this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
11 points (100.0% liked)

Writing

1950 readers
2 users here now

A specific community for original shortform and longform writing, stories, worldbuilding, and other stuff of that nature.

Subcommunity of Creative

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
mint@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
11
What do you do when trying to describe something very specific? (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by silent_g@beehaw.org to c/writing@beehaw.org
7 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Many times when writing, I get a very specific image in my head of the way I want something to look, or the way I want something to move. Particularly with actions where objects are moving in a very specific way, I want to describe them accurately so that most readers would see the same thing that I'm seeing in my head. The problem is, I don't want to come off as sounding too technical (the object slid along its Z axis and suddenly stopped and rotated 45 degrees on its Y axis), and I also don't want to be so vague that a later sentence contradicts what they were seeing in their head.

Is this just a psychological thing that I need to get over and stop worrying about, and just write to the best of my ability and edit when I hear critiques/comments from readers, or is it a skill that I need to improve?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Profilename1@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

It's hard to say. You definitely don't want to be too specific, but you do want to hit the high notes. What parts of the movement are important later, even if "later" is only a sentence or two away?