Grammaropolis
The Writing Company · with the Mayor

Write to Describe

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Write to Describe

When your purpose is to describe, the details carry the feeling. Name the feeling and it dies. Imply it and it lives.

Every description hands your reader a place to stand. Here is what a good one carries now.

  1. A place the reader can enter
    Your scene, named in one sentence. The reader should know where they are standing before anything else happens.
  2. One path, held
    Pick your order through the scene and hold it to the last line.
  3. Things that act
    Nothing just sits there, and nothing gets announced. The things do the acting, and the reader watches them.
  4. Implication over statement
    Find the detail that carries the feeling, and never name the feeling. A half-wiped name on a whiteboard says more than a paragraph about sadness.
  5. A final detail that lands
    End where your path ends, on the one detail the reader will keep feeling after they stop reading.

Spend your tools

The craft moves you already know still do the work, pointed at a description.

Jake portrait

Jake · Show, do not tell

Could we be more specific? Do not state the sadness. Give the third name on the whiteboard and the silence, and the reader arrives at the sadness alone. What you imply, a reader keeps longer than what you announce.

I was sad the dog got returned again. The staff wrote his name on the whiteboard for the third time, and nobody said anything.

Nelson portrait

Nelson · Specific nouns

Two nouns can point at the same thing and FEEL different. "Place" is flat; "shelter" carries care. "Animals" is neutral; "strays" carries the loss. That extra feeling a word carries is its connotation, and choosing it on purpose is real power. Nelson would want the exact one.

The animals at the place needed homes. The strays at the shelter needed homes.

Vinny portrait

Vinny · Strong verbs

A verb can do more than name an action; it can set the pace. "Waited" is a snapshot; "had been waiting" stretches the weeks behind it. "Was deciding" slows the choice down so the reader feels it. Vinny knows the verb sets the clock.

The dog waited. I decided to stay. The dog had been waiting for weeks. I was deciding, slowly, to stay.

Connie portrait

Connie · Clause control and subordination

When two ideas share a sentence, one can lead and one can follow. Tuck the lesser idea into a subordinate clause ("where I learned...") so the main idea ("changed me") carries the weight. Model the commas around the clause; that is the rule. Connie can join clauses, but you decide which one leads.

I volunteered at the shelter. I learned why pets get returned. It changed me. Volunteering at the shelter, where I learned why pets get returned, changed me.

The Describe Plan

Same three moves as always, new trip. When your purpose is to describe, the Plan it move is the Path.

The Mayor's Power Plan

  • Pick it. Choose the place worth seeing, and the feeling it should carry without naming.
  • Plan it. Pick your path, and pick the detail that will do the implying.
  • Pour it on. Write, and keep pouring: acting things, real senses, and not one named feeling.

The Path

Pick one way through the scene, and let the details carry what you never say.

  1. Name the place: your scene, in one sentence.
  2. Pick one path, and hold it to the end.
  3. Let the things act: at every stop, something does something.
  4. Pick the detail that implies the feeling you will never name.
  5. Land the last detail: end on the one thing the reader keeps feeling.
Watch the Mayor plan it

Watch me run the plan on a place from the shelter season: the kennel row on a Saturday morning, during adoption hours.

Pick it. The county shelter's kennel row, Saturday morning. The feeling is hope wearing thin, and I will not write those words anywhere. The details will carry it.

Plan it.

  • The place The county shelter's kennel row, Saturday morning, adoption hours.
  • One path Near to far: the lobby doorway, the whiteboard, then down the row to the last kennel. Held to the end.
  • What acts The doors buzz. Paws scrape concrete behind every gate. A water bowl scoots against its gate.
  • The detail that implies On the whiteboard, one name sits half-wiped, written and erased so many times the marker ghost stays.
  • The last detail In the last kennel, a folded blanket waits at the front of the gate.

Pour it on. When I write it, I never write "it was sad" or "the dogs were hopeful." The half-wiped name and the folded blanket carry all of it. A reader trusts a feeling they found on their own, and they keep it longer. My job is to plant the detail and get out of the way.

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