7 Description Mistakes Every New Fantasy Writer Makes
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- Опубликовано: 28 май 2024
- After editing 751,000+ words this year, here's the most common description mistakes I see new writers make.
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⏲️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Introduction
00:45 - Over-relying on sight
04:43 - Not filtering through the narrator
09:36 - Using your first ideas
10:30 - Disconnected descriptions
15:26 - Repetitive sentence lengths
17:08 - Starting sentences with the same words
18:23 - Overly abstract descriptions
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I smelled my blood
is this only for english or also for other languages?
not you saying "fish out of water" and me pausing the video and going back to where my character ], at 14 years old, walks onto land for the first time in their lives... (Its Roman Mythology, he thought he was a child of Neptune, it's complex to explain)
I think writers neglect smell, taste, and touch because they're writing from their movie/TV experience rather than their life experience.
So insightfully correct
I definitely forget, now gotta rewrite again 😂
They just want to write their imagination, they don't realize they had to use personal experiences to create relatable and immersive storytelling.
I think it's just because smell/touch/taste are less relevant senses. Your real world sensations are mostly sight and sound based, the VAST majority of info you're taking in is sight with a bit of sound. Taste is very contextual (only when eating or tasting something), smell is only really used when something is odd smelling, otherwise it's just desensitised i.e. you don't just smell what your house or outside world smells like because you're so used to it, you only notice when it's just rained or if it's smokey or something like that. Touch, again, is contextual to when you're holding/touching/wearing something. Case in point: when he tried to get us to close our eyes and think of a smell that evoked childhood, I couldn't easily do it, nothing really came up, but while I was trying to I kept thinking of scenarios of myself as a kid e.g. when I was at the beach holiday with my family, or playing in the street with my friends. I couldn't remember the touch, taste or smell of any of those (although my mind can imagine what the beach might have smelled like, it's not a memory) but my mind could remember flashes of what those memories looked like.
I agree when he says you should include other senses to fill out the experience, and to emphasise senses that are most appropriate. But visual and audio are the two main senses.
As a further example: my stepmum can't smell, she lost her sense of smell when she was young (so she sort of knows what things smelled like, but not really). It's a minor inconvenience that rarely has an impact on her life; dad has to describe what a perfume smells like etc. But obviously if you were blind or deaf that's considered a fairly major disability that would have a major impact on your life.
@@moocowp4970 Fair assessment and I agree. Thinking of it this way. When was the last time you heard someone telling a story that happened during their day and they brought up smells? Like you said unless the smell was an important aspect of the event( example something smelling bad) most people just don't even think about smell in their everyday life. I would imagine writing a story is the same way, sight will always be the primary sense in painting that visual for the reader, followed by sound.
Sure smell is important... but if I read the 145,763th female OC who is described as smelling like jasmine and roses despite being an adventurer who hasn't bathed from a month of tramping through the wilderness...
She surprised me. Coming up behind from the shadows. Before even noticing the knife at my throat I notice she smells just like a dock worker bathed in sweat.
@@topherak8450 As we stand in the wilderness surrounded by trees and shrubbery, a knife lightly grazing my throat. I gasped as I realized; the aroma from my body was no different then hers!
@@slayerofdarknssdmt9697cutting through the wilderness, I watched a pebble rumble before me. Reaching down to pick it up, I stood up to a knife to my throat.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What dis you say?”
“You smell like shit.”
@@slayerofdarknssdmt9697stop plssss this killed me
@seafoam6119 The air's scent was odd. Scavenging through the wilderness, I noticed a small pebble move out of the corner of my eye. What was that sound? Bending down to check out the irregularity, I felt the cold press of a steel blade on my throat- a dagger.
"Damn." The whisper came out of my mouth on its own.
"Say that again?"
"You smell like a fucking dam!"
I had initially thought, based on the thumbnail image, that there was something wrong with describing a character with yellow eyes. As a fantasy author currently writing a book with a race of yellow-eyed people, I felt called out. Having seen the video, I can appreciate the difficulty that Jed must've experienced choosing a thumbnail for a video topic that is ironically non-visual in nature.
That device did wonders for the Christmas Story through-line
I feel like it was quite smart to use eyes as the focus of the thumbnail, since one of the most common mistakes for new writers is limiting the characters' perception to only their eyes when setting a scene and describing the environment.
😂. I sort of felt the same. I have a character with golden eyes. And I was like uh ohhh.
I would consider it sort of mistake, simply couse ppl love to describe someone's eye color on first look, which is rather weird... Most ppl don't register what eye color others have( ppl that fell in love are of course diferent in that case), and specially men 100% won't register other men's eye color unless it's extreamly rare or weird.
@@meldraghart Exactly!! I read a book not too long ago where the MC sees a knight in full armour across a courtyard... and still somehow sees their eye colour. Like, bro... you can't even see their face from there! XD
I remember a description of an action scene I read where a barbarian type character was disembowling a guy.
The writer used extremely clinical, technical terms that told me he had opened up an anatomy book before describing it. Really wanted to show he'd done his homework, I think.
But that's not how the PoV character, a savage and ferocious warrior, would think about the act of cutting open another man's belly and spilling his guts on the cold, thirsty ground.
IMO the writer should have instead used something like a twisted version of a hunter's description of field-dressing an animal. Lots of different possibilities for showing how the barbarian views other humans, if he even sees his enemies as being human.
