Enhancing world-building in speculative fiction

Enhancing world-building in speculative fiction is akin to wielding a literary wand, conjuring realms that exist beyond the boundaries of the ordinary.

It’s the craft of architecting entire universes from the foundations of imagination, layering intricate details upon the blank canvas of the mind.

In these fantastical worlds, the buildings are not mere structures but living organisms, reflecting the very essence of the setting.

Whether it’s floating cities among the clouds, ancient temples infused with magic, or futuristic metropolises teeming with advanced technology, each architectural element becomes a brushstroke on the canvas of the reader’s mind.

As writers, we have the privilege of sculpting landscapes that defy reality, offering readers the opportunity to explore the infinite possibilities of the human imagination.

In this realm, buildings are not just bricks and mortar; they are keystones to unlocking the secrets of the fantastical realms we create, enriching our stories with depth and wonder.

Incorporating Building Descriptions into Your Writing

Incorporating building descriptions into your writing is akin to weaving an intricate tapestry of time, place, and emotion. It’s the art of making architecture a character in your narrative, breathing life into bricks and mortar.

These descriptions are not mere backdrops; they are the stage upon which your story unfolds. Like a skilled director, you choose the lighting, the angles, and the props to evoke the desired emotions and reactions from your readers.

Whether it’s the haunting elegance of a decrepit mansion, the gleaming promise of a futuristic cityscape, or the rustic charm of a countryside cottage, each building holds the potential to engage your readers on a visceral level.

It’s in these meticulously crafted descriptions that your story’s setting becomes a character in its own right, shaping the plot, influencing the mood, and leaving an indelible imprint on the reader’s imagination.

So, as a writer, remember that in the world you create, buildings are not just structures; they are the silent narrators of your tale, and through your words, they whisper secrets and dreams that captivate your audience.

Case Studies and Examples

Case studies and examples are the breadcrumbs on the path to mastery, the flashlight in the dark cave of understanding.

They’re the vivid stories that breathe life into theory, turning abstract concepts into tangible realities. Like windows into different worlds, they invite us to peer through the glass and see how ideas take shape in the messy, unpredictable terrain of real life.

They’re not just data points or anecdotes; they’re the sparks of insight that ignite our curiosity and illuminate the path forward.

Whether it’s exploring the triumphs and tribulations of historical figures, dissecting the strategies of successful businesses, or delving into the intricate dance of cause and effect in science, case studies and examples are the narrative threads that weave the fabric of knowledge.

So, let them be your compass, your inspiration, and your guide as you embark on your journey of discovery and enlightenment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about How To Describe Buildings In Writing

What is the importance of describing buildings in writing.

Describing buildings in writing can provide readers with a vivid sense of place, history, and atmosphere. It enhances storytelling, creates visual imagery, and sets the scene in various forms of literature and communication.

Can you describe a building’s interior as effectively as its exterior?

Yes, describing a building’s interior can be just as effective. You can discuss its layout, decor, furnishings, and ambiance to create a more immersive and comprehensive description.

Should I focus on historical or architectural details when describing a building?

The choice depends on your purpose. If you want to emphasize the building’s historical significance, focus on its backstory. For architectural appreciation, delve into its design, materials, and unique features.

How do I make my building description more engaging to readers?

Engage readers by using sensory language, evoking emotions, and telling stories related to the building. Engaging descriptions appeal to sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste.

What’s the best way to organize a building description?

Organize your description logically, often starting with the exterior and moving to the interior. Alternatively, you can structure it by detailing elements from top to bottom, front to back, or in a sequence that makes sense for your narrative.

Can I use metaphors and similes to describe buildings?

Yes, metaphors and similes can be powerful tools to make your descriptions more vivid. For example, you can compare a modern skyscraper to a towering glass monolith.

How do I balance detail with conciseness in building descriptions?

Balance is key. Include enough detail to paint a picture, but avoid overwhelming the reader with excessive information. Focus on the most significant and impactful elements.

Should I include historical anecdotes when describing a building?

Including historical anecdotes can add depth and interest to your description. They can highlight the building’s place in history and make it more engaging for readers.

Can I use a building’s description as a setting in my fiction writing?

Absolutely! Building descriptions can serve as essential settings in fiction, enhancing the story’s atmosphere and providing a backdrop for events and character interactions.

Are there any common mistakes to avoid when describing buildings in writing?

Avoid using overly technical jargon that might confuse readers. Also, be cautious of being too repetitive or providing too much information. Strive for clarity and balance in your descriptions.

Can I describe fictional or imaginary buildings using the same principles?

Yes, you can apply the same principles to describe fictional or imaginary buildings. The key is to create a detailed and immersive description that helps readers visualize and connect with your imaginary world.

How do I ensure my building description stands out and is unique?

To make your description unique, focus on the building’s distinctive features, its emotional impact, and the stories it tells. Avoid clichés and strive for originality in your language and perspective.

What’s the role of research in building description?

Research can provide historical context, interesting facts, and architectural details that can enrich your description. It adds authenticity and depth to your writing.

Can I use building descriptions in non-fiction, such as travel writing or journalism?

Yes, building descriptions are valuable in various forms of non-fiction writing, especially travel articles, architectural reviews, and historical pieces. They help readers connect with the subject matter and provide valuable information.

Remember that effective building descriptions should not just inform but also engage and inspire readers, allowing them to form a deeper connection with the subject.

In the enchanting world of literary creation, where words are our palette and imagination knows no bounds, the art of describing buildings in writing stands as a testament to the richness of human expression.

Through this journey, we have explored the power of keen observation, the intricacies of detail, and the magic of language in bringing buildings to life within our narratives.

As writers, we now possess the tools to craft architectural masterpieces with words, forging connections between readers and the settings we create.

Whether we evoke the hustle and bustle of urban landscapes, the tranquility of pastoral scenes, or the grandeur of historic landmarks, our descriptions have the potential to captivate, resonate, and transport.

So, let us continue to embrace this craft, painting with our literary brushes, weaving buildings into the very fabric of our stories, and leaving indelible imprints of the worlds we create in the hearts and minds of our readers.

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44 Ways to Describe Buildings–Homes I

For the next few months, weekly writing tips will include word choice suggestions. That includes:

• colorful and original descriptions
• pithy words and phrases
• picture nouns and action verbs
• writing that draws a reader in and addicts them to your voice

After taking some advice from Crawford Home Buyers , I keep a  collection of descriptions that have pulled me into the books.

It’s amazing how skilled writers can use just a few carefully chosen words to transport readers into the world of their story, capturing their attention and making them want to stay. While some authors might focus on describing homes in detail, others might take a different approach, relying on powerful imagery and sensory details to evoke a mood or feeling. No matter your writing style, it’s important to find a way to connect with your readers and draw them in. When it comes to bridging the gap between planning institutions and entrepreneurs, one useful resource is  https://netivey-hakama.co.il/ . This service produces professional content and promotes the transformation of licensing into a profession with required training and education, helping to connect planners and authorities with the wider community and promoting effective collaboration.

A note: These are for inspiration only . They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly from an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted when published).

