Writing Tips — Descriptive Writing

In Story Club this week, my workshop for young writers, we had a look at how to ‘Show’ not ‘Tell’ a story. How can we pull a reader into a scene, rather than just telling them what’s happening at a distance?

The five senses came up. Experiencing a scene through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch helps the reader (and writer!) enter the full experience of the character.

Young writers choosing a scene of taking a dog for a walk brought in sounds of the wind and the excitement and anticipation of being off the lead. Rather than write the sentence ‘the dog went for a walk’ we were shown through the senses what happened. Wind in his fur as leaves whooshed, the anticipation of being unclipped from the lead …

A young writer choosing this scene decided to make the character blind. What she brought into the scene were smells of the forest, sounds of birds and other animals, the steely grip of the sword, the strength and confidence of her stance.

Besides the five senses, we explored using onomatopoeia (words that sound like sounds) and comparisons (metaphors/similes) to bring the reader into the experience.

The whoosh of wind. The pitter-patter of rain. Curling like a cat.

May we all enchant readers with portals into other worlds, rather than just windows.