I guess it depends on if the book is narrated first person or third person and then if that third person narrator is omniscient, close or objective. However, even if it was, let's say, a third person omniscient narrator (which isn't that common anymore hehe) characters could still focalise or free indirect. I'm assuming this book you're talking about was first person and this almost authorial narration was really jarring and took you out of your immersion. At least you got a really graphic depiction of all the small guts and big guts ey LOL
The most impressive used of limited third person I’ve read was from a book called Brutal Kunnin’ without a major lore dump it’s an action comedy in an other with grim dark world. This setting is also a space fantasy with the main characters being Orks (not to be confused with Orcs although they’re similar in a lot of ways) Orks are incredibly stupid with an ability to make their own misconceptions of the world be true, an example being Red things go faster. They’re obsessed with war, don’t fear dying and because they’re part fungus if they die they release spores to grow more Orks. They also have the vibe of Mad Max mixed with British Soccer Hooligans. Like I said they’re incredibly stupid. What’s impressive about this is that even though it’s in third person following an Ork character they never break from the narrative bias that this is following an Ork. If they do something stupid or believe something illogical the narrator will never call this out as stupid unless the main character also thinks it’s dumb. The narrator is right there with the MC justifying the clear stupidity of anything that happens. Ufthak Blackhawk is an Ork that loves to get into a good fight and would preferably die in glory fighting an impossible enemy, he knows nothing about machines other than cool guns, doesn’t understand anatomy and is easily distracted, even at one point accidentally crushing a humans head in his hand and was more annoyed at the mashed brain on his hand and got upset at how squishy human heads are.
Can you please disclose the book's name? I wanna read.
@@Someones.khasam I would if I could, I legitimately don't remember.
Tip 2: Filtering through the narrator was life changing for me.
When I began to intentionally run every aspect of my writing thought that lens, it took my story up a level.
Absolutely - I really saw your progression when you started doing this in The Stars of Nyne.
I think I ended up subconsciously doing that while I was trying to develop my characters arc's in a somewhat subtle way.
In one of the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, specifically the tale mostly written from the perspective of a high-functioning sociopath making a very ill-advised seduction, the author successfully crafts the villain protagonist's description of the beauty of an alien girl who is ugly by our standards.
“Now I want you to close your eyes” - I tried while driving in Atlanta traffic but it didn’t go over well.
Geordi LaForge: This holodeck simulation still reads out as electromagnetic fields to my VISOR, Lt. Barclay.
Same. It was terrible. So much carnage
Did it go wayyyyyy over?
I love that one of my characters is blind and that I'm writing in third person limited. It forces me to get creative and think of more aspects of the world.
His thoughts are vivid and he explores his world in other ways. Hopefully it doesn't feel like anything is missing, especially since he rarely feels like anything is missing himself. (Born blind, very much accustomed to it.)
He loves trailing his hand across the geometric panelling of the halls, so desperate for connection to the world around him that his hand continues to trail long after the winter cold has numbed him. He's a historian and a diplomat.
Other aspects of description:
He loves tracing his hands across scrolls. If he does not file down his fingertip's scales, it rasps against the greenfrond paper, breaking focus and whatever little calm he has managed to maintain.
(Other character perceiving him, one who has known him for a while). He moved with great deliberation, like he was acutely aware of where each limb was in space and hated even his most gentle intrusions upon the world.
Sorry for any disconnected/fragmented writing here. Have brain damage, will definitely be hiring an editor.
Oooh!
@@jay_dots3084 Your comment made my day! Very happy someone read and enjoyed. Hope you have an awesome day. Also: highly recommend looking up the Timberdoodle bird and the sea sheep. Amazing creatures
I like this a lot! I also have written a couple blind characters and love your interpretation of them.
Ooohh, I love that! It's so interesting to read and experience how another person experiences life, and those descriptions really bring that out!
It reads like a beautiful first draft where all the ideas and feelings go into :)
I'd love to read more of your writing if that's ok. I'm taking an editing course and would be willing to help out with edits too, if that's something that interests you!
oh my god. id love to know more about your character! :D
I think the "What do they pay special attention to?" question is key for establishing character personalities. If you have the stereotypical knight and princess story, your knight is likely to size up the people around him to figure out who could be a threat while the princess would pay more attention to social status using clues like clothing and manner of speech. The knight checks out the architecture for defensibility while the princess considers the style and history. You can then layer the characters' opinions on top of their observations. One knight might admire the arrow slits in a building because it's yet another way to defend the building while another might feel disdain because the only honor way to fight is by sword. One princess might look down on all those who can't afford the latest finery while another might appreciate the skill of those who maintain their clothing well despite a lack of money. It's one way to "show, not tell" their personalities.
The reality is though, that while familiar smells can trigger a strong memory response (when experienced in person!), people's ability to actually imagine a smell is overall surprisingly bad. Half of the time they don't even know or remember how a specific item smells, and even when they do, it rarely has a strong emotional effect.
Of course there are some exceptions - but those are mostly negative ones. The stinging stench of urine, the rotten smell of a food that has gone bad, that kind of stuff isn't hard to imagine, but those already are pretty common in fantasy books.
Meanwhile, no one's gonna gain much out of a book describing the camellia-scented love letter as such, because 99% of people will not know what a Camellia even smells like, and the 1% that do will struggle to remember it accurately and even if they do, it's very unlikely they are one of the few people who can accurately reproduce such a specific smell for their mental experience.