• Fair-sized house built of red Lyons Sandstone with the most god-awful-looking picket fence I’d ever seen.
• Small upstairs apartment on Newport Island, a tiny piece of land accessible only by a bridge so narrow, it would admit just one car at a time.
• The weather-beaten slat cottage sat at the far end of a mostly brown lawn. Wood silvered by the sun. Roof shingles warped. Small stands of plantain and giant bird-of-paradise for privacy. Despite the weathered appearance of the slat cottage, there was hope for its revival thanks to the services of a reliable local company specializing in affordable roofing solutions. If you too wish to safeguard your home against the elements and enhance its aesthetic appeal, going for this local company is the answer. Their dedication to quality and affordability ensures that your roof not only withstands weather challenges but also adds to the charm of your dwelling. With their assistance, the weather-beaten cottage could regain its former glory, proving that a reliable roofing projects can breathe new life into any home.
• Rambling old farm house
• Gleamed with the spotless silence of for-company-only.
• He leaned on the old boards. They felt thin and veined, frozen by a hundred winters, baked by a hundred summers. They smelled of dust and age. A big house from buy houses syracuse ny , the kind in which most American kids dreamed of growing up. Secluded among trees on one of DC’s most exclusive streets, it had turrets, gables, dormers, balconies, a screened-in front porch, a free-standing garage, a gazebo, a pool, formal gardents, the American dream.
• Sturdy two-story residence designed without the least imagination
• A set of sagging wooden steps descended three treads from the door

Contact an Industrial Cleaning Services provider if you’re managing an industrial facility or planning to sell a commercial property.

• A room barely big enough to exhale into
• A room that showed her lack of interest in anything to do with what people thought of her
• Small with clean white walls, a twin bed, a desk with a blank blotter on it, sliding closets opposite the bed, and thin green shag carpet. Or make a call to Zerorez to do this job professionally.
• My Writing Area: My computer faces out the window. I like having the sky and buildings in the background. Occasionally a bird or plane flies by in the distance. To my far left is my 42″ flatscreen TV (size does matter), which often displays my daily dose of CNN or Grey’s Anatomy. Next to that is my Buddhist altar, which I need to make better use of. To my right is a framed poster displaying a poem of mine that had been on Chicago buses and trains. And to the far right is a black and white picture of Grand Central Station with wide beams of light gushing in through the windows. The beams look like they are about to make the commuters levitate at any minute and float skyward. A single light burned, casting light on a chintz couch and an antique Quaker chair
• Improvised kitchenette off to one side
• Walls and ceilings were covered with mirrors, a high-tech bordello.
• Furnishings were cheap, black-painted. A worn mustard-yellow bean-bag chair, a relic of the seventies. An old tape deck and a towering set of speakers whose cloth was fraying
• A front door that could accommodate a family of giraffes.
• A foyer that would accommodate the Serengeti Plant at the foot of a vast curving staircase that probably went to heaven
• Polished wood floors and a graceful banister that curved up toward a soaring second floor gallery.
• Persian rug cove red a shopworn carpet.
• Prints of gentlemen riding to hounds decorate the walls.
• Crumbling rock walls
• Beautiful high arched windows
• Velvet drapes framed the windows, the lace inner curtains remained drawn, allowing daylight to enter while rendering the heart-stopping view over the city a blur
• bay windows
• two tall windows allowed sunlight to flood the room
• the windows flanked a grey fabric sofa, burgundy throw
• sheer lace curtains bordered by heavy burgundy drapes matching

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How To Describe a House in Writing (21 Tips for Beginners)

Enhance your storytelling by vividly describing houses and setting the perfect scene for your readers.

Here is how to describe a house in writing:

Describe a house in fiction by considering its architecture, size, color, materials, landscaping, décor, furniture, lighting, sounds, smells, age, and condition. Also explain the house’s location, unique features, atmosphere, emotional response, personal memories, and historical context.

In this article, you’ll learn all the best tips for how to describe a house in writing.

How To Describe a House in Writing (21 Things You Must Know)

Table of Contents

When it comes to describing a house in your writing, here are 21 essential aspects to consider:

• Architecture: The architecture of a house can give readers a quick snapshot of its character. Victorian homes might be associated with history and elegance, modern homes with sleekness and efficiency, and colonial homes with tradition and solidity. An old, sprawling manor with many gables and chimneys gives off a different vibe than a compact, glass-walled contemporary home.
• Size: The size of a house can say much about the people living in it. A massive mansion might imply wealth or social status, while a cozy cottage may indicate a simpler lifestyle. The scale of the house can affect the overall atmosphere and dynamics of the story.
• Color: Color can set the tone for a house description. A red-brick house may evoke feelings of warmth and homeliness, while a grey stone mansion may feel imposing or cold. Use color to create an emotional response in your readers.
• Materials: The materials used in the house’s construction can add texture to your descriptions. The roughness of stone, the coolness of metal, the warmth of wood – these sensory details can make your descriptions more vivid and engaging.
• Landscaping: The surrounding environment and garden can also play a significant role in setting the scene. A well-kept garden may indicate the owners’ pride and care, while an overgrown yard may hint at neglect or mystery.
• Windows and Doors: Windows and doors can be symbolic gateways to the souls of a house. They can offer views into the world outside or hide secrets within. Their size, shape, and detail can add depth to your house description.
• Rooms: The arrangement and purpose of rooms can tell readers a lot about the inhabitants’ lives. A house with many bedrooms might hint at a large family, while a house with a spacious home office could suggest a work-from-home professional.
• Decor: The decor of a house can reflect the tastes and personalities of its inhabitants. Is the house filled with antique furniture and paintings, or is it minimalist and modern? This can greatly influence the atmosphere of the house.
• Furniture: Furniture adds functionality and personality to a house. A plush velvet couch might indicate luxury, while a worn but comfortable armchair may suggest warmth and comfort. Different pieces can also hint at the activities and priorities of the people living in the house.
• Lighting: Lighting can drastically alter the mood of a scene. Bright, natural light streaming through a window can create an atmosphere of cheerfulness and energy, while dim artificial lighting can make a room feel cozy or somber.
• Sounds: Sounds like the creaking of stairs, the ticking of a grandfather clock, or wind whistling through gaps can add a layer of sensory experience, making the scene more immersive and engaging.
• Smell: The smell of a house can evoke strong emotions and memories in readers. The scent of fresh paint could suggest new beginnings, while the musty smell of old books in the library might bring a sense of nostalgia.
• Age: The age of a house can add a historical dimension to your story. An old house might hold many secrets and stories within its walls, while a new house could symbolize a fresh start or modernity.
• Condition: The condition of the house can reflect its history and care. A house in good repair might suggest attentive owners, while a rundown house might indicate neglect, hardship, or abandonment.
• Location: The location of the house can set the context for your story. A house in a bustling city will have a different vibe compared to a house in a quiet countryside or a suburban neighborhood.
• Unique Features: Unique architectural features like a hidden room, a beautiful stained-glass window, or an ornate fireplace can add interest to your house description and serve as key points in your narrative.
• Atmosphere: The overall vibe or mood of the house can be a critical aspect of your description. Whether it’s a cozy, warm ambiance, a chilly, eerie vibe, or a sterile, impersonal atmosphere, this can greatly influence how readers perceive the house.
• Emotional Response: How your protagonist feels about the house can guide readers’ emotions as well. A character may feel comfort and safety within their home, fear and unease in a stranger’s house, or nostalgia and longing in a childhood home.
• Weather: The weather can dramatically affect how a house is perceived. A house may seem warm and welcoming with sunshine bathing its facade, while the same house can appear ominous and foreboding in a thunderstorm.
• Personal Memories: If your character has a history with the house, personal memories can add depth to your description. Memories of happy family dinners, traumatic events, or mundane daily activities can color a character’s perception of the house.
• Historical Context: If the house is set in a particular historical period, including relevant details can make the description more authentic and immersive. This could involve architectural styles of the period, materials commonly used in that era, or historical events associated with the house or location.