Humans are, for better or for worse, an overwhelmingly visually operating species, unless their visual sense is impaired. We conciously evaluate only about 0.0004% of sensory information anyways, the vast majority of it being visual, with the other senses trailing further and further behind, with smell being the most disregarded one. Of course it's very important to our ACTUAL experience, but our actual experience is decided by the 99.9996% of subconciously processed sensory information - which generally can't actively be called upon for our imagination.
So disregarding the description of certain sensations isn't really a sign of bad writing, it's just... efficient, since it is unlikely to elicit much of a response even if included.
Counterpoint:
"The morning air smelled of lilac."
It wasn't the what. It was the WHY
@@JaneXemylixa as someone who doesnt know what lilac smells like, for all I know thats what morning air smells like.
@@kentlynardsoriano6707 In context, it was a repeating motif that held great significance for the main character. In this scene (from the past. there's time travel) we finally find out why. It does the same thing as actually smelling it and getting hit in the face with memories
That's because our modern lives are so sensorily poor it's almost frightening. Really you can't remember or imagine what is the smell of just harvested hay? Of the fermenting grapes? Of washed linens in the sun? Of a fresh croissant or a freshly baked loaf? Never went to work at early morning and smelled the coffee and pastries passing by a coffee-shop? Never entered in an antique apothecary and breathed in the smell of medical herbs? Never appreciated the smell of ripe fruits like strawberries, peaches and apples? A steaming cup of tea? Never felt the spring in the air just from the smell of flowers? How poor has become our life that we think that humans always used ONLY sight to perceive their world?
The fix to this is following up the smell with the emotional or psychological reaction of the character to that smell. That gives us something relatable to latch on to.
"A cold wind whispered secrets through the leaves." WOW. This sounds like Dickens or Brian Jacques (two of the best description writers that I have read)!
My dark fantasy novel, which uses a gothic horror aesthetic, is set in a world of eternal night and darkness, which is the main aspect of my worldbuilding I focus on.
I chose it because i want to use lots of ocean and maritime metaphors and similes for my descriptions (using the bright full moon and starry twilight skies as consistent motifs) as well as just use vivid and cool imagery for my novel. For example, I feature a location in the book called the abyssal forest, and compare it to the twilight and hadal zones of the deep ocean
Uh...this sounds badass!
@@constancegoldwing5867 Which parts?
@@unicorntomboy9736 All of it honestly. It seems to me you've a strong motive going, besides I can already picture parts of your world in my head by the way you've described them
@@VibingMeike For context, the book follows an anti heroine protagonist who goes on a negative character arc due to childhood trauma on a quest for vengeance, they embrace their dark tendencies and become a villain protagonist by the conclusion of the book.
I have 4 thematic questions, all themed around the subject of corruption
The first, and most prominent, thematic question being: 'Do traumatic experiences justify morally questionable choices and actions, or do they challenge the notion of right and wrong?' My protagonist is on the side of yes to that question, wherea my supporting character (the childhood friend and love interest, essentially a Captain America type character) takes the opposite stance
All of it! I love a world that's endless night. It makes me want to know why, and like who lives there? Who are the characters? Also love how you've incorporated the hadal zones!@@unicorntomboy9736
The tips are always helpful, especially since I’m slowly writing my own book and I can see the actual difference in how I used to write and how i do now. So thank you for giving these great tips for free
Glad it was helpful!
Honestly the thing that really gave me a sense for setting description and to include multiple senses was the Robert Pattinson Batman. Despite not even being the same art form, Gotham in that movie is so insanely immersively portrayed that it was impossible not to imagine what it smelled like the entire time and it kind of tattooed on my brain the fact settings will always have at least one unique piece of sensory input.
Great example! That world just feels so visceral and tactile. I'd put Dune (the 2021 movie) in the same category as well.
One of the three magic trees in my story actually focuses on elements but as you dig deeper you realize it focuses on nature itself eventually coming down to the all the senses. The Beastkin will be the most common characters you'll see taking advantage of magic revolving around senses and physical boosts while Elves will focus on elemental while leaning towards the other two magic trees.
Fun fact, but I do remember my favorite books by the smells they remind me of. And sometimes, when I read I scene I can "smell"it. That's when I know the writting is great and I am living the story.
I was born without a sense of smell, so I am constantly reminding myself that it is a thing which exists. I also have to research how scents are described, because I simply don't know. I have learned how to incorporate it into my writing, for example:
My protagonist is in Hell and currently wandering through a dungeon, where damned souls are tortured. A succubus he encountered earlier had tried to seduce him, but he resisted, angering her. She warned him he may find a soul in her dungeon he cared for, and later, he finds his wife's soul (someone he hadn't seen in a long time and believed to still be alive). After rescuing her from her cell, they embrace and kiss, and he will catch a whiff of a subtle perfume. But his wife never wore perfume, cluing him in that this is not his wife at all.
Great video, Jed! All your videos have been so helpful and informative. Are your novels available in the US?
Born with no sense of smell. That stinks.
Dude same it’s hard when there not a vary good smell description you can find describing what your smelling like this smells like this but what dose this that it smells like smell like
The only smells I could remember off the top of my head were the dumpsters at my elementary school and the weird smell from the dentist's office that I could never figure out what it was. For me, hearing is definitely a lot more rooted in my deep memories. Listening to a song or watching an old commercial from my childhood or teen years can almost instantly give me deja vu for whatever I was doing while I was listening to them back then.
One of the best things I learned from Star Trek - Deep Space 9 was that every statement says 3 things. Something about the direct moment. Something about that character because their statement is framed through their perspective. And something about their people or their culture. The present, the character, and the worldbuilding. Next time you watch DS9 think about this and see what you can tell about characters. Love that show.
Something you said reminded me of this. Thought you might enjoy. Please keep up the great work!
I can't say if Brandon Sanderson coined the term "Pyramid of Abstraction", but I believe the concept itself came from his own instructor when he was taking the BYU class.
Lots of good advice here. One thing I am hyper aware of in my writing is starting the first sentence of a paragraph with the character's name. I feel like I do it too often. None of my readers have ever pointed it out, but it feels like I do it too often, and I find myself agonizing over how to restructure paragraphs to avoid it.
I have that same issue at times. I'm currently working on a novel of my own, and in one particular scene, I'm starting the sentences with my "main group" characters' names, bouncing back and forth between each other when it's 'their turn to speak'. I try to reduce repetition the best I can, but there are some areas in certain scenes that aggravate me due to a lack of fluidity and change.
Like Jed mentioned, I read my descriptions aloud as well as the pace, to make sure that it sounds good to the ear but also looks different (or seems different) as they, the audience, read along. Currently, my poorest areas are the ones that describe settings and places from the character's POV or just narration in general. It's not so much that I don't know what to say, it's more that I don't know how to say it.
The pyramid of abstraction was a game changer in my writing, and the fact that it came from one of his roommates is mind-blowing to me.
Interesting. I naturally tend to avoid all these mistakes as they simply make for bad reading. I feel strongly that as authors we should be able to read what we've written and be able to enjoy them from the perspective of a reader, as if it was written by someone else.
I think that regardless of one's level of experience with writing genre fiction, the most important aspect is to know what good writing looks like- what it *feels* like. The best writing captures the essence of experience- sensation, emotion, impression- without getting bogged down on the minutiae that we generally don't pay much attention to in our day-to-day experiences.
While it can be helpful to keep in mind the spectrum of sensory experience while writing, I find I like to focus on the *essence* of what I'm describing and cater my prose to try and evoke that feeling. A paragraph from chapter one of the first draft of my novel illustrates this well, I think; while the description focuses mainly on the visual appearance of the environment from a sensory context, the emphasis is on the psychological/emotional impact that those visual cues create:
"The border of the Deep Wood itself kept most folk far afield simply through its foreboding presence. The boundary was demarcated by an ominous change in the foliage; past the invisible line the trees grew thick and gnarled, their canopies dark and impenetrable as if devouring the light from the sun before it had a chance to touch the ground. The leaves themselves never turned colour or fell, leaving the forest floor strangely barren; no twig nor leaf marred the tangle of interwoven roots. No plants besides those trees grew there either; whether simply from lack of light or by some mystical energy, not even the hardiest of scrub took root under those branches."
It's important to remember that all stimulus, whether sight/hearing/touch/taste/smell, simply serves as a trigger for an internal experience. Don't just describe the sensory information your characters experience, but use it as a starting point to elaborate on what those stimuli cause your characters to *feel*.
Two characters could be approaching a castle in the distance: you might describe how the rising sun at their backs pierced through the early morning mist, gilding the stalwart walls and soaring towers with light- but each character could have an entirely different internal experience. One might marvel at the sight, taken by the beauty of the architecture enhanced by the graces of nature; the other might look on it bitterly, seeing only a monument to the hubris of "nobility" and a symbol of the power of an oppressive system.
Exactly. The first thing a writer should learn is how to detach from their own work and read it as a reader would. It points out so much bad writing just from the experience alone.
I write purely for relaxation, but I do like to then 'bury' whatever I've written for at least a year before I read it back. By then, I've forgotten what I've written, so it is like reading someone else's work, and I can read it back critically. Sometimes I laugh at bad dialogue, or I spot plot holes and repetitive language, and other times I find myself racing through it, thinking this is ok! I'm never satisfied though. Leave it another year and I'll go back and edit it again, until another idea takes me over and I spit out another hundred thousand words of something completely different.
You can tell when someone is a technically skilled writer by their semicolon addiction
2:19 one reason to limit smell to trigger imagination is because the brain doesn't store memory of smell like what he described. it stores recognition of particles that touch the nose as what we have labeled them, and when a memory is made the brain will create "I remember sitting in my room when i smelled cookies baking", and when you recall the memory you will mentally visually see it, mentally audibly hear it, and in some cases (most often due to a deep placed memory such as pain or euphoria) may even feel it, but smell won't be recalled. Taste unlike smell can be recalled but it isn't given a high priority in the neural pathways of memories and thus takes a bit more stimuli to recall. the only reason i know this is i like studding new things, one of which is neurology.
I know I'm late to the party. Novice writer here. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I thought it was pretty much "done" at 93k+ words, but after watching this I've gone through my book and, so far, added about 500 words describing smells and touch sensations. I had already included more smells than I think is normal from your research, but I'm adding more. And taste, which is difficult. I'm re-reading still, looking for areas to touch up. It's not easy, it takes place in a foreign environment where I can't just say "he smelled mint". But I think it's better already. Look forward to watching more of your videos.
I’ve been soaking up your videos as I wait to edit my first draft of my dark fantasy book.
I’ve been itching for the past month to begin revising, and your videos have been a massive help in keeping my sanity as I wait. Thank you for all the hard work you put into your videos, and the inspiration us aspiring authors receive by watching and listening!