Here is a video I made about how to describe a house in writing:

Examples of House Descriptions

Every house has a story to tell, and it’s your job as a writer to relay it effectively.

Whether it’s a crumbling castle or a modern penthouse, the detail lies in your description.

Here are five examples.

Victorian House

Standing proudly at the corner of the street, the grand Victorian house commands attention with its ornate wooden detailing, stained glass windows, and a turret projecting into the sky.

Its paint, though peeling slightly, remains a vibrant royal blue, reflecting a subtle charm of antiquity.

The scent of roses wafts from the beautifully manicured garden, surrounding the property like an idyllic frame. Inside, the house remains faithful to its period, decorated with heavy drapes, antique furniture, and fireplaces in nearly every room.

Walking through the house is like stepping back in time.

Modern House

The modern house, all clean lines and glass, glows like a jewel against the cityscape.

Its tall, floor-to-ceiling windows invite light to play on the polished concrete floors, creating an ever-changing pattern throughout the day.

Minimalistic furniture, curated artwork, and a sleek stainless-steel kitchen give it a sense of chic sophistication.

An underlying aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a hint of sandalwood incense gives the house a warm, welcoming feel.

It stands as a testament to architectural innovation and luxury living.

Nestled in a lush, green valley, the charming stone cottage emanates a sense of tranquility.

Its ivy-clad walls, thatched roof, and quaint wooden doors seem lifted straight from a fairy-tale. Inside, the cottage is warm and cozy, with an open hearth always burning and worn, comfortable furniture.

The smell of home-cooked meals and the sound of wind rustling through the trees outside create an ambiance of serenity and homeliness.

It’s a picture of rustic simplicity and the perfect retreat from the hectic pace of the world.

The old farmhouse, with its weathered white paint and wrap-around porch, is the heart of the sprawling property.

Its large, open kitchen hums with activity, smelling of fresh bread and ripe apples from the surrounding orchard.

An old grandfather clock ticks rhythmically in the living room, filled with well-used furniture and family photos. The sound of livestock and the fresh scent of hay carry in through the open windows.

Despite its age, the farmhouse radiates warmth and the quintessence of home.

Situated in the heart of the city, the apartment is a mix of modern style and comfortable living.

It showcases an open concept layout, with a glass wall revealing an impressive view of the bustling city.

High-end appliances, a plush sectional, and a strategically placed bookshelf loaded with books of various genres lend a personality to the place.

The sound of jazz playing softly complements the hum of the city beyond. It’s a sanctuary amidst the urban chaos.

Words To Use to Describe a House in Writing

Here is a chart I put together to help you describe a house in writing:

How Do You Describe a Beautiful House?

Describing a beautiful house involves a balance of physical details and emotional responses.

You’ll want to communicate not only what the house looks like, but also how it makes one feel.

Begin with the house’s exterior, focusing on its architectural style, structure, and symmetry.

Discuss its color scheme, materials used, and the overall aesthetics.

You could describe a charming thatched cottage nestled amidst vibrant flowerbeds, a majestic Victorian manor with intricate woodwork, or a sleek modern house with clean lines and glass facades.

Don’t forget to include its surroundings and how they complement the house – a well-manicured lawn, a serene backdrop of trees, or a stunning waterfront view can all contribute to the house’s beauty.

For the interior, provide details about the layout, furniture, decor, and lighting.

Describe large, sunlit rooms, high ceilings, tasteful décor, elegant furniture, or perhaps a spectacular view from a floor-to-ceiling window.

You might describe a kitchen filled with modern appliances and smooth marble countertops, a living room with plush, comfortable seating and warm lighting, or a bedroom that offers a peaceful sanctuary with its muted colors and soft textiles.

Most importantly, convey the feelings the house invokes.

A beautiful house might make one feel relaxed, enchanted, or awed. It could emanate a sense of warmth, tranquility, or sophistication.

Using sensory details and emotive language can help readers not only visualize the house’s beauty but also experience the atmosphere it creates.

How To Describe a Mansion in a Story

When describing a mansion in a story, you want to convey its size, grandeur, and luxury.

Begin with a bird’s eye view of the mansion – its sprawling grounds, multiple floors, vast gardens, perhaps even a pool or a tennis court.

Highlight architectural features that communicate its scale and opulence, such as tall columns, grand archways, a long, winding driveway, or vast, manicured lawns.

For the interior, describe large, opulent rooms filled with luxurious furnishings.

The entrance could feature a grand staircase, the living room could have soaring ceilings and elaborate chandeliers, and the dining room could comfortably seat dozens.

Describe materials and features that indicate wealth and taste, such as marble floors, silk draperies, gold leaf details, or art collections.

Don’t forget other rooms that might be found in a mansion, such as a library, a game room, a home theater, or a wine cellar.

A mansion can also create a particular atmosphere and emotional response.

It might feel intimidating due to its size, imposing due to its grandeur, or fascinating due to its luxury.

However, a mansion could also be depicted as a lonely, echoing space, demonstrating that bigger doesn’t always mean homelier.

As always, remember to use sensory details to bring the mansion alive in your reader’s mind – the echoing footfalls on marble floors, the soft glow of a chandelier, the subtle scent of polished wood, and the hushed silence that fills its spacious rooms.

Final Thoughts: How To Describe a House in Writing

You can also describe houses based on the mood or genre of a scene of story (romantic, horror, etc.)

Happy literary house hunting!

Related Posts:

• How to Describe a Scary Clown in Writing (130 Words + Tips)
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• 400+ Words to Describe a Flower Garden: Best Writers Guide
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From golden stone to monochrome, the tall towers of the city stand in resolute togetherness all the year round.

Centuries of grand design and sculpture came together in the wide avenues to form that eclectic yet peaceful cityscape.

These tall buildings, so different from one another, are so very content to reflect the beauty of each neighbour.

A community of buildings stood tall together in the city centre, reflecting both the blue and the clouds of white-silver hue.

The buildings galloped up to the clouds and they had entire floors dedicated to play. There were slides to go down several floors at a time, they had elevators too but fun was thought so important that those were added too. Then there were the pods that moved on rails around the outside, not for transport but more as a sort of wild fairground ride. Then there were the parts that transferred wind and solar energy to electricity, and the floors that were parks with benches and butterflies. They had the community restaurants, the movie theatres and bowling ally's. They were fun and we all lived in them, quite forgetting what the word "lonely" meant.

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Building Descriptors: A Guide with Examples

When it comes to describing buildings, the right adjectives can make all the difference. As a seasoned architect, I’ve come across countless structures that have left me in awe, and it’s often the descriptive words used to capture their essence that truly bring them to life. In this article, I’ll be sharing a comprehensive list of adjectives that can be used to describe buildings, along with examples that showcase their application. Whether you’re an aspiring architect, a design enthusiast, or simply someone who appreciates the beauty of buildings, this guide will help you find the perfect words to articulate your admiration.

From towering skyscrapers to quaint cottages, buildings come in all shapes and sizes, each with its own unique character and charm. As I walk through the streets of a city, I can’t help but be captivated by the architectural wonders that surround me. The grandeur of a majestic cathedral, the sleekness of a modern glass facade, the rustic beauty of a historic landmark – these are just a few examples of the myriad of adjectives that can be used to describe buildings. In this article, I’ll be diving into the world of architectural vocabulary, providing you with a curated selection of adjectives that will help you paint a vivid picture of any building you encounter.

Table of Contents

How to Describe building? – Different Scenarios

Describing buildings is an important skill for architects, design enthusiasts, and anyone who appreciates the beauty of architecture. Each building has its own unique features and characteristics that can be effectively conveyed through the use of descriptive adjectives. In this section, I’ll provide you with different scenarios and examples to help you describe buildings accurately.

Scenario 1: Describing the Exterior of a Building

When describing the exterior of a building, consider its overall appearance, architectural style, and notable features. Here are some examples to get you started:

Scenario 2: Describing the Interior of a Building

Describing the interior of a building involves capturing its atmosphere, layout, and decor. Use these adjectives to create a vivid picture:

Scenario 3: Describing the Function of a Building

When describing the function of a building, focus on its purpose and how it serves its users. Consider these adjectives:

Describing Words for building in English

When it comes to describing buildings, it’s important to choose the right adjectives to accurately convey their characteristics and features. Whether you’re an architect, a design enthusiast, or simply someone who appreciates the beauty of architecture, having a diverse vocabulary of describing words can greatly enhance your ability to articulate your admiration effectively. In this section, I’ll provide you with a range of adjectives that you can use to describe different aspects of a building, along with examples to help you understand their usage.

Describing the Exterior of a Building

When describing the exterior of a building, it’s essential to capture its appearance, style, and overall impression. Here are some adjectives that can be used to describe the exterior of a building:

Example : The majestic building with its towering spires and intricate architectural details never fails to leave visitors in awe.

Describing the Interior of a Building

The interior of a building is where its true character and functionality come to life. Here are some adjectives to describe the interior of a building:

• Contemporary
• Minimalistic

Example : As I stepped into the welcoming interior of the building, I was greeted by a warm ambiance and an expansive open floor plan.

Describing the Function of a Building

A building’s purpose and function play a significant role in its design and layout. Here are some adjectives that can be used to describe the function of a building:

• Educational
• Residential
• Sustainable

Example : The sustainable building incorporates state-of-the-art technology to reduce energy consumption and promote eco-friendly practices.

Remember, using the right adjectives can bring your descriptions of buildings to life. Experiment with different words to accurately convey the unique characteristics and features of the buildings you encounter.

I hope this section has provided you with useful adjectives to describe buildings in English. Continue reading to discover more exciting and insightful information about adjectives for buildings.

Adjectives for building

As someone who appreciates architecture or works in the field of design, you know that choosing the right adjectives to describe buildings is essential. Whether you’re talking about the exterior, interior, or overall function of a building, using the right words can effectively articulate your admiration. Here are some adjectives to help you accurately describe buildings, along with examples to give you a better understanding of their usage.

Positive Adjectives for Building

When it comes to describing buildings in a positive light, there are a plethora of adjectives you can use. These words can evoke a sense of admiration, awe, and appreciation for the architectural beauty. Here are 12 positive adjectives you can use:

Negative Adjectives for Building

While we often focus on the positive aspects of buildings, there are times when negative adjectives are necessary to convey certain qualities or flaws. Here are 5 negative adjectives you can use when describing buildings:

Remember, the adjectives you choose should accurately reflect your observations and opinions about buildings. Each adjective has its own unique meaning and can greatly impact how others perceive the architectural beauty. So, use these adjectives wisely and let your descriptions bring buildings to life in the minds of your readers.

Synonyms and Antonyms with Example Sentences

Synonyms for building.

When it comes to describing buildings, there are various synonyms that can help us convey different aspects and qualities. Here are some synonyms for the word “building” along with example sentences:

Antonyms for Building

On the other hand, we also have antonyms that describe the opposite characteristics or qualities of a building. Here are some antonyms for the word “building” along with example sentences:

Remember, using a wide range of adjectives can help us paint a vivid picture and accurately convey our thoughts about buildings. By incorporating synonyms and antonyms into our vocabulary, we can add depth and richness to our descriptions.

In this article, I have explored the significance of selecting the right adjectives when describing buildings. By providing a wide range of synonyms and antonyms for the word “building,” along with example sentences, I aimed to enhance readers’ understanding of their usage. It is crucial to incorporate a diverse array of adjectives to paint a vivid picture and effectively convey our thoughts about buildings.

By incorporating synonyms and antonyms into our vocabulary, we can add depth and richness to our descriptions. Architects, design enthusiasts, and those who appreciate architecture can benefit from this knowledge, as it allows them to articulate their admiration and effectively convey certain qualities or flaws of buildings.

Remember, the choice of adjectives can greatly impact how we perceive and understand buildings. Whether it’s describing their grandeur, elegance, or even their flaws, the right adjectives can help us accurately convey our thoughts and emotions. So, let’s continue to explore the vast world of adjectives and expand our vocabulary to create captivating and insightful descriptions of the buildings we encounter.

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Creative Adjectives to Describe Interesting Buildings

Table of Contents

Buildings are a very mundane sight when you’re living in the city. And they may not seem like the most exciting subject, but they can be with the right  adjectives to describe a building . We’ve listed some of the best adjectives that can help you describe buildings in a vivid and interesting way. These are sure to come in handy when writing an essay about the city you’re living in.

Aside from a long list of adjectives, this article will also touch on the definition of adjectives and some tips on writing your description. We have so much important stuff to discuss, so let’s get into it! 

What Are Adjectives?

When describing a building or virtually any object, you’ll need the help of adjectives. The primary function of these words is to describe the characteristics of the noun or pronoun in your sentence. These characteristics can include size, shape, color, and other features.

Adjectives add more meaning to your sentences and create more vivid pictures in your reader’s head . This will make it easier for them to visualize what you’re talking about. 

Quick Tips for Describing a Building

Describe the prominent features.

There are many elements to a building that you can use to describe it. Talk about the exterior and interior features that can make it unique and interesting. Include any stand-out features of the building, such as a special roof or a beautiful view.

Some other things to consider for describing a building’s exterior are the shape, color, style, and material used. Also, consider the architectural elements included in the building, such as windows, doors, and balconies.

Paint a Picture Using Multiple Adjectives

Sometimes, one adjective isn’t enough to paint a clear picture of your subject. In the case of building descriptions, you can opt to use multiple adjectives in a single sentence to make it more comprehensive.

For Example:

The building was made of brick with a  tall  roof,  old-fashioned  doors, and  weathered  paint.