Glad to help. Good luck with the editing!
I like web novels but a common problem is that they tend to lack sufficient descriptions of characters what is enough and when is it to much.
Web novels (and a significant chunk of Fanfiction) suffer from most of the authors' myopic inability to get outside of their own heads. You need to read a _lot_ of writing from a lot of different times in order to build up your brain's lexicon of expression. A lot of modern writers put themselves into a single niche of only absorbing modern content from the past 5-10 years, when they should be reaching back into the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's where expressions and imagination are hugely wide and varied. The more you read, the more you can write.
There is a danger though that you can describe a character in too much detail, denying the reader a chance to hang their own hat on what he/she looks like. Too much much specific character description can be off-putting.
@@davidcopson5800 the example i was thinking of was the Web novel the nature of predators by Spacepaladin. it is a sci-fi story and i did not realize one of the primary races was goatlike humanoids with horns until it became plot relevant. he did explain their appearance in the fist chapter but 150 chapters later i had forgotten as he did not tend to describe their attributes much beyond having fur and a tail in the intervening time.
What i was asking was if you have described a character how often do you reestablish that description. i.e. character is blonde as described in first appearance should every time i mention their hair it say "Blonde hair" or only in times where it is pertinent.
@@kylejohns2288Keep character descriptions to a minimum and only mention them when it’s relevant (which won’t always be plot related) or necessary.
Think of it as “why is my character noticing their hair color now?” Is it because the sun is shining on it and giving them a golden halo? Is it because it’s the first time it has been washed in a while? Is it matted with blood or filth? Does the character like the other person’s hair and finds their eye drawn to it?
The goat man shouldn’t have been brought up as being a goat man constantly, but it sounds like the actual mistake was ignoring the implications of having a goat man. He has to interact with the world differently, he might need different food or to eat it differently, things won’t fit quite right. Also, 150 chapters is so many. That’s like James Patterson numbers, and I suspect the web story did not have short chapters like he often does.
The smell thing - yes, it is strong. But it's strong when you smell it. Not when you think about it, because then you're not really using the smell-memory. Am I right or wrong? If I actually smell something specific, it can definitely remind me of things. But in trying to conjure up a smell when there isn't any didn't work for me. I could think of one. But I definitely visually remembered other things though. Hmm...
Not every scene needs a smell. But cities have scents. New York smells overwhelmingly of gasoline, Paris of urine (certain parts smell nicer, but the nasty ambient scent is much stronger in my brain than that of going to a bakery. Mom used to say it was the time of year we went.)
Ports have scents, they’ll smell like fish and crab. Skin has a scent, hair has a scent, freshly cut grass and hay has a scent, orchards have them.
Basically, you’re not randomly standing around and saying “Penny smelled bread.” It serves a purpose to description and you’d use it to create intimacy in a scene and to fully bring readers in. Because you can describe the streets full of refuse and filth, but describing the rancid stench of an overflowing sewer can be gag inducing and fully round out a scene.
I have to say that I have never experienced somebody convey advice this well and without ridiculing anything or nit-picking at small details which is obviously just out of a personal opinion. You seem to give people motivation to become better and not just feel discouraged and ashamed if they make any mistakes. I will only watch your videos from now on.
I uhh... I have this thing where descriptions I write don't rely on senses at all, but rather feelings. I usually grind through writing but every once in a while, the spirit of Charles Dickens grabs me by the brain and I write a line so raw, I can hear Gordon Ramsey banging on my window.
(In a description of buildings) "They looked as if they’re ready to pierce the stars themselves, all lit up with lights, neons bright and vibrant alike, akin the works of Babel; cast in steel and dressed in vanity."
Some great tips there. Even if you do use some of these things sometimes, often unconsciously, it's better to be aware of them and use them appropriately and consciously to write a stronger, more engaging story. I love prowritingaid. I also purchased lifetime access. When I was editing my first novel it gave me so much insight into sentence structure and where I could tighten up so many paragraphs. Just using it for a single edit made the first draft of my next book a much better draft, and for the most part I've avoided a lot of mistakes that I wrote in the first one. The second novel is currently with my alpha reader and they have commented that this draft is much better written that the first draft of the first book.
Yep, I've found that I use ProWritingAid less with each book - but it's usually because it teaches me how to avoid mistakes in the first place.
I just came across your videos today and I find your content so informative. Thank you so so so much for taking time to help other writers! Your advice is sound, makes sense and is extremely helpful to me and I find myself taking notes while watching your videos. I look forward to more of your content!
Excellent advice in all points! What has been a very useful hack for myself has been forcing myself to omit third-person references to the POV character when writing in close third and instead make declarations of fact. "X was shivering", while descriptive, is a distant description - "it was freezing in here" is the character's undeniable opinion of the situation.
Also, the vagueness point is a good one - it's also a danger I have found when getting too close to the POV character's perspective. The challenge is somehow getting the character across while still letting the reader know that you're on their side when it comes to helping them understand the world.
Excellent actionable advice, thank you
You're basically talking about 'show don't tell' here.
I've recently did the third sage finale for my story, and i did some what you said during the last scene with smell description. It followed a small massacre so I made sure to add stench of blood in the air.
Really great video! Inspiring!
I am heavily driven by smell as I suffer from hiperosmia, so naturally, my descriptions focus on that sense. Most of my reviewers report that they are immersed in my worlds and want more of them. Now I know why.