Use Comparisons

A good comparison can help the reader understand your description better. Instead of just saying that the building is tall, try saying:

Looking up at the  towering  skyscrapers, we all felt like  miniature  ants.

Adjectives to Describe a Building

• Abandoned : No longer used or occupied.

The abandoned building is an eerie sight.

• Ancient : very old

The fire destroyed the ancient buildings.

• Bright : full of light

It was a bright building thanks to its many windows.

• Clean : free from dirt

The clean lobby of the building was spotless.

• Complex:  made of many interconnected parts

This complex building took several years to build because of its design.

• Damaged : harmed or broken

The storm left the building damaged beyond repair.

• Dark : not having enough light

It was a spooky and dark room.

• Dirty : covered in dirt

The balcony of the dirty building was filled with leaves.

• Empty : has no tenants or occupants.

Mysterious sounds haunted the empty building.

• Large : big in size

Large skyscrapers filled the city sky. They were hard to miss.

• Modern : has an up-to-date design and structure.

The modern building was equipped with solar panels.

• Refurbished : renovated and repaired. 

Many houses were refurbished with new paint and furniture.

• Towering:  extremely tall, especially when compared to the surroundings.

Many tourists were astonished at the towering buildings.

• Well-built : solidly constructed

The well-built building withstood the hurricane.

Other Interesting Adjectives Related to Buildings

• Melancholic
• Magnificent
• Dilapidated
• Ruined 

When describing a building, try to pay attention to its details. Describe the building’s characteristics, such as size, shape, and color.

There are so many  adjectives to describe a building  that you can use to spice up your description . Make sure to choose the right ones that truly fit the building you are describing.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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A Guide to Descriptive Writing

by Melissa Donovan | Jan 7, 2021 | Creative Writing | 8 comments

What is descriptive writing?

Writing description is a necessary skill for most writers. Whether we’re writing an essay, a story, or a poem, we usually reach a point where we need to describe something. In fiction, we describe settings and characters. In poetry, we describe scenes, experiences, and emotions. In creative nonfiction, we describe reality. Descriptive writing is especially important for speculative fiction writers and poets. If you’ve created a fantasy world, then you’ll need to deftly describe it to readers; Lewis Carroll not only described Wonderland  (aff link); he also described the fantastical creatures that inhabited it.

But many writers are challenged by description writing, and many readers find it boring to read — when it’s not crafted skillfully.

However, I think it’s safe to say that technology has spoiled us. Thanks to photos and videos, we’ve become increasingly visual, which means it’s getting harder to use words to describe something, especially if it only exists in our imaginations.

What is Descriptive Writing?

One might say that descriptive writing is the art of painting a picture with words. But descriptive writing goes beyond visuals. Descriptive writing hits all the senses; we describe how things look, sound, smell, taste, and feel (their tactile quality).

The term descriptive writing can mean a few different things:

• The act of writing description ( I’m doing some descriptive writing ).
• A descriptive essay is short-form prose that is meant to describe something in detail; it can describe a person, place, event, object, or anything else.
• Description as part of a larger work: This is the most common kind of descriptive writing. It is usually a sentence or paragraph (sometimes multiple paragraphs) that provide description, usually to help the reader visualize what’s happening, where it’s happening, or how it’s happening. It’s most commonly used to describe a setting or a character. An example would be a section of text within a novel that establishes the setting by describing a room or a passage that introduces a character with a physical description.
• Writing that is descriptive (or vivid) — an author’s style: Some authors weave description throughout their prose and verse, interspersing it through the dialogue and action. It’s a style of writing that imparts description without using large blocks of text that are explicitly focused on description.
• Description is integral in poetry writing. Poetry emphasizes imagery, and imagery is rendered in writing via description, so descriptive writing is a crucial skill for most poets.

Depending on what you write, you’ve probably experimented with one of more of these types of descriptive writing, maybe all of them.

Can you think of any other types of descriptive writing that aren’t listed here?

How Much Description is Too Much?

Classic literature was dense with description whereas modern literature usually keeps description to a minimum.

Compare the elaborate descriptions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s  Lord of the Rings  trilogy  with the descriptions in J.K. Rowling’s  Harry Potter series  (aff links). Both series relied on description to help readers visualize an imagined, fantastical world, but Rowling did not use her precious writing space to describe standard settings whereas Tolkien frequently paused all action and spent pages describing a single landscape.

This isn’t unique to Tolkien and Rowling; if you compare most literature from the beginning of of the 20th century and earlier to today’s written works, you’ll see that we just don’t dedicate much time and space to description anymore.

I think this radical change in how we approach description is directly tied to the wide availability of film, television, and photography. Let’s say you were living in the 19th century, writing a story about a tropical island for an audience of northern, urban readers. You would be fairly certain that most of your readers had never seen such an island and had no idea what it looked like. To give your audience a full sense of your story’s setting, you’d need pages of detail describing the lush jungle, sandy beaches, and warm waters.

Nowadays, we all know what a tropical island looks like, thanks to the wide availability of media. Even if you’ve never been to such an island, surely you’ve seen one on TV. This might explain why few books on the craft of writing address descriptive writing. The focus is usually on other elements, like language, character, plot, theme, and structure.

For contemporary writers, the trick is to make the description as precise and detailed as possible while keeping it to a minimum. Most readers want characters and action with just enough description so that they can imagine the story as it’s unfolding.

If you’ve ever encountered a story that paused to provide head-to-toe descriptions along with detailed backstories of every character upon their introduction into the narrative, you know just how grating description can be when executed poorly.

However, it’s worth noting that a skilled writer can roll out descriptions that are riveting to read. Sometimes they’re riveting because they’re integrated seamlessly with the action and dialogue; other times, the description is deftly crafted and engaging on its own. In fact, an expert descriptive writer can keep readers glued through multiple pages of description.

Descriptive Writing Tips

I’ve encountered descriptive writing so smooth and seamless that I easily visualized what was happening without even noticing that I was reading description. Some authors craft descriptions that are so lovely, I do notice — but in a good way. Some of them are so compelling that I pause to read them again.

On the other hand, poorly crafted descriptions can really impede a reader’s experience. Description doesn’t work if it’s unclear, verbose, or bland. Most readers prefer action and dialogue to lengthy descriptions, so while a paragraph here and there can certainly help readers better visualize what’s happening, pages and pages of description can increase the risk that they’ll set your work aside and never pick it up again. There are exceptions to every rule, so the real trick is to know when lengthy descriptions are warranted and when they’re just boring.

Here are some general tips for descriptive writing:

• Use distinct descriptions that stand out and are memorable. For example, don’t write that a character is five foot two with brown hair and blue eyes. Give the reader something to remember. Say the character is short with mousy hair and sky-blue eyes.
• Make description active: Consider the following description of a room: There was a bookshelf in the corner. A desk sat under the window. The walls were beige, and the floor was tiled. That’s boring. Try something like this: A massive oak desk sat below a large picture window and beside a shelf overflowing with books. Hardcovers, paperbacks, and binders were piled on the dingy tiled floor in messy stacks.  In the second example, words like  overflowing  and  piled are active.
• Weave description through the narrative: Sometimes a character enters a room and looks around, so the narrative needs to pause to describe what the character sees. Other times, description can be threaded through the narrative. For example, instead of pausing to describe a character, engage that character in dialogue with another character. Use the characters’ thoughts and the dialogue tags to reveal description: He stared at her flowing, auburn curls, which reminded him of his mother’s hair. “Where were you?” he asked, shifting his green eyes across the restaurant to where a customer was hassling one of the servers.

Simple descriptions are surprisingly easy to execute. All you have to do is look at something (or imagine it) and write what you see. But well-crafted descriptions require writers to pay diligence to word choice, to describe only those elements that are most important, and to use engaging language to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. Instead of spending several sentences describing a character’s height, weight, age, hair color, eye color, and clothing, a few, choice details will often render a more vivid image for the reader: Red hair framed her round, freckled face like a spray of flames. This only reveals three descriptive details: red hair, a round face, and freckles. Yet it paints more vivid picture than a statistical head-to-toe rundown:  She was five foot three and no more than a hundred and ten pounds with red hair, blue eyes, and a round, freckled face.

10 descriptive writing practices.

How to Practice Writing Description

Here are some descriptive writing activities that will inspire you while providing opportunities to practice writing description. If you don’t have much experience with descriptive writing, you may find that your first few attempts are flat and boring. If you can’t keep readers engaged, they’ll wander off. Work at crafting descriptions that are compelling and mesmerizing.

• Go to one of your favorite spots and write a description of the setting: it could be your bedroom, a favorite coffee shop, or a local park. Leave people, dialogue, and action out of it. Just focus on explaining what the space looks like.
• Who is your favorite character from the movies? Describe the character from head to toe. Show the reader not only what the character looks like, but also how the character acts. Do this without including action or dialogue. Remember: description only!
• Forty years ago we didn’t have cell phones or the internet. Now we have cell phones that can access the internet. Think of a device or gadget that we’ll have forty years from now and describe it.
• Since modern fiction is light on description, many young and new writers often fail to include details, even when the reader needs them. Go through one of your writing projects and make sure elements that readers may not be familiar with are adequately described.
• Sometimes in a narrative, a little description provides respite from all the action and dialogue. Make a list of things from a story you’re working on (gadgets, characters, settings, etc.), and for each one, write a short description of no more than a hundred words.
• As mentioned, Tolkien often spent pages describing a single landscape. Choose one of your favorite pieces of classic literature, find a long passage of description, and rewrite it. Try to cut the descriptive word count in half.
• When you read a book, use a highlighter to mark sentences and paragraphs that contain description. Don’t highlight every adjective and adverb. Look for longer passages that are dedicated to description.
• Write a description for a child. Choose something reasonably difficult, like the solar system. How do you describe it in such a way that a child understands how he or she fits into it?
• Most writers dream of someday writing a book. Describe your book cover.
• Write a one-page description of yourself.

If you have any descriptive writing practices to add to this list, feel free to share them in the comments.

Descriptive Writing

Does descriptive writing come easily to you, or do you struggle with it? Do you put much thought into how you write description? What types of descriptive writing have you tackled — descriptive essays, blocks of description within larger texts, or descriptions woven throughout a narrative? Share your tips for descriptive writing by leaving a comment, and keep writing!

Further Reading: Abolish the Adverbs , Making the Right Word Choices for Better Writing , and Writing Description in Fiction .

I find descriptions easier when first beginning a scene. Other ones I struggle with. Yes, intertwining them with dialogue does help a lot.

I have the opposite experience. I tend to dive right into action and dialogue when I first start a scene.

I came across this article at just the right time. I am just starting to write a short story. This will change the way I describe characters in my story.

Thank you for this. R.G. Ramsey

You’re welcome!

Great tips and how to practise and improve our descriptive writing skills. Thank you for sharing.

You’re welcome, Bella.

Hello Melissa

I have read many of your articles about different aspects of writing and have enjoyed all of them. What you said here, I agree with, with the exception of #7. That is one point that I dispute and don’t understand the reason why anyone would do this, though I’ve seen books that had things like that done to them.

To me, a book is something to be treasured, loved and taken care of. It deserves my respect because I’m sure the author poured their heart and soul into its creation. Marking it up that way is nothing short of defacing it. A book or story is a form of art, so should a person mark over a picture by Rembrandt or any other famous painter? You’re a very talented author, so why would you want someone to mark through the words you had spent considerable time and effort agonizing over, while searching for the best words to convey your thoughts?

If I want to remember some section or point the author is making, then I’ll take a pen and paper and record the page number and perhaps the first few words of that particular section. I’ve found that writing a note this way helps me remember it better. This is then placed inside the cover for future reference. If someone did what you’ve suggested to a book of mine, I’d be madder than a ‘wet hen’, and that person would certainly be told what I thought of them.

In any of the previous articles you’ve written, you’ve brought up some excellent points which I’ve tried to incorporate in my writing. Keep up the good work as I know your efforts have helped me, and I’m sure other authors as well.

Hi Stanley. Thanks so much for sharing your point of view. I appreciate and value it.

Marking up a book is a common practice, especially in academia. Putting notes in margins, underlining, highlighting, and tagging pages with bookmarks is standard. Personally, I mark up nonfiction paperbacks, but I never mark up fiction paperbacks or any hardcovers (not since college).

I completely respect your right to keep your books in pristine condition. And years ago, when I started college, I felt exactly the same way. I was horrified that people (instructors and professors!) would fill their books with ugly yellow highlighting and other markips. But I quickly realized that this was shortsighted.

Consider an old paperback that is worn and dog-eared. With one look, you know this book has been read many times and it’s probably loved. It’s like the Velveteen Rabbit of books. I see markups as the same — that someone was engaging with the book and trying to understand it on a deeper level, which is not disrespectful. It’s something to be celebrated.

Sometimes we place too much value on the book as a physical object rather than what’s inside. I appreciate a beautiful book as much as anyone but what really matters to me is the information or experience that it contains. I often read on a Kindle. Sometimes I listen to audio books. There is no physical book. The experience is not lessened.

I understand where you’re coming from. I used to feel the same way, but my mind was changed. I’m not trying to change yours, but I hope you’ll understand.

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How To Write Beautiful Descriptions

Want to learn more about how to write beautiful descriptions? Read on to discover our top tips! Describing the world in your story is so important. Beautiful, vivid, compelling descriptions create a sense of place and let the reader in. The way you describe the setting will allow your reader to visualize the world in their mind's eye and also fully immerse themselves in it. In short, getting your descriptions right is pretty important.

So how do you find the perfect words to describe your setting to ensure that you paint a vivid image, while also convincing your reader that this world is real and tangible? Here are some useful tips.

Don't delay

Your reader needs to be able to imagine where your characters are from the outset. So don't wait to describe the place and the world and what they can see around them. You need to start early. A common mistake is to launch excitedly into a scene without grounding the reader first. You need to add descriptive material from the outset, otherwise, the scene will feel placeless, and this will put readers off, even if you do add in some detail later.

Get specific

Writing detailed descriptions is all about being careful with your language and choosing specific words and phrases that help to conjure up images for your reader. If you are vague or imprecise, it will be difficult for readers to do this. Take the opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, for example. 

'Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.'