I've never seen your content before, but you definitely earned the immediate subscribe! I've been writing fantasy fiction novels since I was eight years old. I'm certainly not very good at it, but I enjoy it immensely! While these are all things I had to learn on my own (because I'm stubborn I suppose,) it's wonderful to be reminded, and to hear someone else's perspective describing these issues! Very clear and well put points here, I'll be looking into more of your content! 🤗😊
2:10 I really liked that point. In all my Story's the chapters with smell discription were always better. The only problem being, that I have very limited smell so the only few things I can smell are some foods and fire. But it's definatly a good point!
I don't know if it's because I'm autistic or what but I don't have any childhood memories related to smells or sounds, really. I remember the angry tones of voices of family members, I suppose. I mostly remember visual and kinetic information, personally. I still vividly remember my second-grade substitute teacher had these stunning emerald green eyes and the friendliest face! I literally stared at her, wide eyed, and probably looked like a little psycho twerp lol Smells? Not so much. I just don't process the world that way, I guess. I'm going to stick a little note on my computer to remind me that normal people remember that stuff instead so I gotta try implementing more flavorful text regarding it. Thanks for the eye-opener!
Some of this advice kinda feels like something a good D&D table could help a lot of people with🤔I mean, as writers, are we not sort of roleplaying our characters and world? Just because we're the gods of it doesn't mean we shouldn't be on the ground with the MCs. And I will say, you're the first person I've heard talk about word repetition this way. I absolutely understand that and pull my own writing apart over it because I'm hyper aware of every word. I learned recently that most people only truly read every two-three words, but I read e v e r y word, so the repeating sentence-starters and just repeating words in general really stands out to me.
Thank you so much for this! One of my writing weaknesses is description. I learned a lot!
Thanks so much. Just finished my second novel and started to edit. I had a lot of these things on my mind but most of them somehow never made it to the editing plan! Thanks for the help.
You're welcome - good luck with the editing!
Thanks!@@Jed_Herne
Thanks for the video, man. I love your perspective on things.
You're welcome!
That was really helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, this was really helpful.
I didn't have anything to imagine most my childhood was things I saw I don't remember my other senses
Just found your channel and I'm pleased to see that I either avoided the mistake completely, or felt it was common sense. Not a knock on the video or tips at all, but as a first time writer this built up a lot of confidence in my ability to write my story well. You earned a sub!
When he started talking science and how the brain works, my heart started to warm.
Excellent, concise tips! I look forward watching your other videos 😊
Glad you like them!
I'm so grateful for your advice. I'm still working through my first draft and it's purposely terrible. Videos like these are making me excited for the second and third drafts though.
Happy to hear that. Good luck with the writing!
Thank you for the tips! Currently working on a light novel. These will help me when I'm editing my draft. Again thanks! 😄
Good advice all around. I really liked the mention of repetitive sentence lengths. That can really kill the pace of reading and it's such a subtle thing that few people talk about. Cheers!
15:35 Bars lmao. It had a kind of nice rhythm read aloud, but yeah, you're right that it'd be really tedius to read something like that over and over.
I think most of your suggestions would also apply to any story with an unusual setting, including historical fiction. Excellent examples, and specifics. Thank you!!
Also, I guess for writers to avoid the 'plot-driven vs character-driven story' mindset, they should just focus on what's the conflict itself and then who participated in the conflict, what is its effect on the characters, and also how they respond. Also, conflict must be the key element of a story since this is the tension or exciting part of a story and the writers must think might characters might help or oppose each other. (Sorry for bad grammar and wordings, english is not my first language)
My mom's amazing cooking came straight to my head. ❤ 😊
Saved this video, really good advice that I want to implement as soon as I get home! Thank you for this video
Glad it was helpful!
Great advice. Overly abstract descriptions are not just limited to new fantasy writers. There is one fairly popular fantasy I DNF at about 30% because the descriptive narrative was so over the top at times it didn't make sense. Completely overblown metaphors and similes where the writer tried to reach too hard to write something unique, instead it just came out extremely silly. But it is a popular book, so maybe some people like that?
The smell thing didnt work for me - I dont remember in that way, I'm visual in nature. But I do think its worth including more senses in my writings, so thanks for the idea :)
@@thefrostedforest cinnamon vs poop smell. :D
im writing a story about a blind person. All the descriptions of senses are usually about feel, smell, hearing, and others,
I know Im late to this video, however I was writing a story and my protagonist was waking from a short coma. I was having such a hard time trying to describe the world around him returning as he regained his senses. I ended up changing the setting a bit to a camp and using the sounds of the forest, the sounds and smells of campfire and cooking food to help the reader get the sense of him coming back to the world and it worked out really well. I ended up going back and looking to where I could use all senses as descriptors where applicable and it seems to read so much better than just a dry description.
David Farland, who taught Brandon Sanderson and many other successful authors, suggests using what he calls a KAV cycle. It's a rotation of Kinestetic (what a character feels), auditiory (what a character hears), and visual (what a character sees). A series of KAV cycles acts similarly to hypnosis and gives the reader the experience of being lost in the story.
I'm not sure if this is an explaination for why those particular senses get so much play or not. It's a useful method, though, IMHO.
should i use it in that order?
Thanks for such a good advices! I checked my draft, and yes, there are much more sight- and noise-descriptions than ones including other senses. I'll try to pay more attention to it.