He chooses super precise descriptions, he gives his readers all the help they need to step into his world and believe that they are there in it too. Don't be generic; instead, focus on exactly what you are trying to capture and find those precise words that work to do just that. 

Be selective

Don't confuse being precise with describing everything you see. While it can be very tempting to share absolutely everything going on in the surrounding areas, this will quickly become overwhelming, if not boring, for your reader. Select arresting and necessary details to create a sense of place. Remember, you are trying to evoke a particular atmosphere, not overload your reader with information. 

Use the senses

Remember, we have lots of different senses, and we are using them all the time. Make sure that your characters do the same. So don't just describe what they see; explain what they feel, taste, and smell as well. This will create a much richer and more lifelike picture for your reader to absorb. 

The following tips can help ensure that you create beautiful and exciting descriptions that work hard to satisfy your reader and allow them to get to know the world in which your characters reside. Without this, it will be like two actors talking in an empty white room. So make sure you pay attention to your descriptions as you write; your readers will thank you for it. 

So now you know how to write beautiful descriptions, why not learn more about what makes writing engaging?

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About Beth Cadman

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10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too. 

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind. 

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view . 

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines. 

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

 A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions. 

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined. 

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

 You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship. 

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

 ​​If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue. 

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.” 

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama. 

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid . 

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.” 

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good. 

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. 

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success. 

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps. 

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything. 

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about. 

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well. 

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels: 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers. 

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.  

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural. 

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.” 

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine. 

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure." 

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between. 

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." 

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible. 

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them. 

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through: 

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years." 

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story. 

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is." 

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales. 

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.” 

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be. 

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it. 

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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Columns > Published on March 22nd, 2012

Writing Powerful Descriptions

Writing is an account of how people think. As a medium it's intrinsically empathic; it communicates patently human sensibilities. In order for a story to work, it needs to feel like real life, even when it’s actually something quite different. The more detailed and rich your descriptions, the better your writing will approximate the human experience, thereby establishing a connection with fellow minds.

The best descriptions are the ones that are completely original, easily understood and often reminisced. They're digestible yet impressionable, they say something profound but they’re palatable enough to be comprehended by anyone. It’s a difficult technique to master, an art form in itself, really.

Consider this a primer for writing good descriptions (here’s your first lesson: “good” isn’t a suitable or sufficient way to describe anything). To make things interesting  — and very embarrassing for me — I’ve dug up several of my own stories from years past to illustrate some truly awful blunders in description, each of which poisoned workshops at varying times during the earlier half of the last decade. Be warned: some major toadstools lie ahead.

Appeal to the senses

Words with strong sensory associations always increase your chances of yielding an empathic response. Why? When you appeal to our sensory faculties, you’re inviting us to imagine how something  feels . Literally.

In order to maximize that empathic response, try to appeal to all the senses as often as you can. Don’t just tell us what something looks like, tell us how it sounds, how it tastes. Recent studies show words containing sensory descriptions are so powerful they even stimulate areas of the brain that aren't used to process language. When we read a detailed account of how something smells, for example, our sensory cortex gets a signal. In other words, the brain often treats real experiences and reading about them as the same thing. If you really want to place your reader in the story, your writing should take advantage of our collective faulty wiring whenever you can.

The same applies to our relationships with the laws of physics. Words describing motion can stimulate the motor cortex, which is responsible for coordinating body movements. If you really want to simulate motion, try doing this while varying the rhythms in your sentences. Want to increase action? Put your subject directly before the verb. To slow down the motion (in other words, to add emphasis), shorten the sentence. If you want to bring things to a stop, try replacing a conjunction with a comma: The fields are barren now, deserted. Here’s another trick: if you want to temporarily “stop” time, try removing the verbs altogether.

Be specific

Avoid summary in your descriptions. Offer concrete information, engage us with moment-to-moment details, tell us about each detail, and how they affect the senses.

One of the most practical — and indeed, easiest — ways of laying out a descriptive foundation is to envision each scene before you write it. Literally close your eyes, see the scene and then write it down. For the time being, just let the image do its work; look closely at the objects in the scene, and describe them in a manner that’s as painfully specific as possible. Now — to establish storytelling authority — make sure the description is told from the proper subjective viewpoint: tell us how the character or narrator would see things from the POV you've established.

Here’s an especially bad slice of description from a story I wrote eight years ago:

Example (bad): It is hot.

“It is hot” would be fine if I were filling out a police report, or even writing a piece of journalism. But this was intended to be a work of fiction. Clearly, I hadn’t yet realized that by generalizing and not appealing to the readers' senses I missed an ideal opportunity to connect with empathizing human minds.

Example (better): The heat is oppressive, sweltering and exhausting, it sticks to the skin and makes ovens out of parking lots.

Some things to always consider when you’re writing a scene: do your word choices paint images, do they place us in the moment? Do they make us participants in the story instead of mere observers? Not only is this new sentence more specific, it brings in a few common experiences associated with heat (sticky skin, broiling parking lots), thereby placing readers into the action and increasing the chances of an empathic response.

Limit modifiers

It’s bad timing given my last example, but try to cut down on your adjectives and adverbs. Modifiers don’t specify words as much as you might think. More often than not, they actually abstract a thought, so sentences that rely on modifiers for descriptive strength are building on faulty foundations. You’ll be more successful if you instead find the verb that perfectly portrays the image you’re envisioning. When you edit your work, spend considerable time scrutinizing your sentences to make sure the action maximizes full descriptive potential.

Example (bad): They arrived at the house just behind the streaming line of fire trucks, their street alive in the opulent glow of lights and sirens, their house ablaze in a perennial bloom of orange and yellow.

Unfortunately, this story was published before I possessed the wherewithal to edit such obtuse overwriting. Looking at it five years later, the sentence would have been fine if I simply cut down on the modifiers and let the action breathe.

Example (better): They arrived at the house just behind the fire trucks, the street alive in a glow of lights and sirens, their house ablaze.

Notice how this version places an emphasis on the verbs. Moreover, there’s another advantage gained here. In the first version, the sentence ends with a description of the colors of the blaze, hardly essential information. Now emphasis is placed on the most important information in the sentence (and in this case, the entire story): the burning house. If you want to draw extra emphasis to anything, put it at the end of the sentence. Placing it at the beginning is a close second. Never bury important information in the middle.

Use figurative language

Ever wonder why metaphor and analogy are such powerful — not to mention, popular — tools? Figurative language is an unmatched ally in descriptive pursuits. It gives the writer a chance to deconstruct a specific, subjective event and recast it into something familiar.

The human mind is engineered to see patterns. Anytime you disguise a comparison as a statement (which is what happens with a metaphor) you’re bringing the subject into a new relationship. You’ve established one pattern as being analogous to another pre-existing pattern, and we begin to see a small part of the world in a different way. It takes some creative know-how to make figurative language fly however, and metaphors that are confused, off-base or cliché can ruin an otherwise stellar piece of writing. The analogous relationships you establish have to be earned.

Example (bad): The overcast September sky stared back under a blanket of ashen gray.

First of all, I could happily live the remainder of my days without ever hearing clouds being referred to as a “blanket” again (ditto for “cotton”). Description this familiar tells me I wasn’t particularly inspired when I wrote it, back in 2005. Then there’s the semantic clumsiness of it all. “Blanket of ashen gray?" Why not just write “ashen gray blanket,” or better yet, “gray blanket?” Finally, do skies really “stare back?" The figurative appeals here (clichéd metaphor, awkward personification) seem careless, even lazy. If I were to rewrite the phrase today I might say something like this:

Example (better): There was an orange burn where the sun had been, and the mutilated animal shapes of cloud lay scattered in the tear of dusk.

It’s overkill, but you get the idea. Say something that both reconstructs the subject and enables the reader to see the world in a new, yet recognizable, light.

Also, avoid well-worn words and everyday figures of speech. Describing a farmhouse as “quaint," or using phrases like “before he knew it,” are so familiar the reader treats them as boilerplate and usually skips over them entirely. Always try to describe something in a way that’s never been described before.

Get to the point

If there’s a single take-away I want readers to get from a column that focuses on description, it’s this: avoid obfuscating and pointless over-writing. It’s not the job of the writer to besiege the reader, either with a litany of unimportant details or some long-winded, faux intellectual attempt at armchair discourse. Unfortunately, it seems nearly every writer (myself included) goes through this cringe-inducing phase where we pillage the dictionary or treat our keyboards like calculators. Works resulting from this mindset offer very little descriptive assistance for the reader, and a lot of later embarrassment for writers guilty of these storytelling snafus. When it comes to description, focus on the most telling details rather than caving in to your writerly proclivities to lean on the pen. You’ll thank me later.

Example (bad): He wondered if there was some deeper meaning to it, if the heat spoke of the true workings of this city, the only place he’d known really, and if he tried hard enough he could find an answer that satisfied him, an explanation beyond what those fortunate to have everything and those cursed with nothing have always been forced to accept, if nature’s brutality revealed a final authority, and man’s need to find reason with it was little more than a grotesque delusion that he could make sense out of nothing.

What a mess! Sentences like this reveal a practice that’s very common today, where writers spin these syntactical Triple Lindies in the hopes they can somehow scare people into liking their work. There’s a sort of bullying insecurity afoot here, because the delivery seems to operate off the idea that if readers don’t like the work, clearly it means they “didn’t understand it.” In actuality, this hat trick works on very few people, and incidentally, what’s on the page here says very, very little. This section’s descriptive duties would’ve been much more effective if I had ditched the dime-store existentialism and described instead what the character was thinking, in terms more fitting of his POV. The fundamental disregard to work within the descriptive framework of the character I established — to choose authorial square jawed smugness instead of revealing things the way the character would have seen them, in other words — reveals a rudimentary mishandling of narrative. In the end, it’s the writer who suffers the most from this kind of cloying pedantry, because he/she has deliberately girded the sentences’ potential strengths with mindless clutter.

Example (better): He wondered if the heat revealed nature’s final authority, and that man’s need to find reason with it was little more than a grotesque delusion that he could make sense out of nothing.

The sentence’s newfound pith reestablishes some aphoristic value that was completely submerged in the verbiage. It’s still not a very good sentence, mind you, but it’s far less annoying than what was on the page before. Maybe someday I’ll go back and further try to clean up this mess-terpiece, but until then I’m more than happy to let my purple prose serve as a lesson in moderation and sensibility. Here’s hoping you can also learn from your mistakes — as well as mine.

Find out about Jon Gingerich's 'Fundamentals of Short Fiction' class , which begins todfay! (few seats still available!)

About the author

Jon Gingerich is editor of O'Dwyer's magazine in New York. His fiction has been published in literary journals such as The Oyez Review, Pleiades, Helix Magazine , as well as The New York Press , London’s Litro magazine, and many others. He currently writes about politics and media trends at www.odwyerpr.com . Jon holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Some of his published fiction can be found at www.jongingerich.com .

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• Writing Tips

How to Write a Descriptive Paragraph About a Person (With Examples)

4-minute read

• 7th January 2023

Describing a person or character is difficult for even the most successful authors. It requires a balance of words to make sure they shine through without the language being too heavy. In this article, we’ll look at how to write a descriptive paragraph about a person, share some examples, and talk about different strategies.

1.   Brainstorm Your Ideas

Brainstorming is crucial to any writing process. It’s the process in which you think of ideas for what you’d like to write about. In this case, you’re writing a descriptive paragraph about a person. It’s important to use adjectives to describe the features or characteristics you want to focus on.

One way to come up with ideas for a descriptive paragraph about a person is to go through the five senses. Use the questions below to get some ideas for what you want to highlight about your person.

Appeal to your reader’s senses – smell, taste, sound, sight, and touch

Smell: How does the person smell? Do they wear perfume? Are they doing an activity that would make them have a certain smell?

Taste: Do you associate a certain food with this person? Does it make you think of a specific taste? Can you taste something due to a certain smell they have?

Sound: Do they have a unique voice or laugh? Are they doing an activity that has distinctive sounds?

Sight: What prominent features do they have? For example, think about their dressing style, their smile, or their surroundings. What do you see them doing in your mind when you see a photo of them? What memories do you have of this person? Does this person remind you of something or someone?

Touch: What textures do you see? For example, imagine their skin or clothing. How does it feel if you hug them?

2.   Begin With a Short and Snappy Sentence

Like with any type of writing, you want to hook your reader so that they want to continue reading. In this case, you can use a topic sentence, if appropriate, to introduce your reader to the person. For example:

Or, if you want to be more creative, you can reel them in with a short and snappy sentence about this person. This is called a writing hook . This sentence should focus on a stand-out detail or characteristic about the person you’re describing. For example:

3.   Describe the Person

Now, this is the hard part. But, if you’ve brainstormed plenty of ideas and know which ones you want to focus on, it will be easier. Let’s look at some examples to get a better idea of how to write a descriptive paragraph about a person using the prompt “describe a person you admire.”

Comments: This paragraph is pretty typical of most students. It gives lots of visual details of the person and uses a simile or two (“ Her eyes are like the color of honey” and “Her smile shines like the sun” ). While this strategy gets the job done, it’s not very exciting to read. In fact, it can be quite boring!

Let’s look at how we can rewrite this to make it more exciting.

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Comments: In this example, we focused on one defining characteristic of the person we are describing — her laugh. This strategy places more focus on the person you’re describing, rather than the adjectives you use to describe them.

4.   Edit and Revise

After you write your descriptive paragraph, be sure to read it over. Read it out loud. Read it in a funny voice. Doing this will help you to hear the words and identify which parts do not work or sound awkward.

5.   General Tips for Descriptive Writing

●  Avoid using too many descriptive words.

●  Remember to show the reader, not tell.

●  Appeal to the reader’s five senses – smell, touch, taste, sight, and sound.

●  Focus on a striking or defining characteristic.

●  Use contrasting details from other people or surroundings for emphasis.

●  Use literary devices (metaphors, similes etc.) sparingly and with intention.

●  Use a hook to reel your reader in.

●  Use a variety of short and long sentences.

●  Practice creative writing exercises to improve your descriptive writing skills.

●  Always edit and revise your writing.

If you need more help with writing a descriptive paragraph or essay , send your work to us! Our experts will proofread your first 500 words for free !

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