Also after your video I would say that repetitive sentences can be used once or twice as description of something like depression or sorrow from the pov of your character. That how you can put your reader in the same mood. Cool trick!))
Great example of how you can use repetitive sentences for a specific effect.
Thanks I am currently working on a kind of ambitious and really controversial fantasy novel,so your tips are come really handy.
Awesome video ❤
Great advice.
One sidenote... as someone with Aphantasia, all descriptions are tedious and I skip past them, but I know I'm a minority with that. For me, the only descriptions that matter are the ones that impact the story. For example, it makes no difference if a person is tall or short unless that impacts their ability to interact with the physical and social environment.
I don't have aphantasia, but I agree that you don't need a long-winded description - just enough for the reader to form their own impression, unless some particular feature is essential for the plot. I'm not a fan of long, flowery, tedious descriptions of people or places, when a few choice words will set the scene, with more details added judiciously, as the plot develops.
@@dexine4723 I agree with this. Honestly, the novels who spend like 2 paragraphs to describe a tavern and their food bores me out and usually takes away the tension of the supposed scene in that particular chapter.
I also have Aphantasia and I actually learned something about myself in this video. I primarily associate it with vision, but I don't think I can really imagine/evoke the memory of a smell either.
How did that part go for you?
@@devindaniels1634
No smell, taste, touch, sight or sound.
Which is hard to explain, since I have an internal monologue... I "hear" myself talking in my head when I think, but... there is no sound. So I can't "hear" a dog barking, or the the sound of music, I only have my internal monologue "woof woof", or "la da de da", etc.
I find it quite interesting that people can create imaginary sounds, and that they can change the "voice" of their internal monologue to sound like someone else. e.g. they can read a letter a letter in their head, while "hearing" the voice of the person who wrote the letter. Or read a meme in the voice of the celebrity picture on the meme.
I do have the ability to "imagine" regarding spatial awareness... which is also hard to explain.
@@aliquida7132 interesting. I have no idea what you mean by imagining spacial awareness though that's something I tend to have a harder time with in general so perhaps that's linked.
The only one I do have is sound. I have no issue getting songs stuck in my head, though I have a much harder time trying to hear something in someone else's voice rather than my own internal monologue. Except for Morgan Freeman, that meme needs no help haha.
As I listen for the second time I have been pausing the video to try and incorporate some of the advice into the work that I currently have in my text editor.
Oh hell yes, time to settle in and learn stuff!
It’s very gratifying for me to watch this video and hear things I already thought by myself. Gives me a confidence boost 😂 Still very helpful, though! Your way of explaining why these things are important is spot-on. You make it easily applicable somehow. Very nice!
I really struggle writing descriptions in the way a character and often it’s just how I would describe it. I kinda already knew that I did but this video really made me realize why most of my descriptions feel kinda flat.
I am a neuro-divergent writer who experiences the world LOUDLY through my senses, so I draw on all of them at different times when describing my settings, and in the characters experiences. Your video is great validation! Thank you.
just started writing a novel about a guard's life, inspired by the hold guards from Skyrim. About his daily life and what he writes in his journal afterward, something simple. Hoping this and another video I've watched will help to learn over time to hopefully avoid making some mistakes, the videos have definitely helped in beginning to recognize what people like/don't like in fantasy stories.
Thanks! I'm an author who is dipping a toe into the world of professional editing, and your videos are terrific! Can't wait to do a deep-dive into the rest of your tips.
Glad to help!
Hey sounds like some really good advice in this video. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Brilliantly explained. Good to hear I'm not making any of these mistakes (any more!) lol great stuff
I'm currently writing a story, this helps a lot :)
2: I write fanfiction a lot, but I still watch these kinds of videos, and you reminded me to do something like this in my own works. In a fandom i'm in, I have this one character who used to be able to feel emotions, but became unable to feel any emotions at all due to becoming (literally) soulless. When I write for this character, I write them with emotions, however usually they don't fully remember emotions after having them gone for so long, so I try to usually avoid using the names of the emotions or any words involving them, and instead focus on the internal thoughts and feelings inside the body those emotions bring. And I have been forgetting to do that. I'm not good at it yet, but I try, since it puts me into that character's head and it's fun to struggle like that
For the repetitive sentence structure part, try starting with two repeating sentences: "The forest was dark. Her heart was Pounding." to create emphasis, then vary it up with more flowing sentences. Think of it like a song, where every once in a while you want to return to a chorus. Also remove "long" from "long, sinister" the extra comma conflicts with the other commas in that sentence, and you should always think twice before adding a second adjective.
Giving characters their own voice and style is important and it’s easy to write everyone with this same perspective. And when you hit on a voice and character you hear so clearly the character ends up changing huge portions of your story.
When talking about making (almost) everything a character, I remember "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. When I read that I was struck by how the man in the story is not just one character, but his various different body parts are treated as individual characters.
I LOVE ProWritingAid!
Video is perfectly spot on, as I'm outlining my new fantasy book, thanks
I have a question: there will be two main heroes in the book, but the problem is that they are kinda a team and 90% of the book appear together. I'm struggling with POV cuz I want to tell the story from both perspectives, but i wanna know if it would be appropriate if I switch POV from one hero to another sometimes.
I remember you were telling us a bit about Kingdom of dragons where there are a boy and a girl and as I understood there both have POV? Do they spend most of the book together?
Hi! Im not a professional writer but I maybe this helps you. I have 6 main characters and I'm almost 100% sure i will give all of them a POV, even if they are togheter (they are together in the begginin). For me the best part of writting is exploring the minds and perceptions of my main characters, as they are very different and hide a lot of secrets. I think it is important for all the POV's to be relevant, to make all of them very different, that in some moments of the book they eventually separate, and that they don't know each other from the beggining (it might be more interesting if the reader could see the new bonds and perceptions of all the characters).
And that's all my friend, hope this helps and good luck with your WIP!!:))
I would suggest putting emphasis on how your two different characters think and how their backgrounds shape how they respond to things more so than how often they are in the same area. What details can one character provide that the other just isn’t aware of or has a different take on?
@@TheAuraWolfRising thank you
@@irenelara1999 thank you
Smarminess aside, for me, feel is a big one too. Temperature and or humidity will arouse feelings in me that correlate to a memory I can’t even see anymore. It’s just very powerful emotion and the hint of whatever memory generated it.
I don't like this childhood smell game. I grew up on a hog farm.
Yeah the same but chickens
One thing I like doing with descriptions in my current series is describing the world not just through the senses, but through emotions. Similarly, I enjoy using sensory words to evoke certain emotions with a particular favourite of mine being "a cacophony of fear."
Granted, I'm writing a story with an emotion-based magic system and a main character who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (also known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder), so emotions are very central to how she experiences the world.
I like doing that too.
I'm someone with a vivid memory when it comes to sight and I actually found that if I am too immeresed in trying to see the world being told on a page, then I would often stop reading as well to think about how it would look, which also takes me out of it despite being immersed. It's easier to be immersed when you only have one thing to focus on per sense.
I use touch (and sound) as a description as much as possible, it’s the most powerful sense to me.
I started writing a dark fantasy comic, and there is mystical rainforest called The Sage Forest.
It’s shrouded in mystery, and it’s connected to the gods in this story.
I wanna add something that spices up the dark fantasy genre (how many times do you see a rainforest in a fantasy story??), while also making it align with the themes and lore.
The smell of the dew and mist, the sounds of the birds, trees, and streams of water.
The rainforest shrouded in clouds of greenish mist, with little glimmers of sunlight piercing through the canopy. The sight of all the beautiful, outlandish plant life.
I want the Sage Forest to feel ethereal, and not of this world.
Thanks for the tips, dude!
Good luck with the comic!
This is great. One thing I’d love to see you go into is how to describe taste, smell, hearing, and touch without saying “heard, tasted, smelled, felt”
You can use words like "sounded", "flavored", "scent" "sensed" etc... just look up synonyms for words that would best describe the current situation
I can see situations where a uniform sentence length could be an effective device in certain situations. But don't let it go on too long.
I like to do a form of poetry where the structure isn't rhyming, but cadence. My favorite form of this is four 4 word sentences. Preferably with the emphasis falling in the same place in each sentence.
The woods were dark. The air was still. The path was narrow. Eloise was scared.
Scared like she hadn't been since she was very young, hiding in the tight space under the porch with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed tight as her mother raged drunkenly through the house.
The moon hung cold and judgemental in the sky above her. She balled her fist and snarled at it. "I am not a child anymore!"
Wait omg is that a pubmed article in a writing advice video I'm DEFINITELY gonna have to take a good look at this channel
I write pen and paper solo adventures for my newsletter. Because a lot of them involve dungeon crawling, I have to create evocative descriptions to immerse the player. Your advice is so damn helpful, thanks.
As an example for descript of sight and a descript of smell let's say for a broken down house.
Let's say the character is called Charles Deakin just for the example
1. Sight: Charles Deakin saw an abandoned, run down house, the wood of the walls rotting and decayed as if the house is ready to collapse
2. Smell: Charles Deakin walked past an rundown abandoned house, the timber smelt wet and stale with a foul aroma of mold coming from within the house, Charles Deakin had to cover his nose from the potant air spewing from the rotting house.
These are just one example of sight and one example of smell see how sigh describes the house and what it looks like but smell has a basic description of said building but a far more indept description of the smell coming from the house
Wow, that was amazing! I think I just found my novel editor!
I always struggle with disconnected descriptions, and I definitely need to get better with not using the first thing that comes to mind
When creating D&D modules, I was always conscious of trying to include as many senses as possible. Players tend to remember them as immersive experiences.
Wow Jed! Your editing and overall video quality is mind blowing-As someone with a short attention span, i somehow always make it through your entire videos. Thanks for this !
One for the playlist
I use text-to-speech more and more these days, I find it helps with my ADHD and dyslexia, and I have absolutely noticed spelling mistakes, poor grammar, repetitive words and phrases, bastardised idioms and more. We all have our verbal ticks and writing crutches, but most people aren't even conscious of it; I hope my are at least endearingly quirky rather than overtly annoying😅
Damn, this is a lot to take in. I’ll have to come back to this when I move to the proofreading stage.
My theory is that you need every sense in a story. But like reality, smell, hearing, and sight are primary in judgment and point of view before feeling and taste for most scenes
Many thanks indeed! very useful, extremely inspiring.
I feel like a good balance of sensory description is mostly sight, often with sound, sometimes with smell, then add touch or taste when warranted.
This reflects the typical human experience where you will almost always have sight sensory input, nearly always have sound, frequently have a notable smell present, and occassionally touch something notable or taste something.
It is insane to me that taste is above smell in your survey. Especially since taste is like 90% based on smell anyway!