Descriptive Properties in Writing

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One thing that is very important in all forms of writing – not just poetry – is the description. When writing, an author should describe the setting and the characters thoroughly, in a way that resounds in the reader. All descriptions are written in hopes of putting an image into your head, and especially as sophomores, I believe that we are still learning how to write descriptions. Descriptions are not as easy as everyone thinks of them as – not a good description, anyway. I’ve read many descriptive sentences from peer grading essays and my trudge through numerous novels and short stories, and rarely do I find that descriptions really put an image into my head. Not to discourage the way teachers teach descriptive writing as I understand that if it’s difficult to so much as write a description, it should be very difficult to teach it.
Many descriptions follow along the lines of “the sky was as blue as the crystal waters of the Pacific and little white dots of cotton lined the pearlescent skies, lazily flitting about.” While there is generally nothing wrong with this description, I find that it’s just too wordy and all these descriptive words strung together detract from the mood of the writing more than they add to it. I believe the only time I’ve ever seen this form of description work is in a couple of mystery novels, and I suspect that it would do well in the horror and macabre genre. However, if an author is trying to create a light mood or tense mood, the excessive amount of words used to describe even the face of the protagonist or antagonist takes away from whatever mood the author is trying to create. If an reader has to lug himself through tons of description words to finally get to what is actually going on, the work ju...

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... clunky descriptions, yet it is listed as an imagery poem, so it is assumed that it is a very descriptive poem. The words are well chosen and line breaks are helpful (something novelists don’t really directly get), but the poem itself is beautiful both visually and audibly.
Speaking for myself, I find that drawn-out descriptions are often times boring and make me liable to skim. Rarely do I really find a description I just find perfect, but I feel that J.K Rowling often does a good job at detailing her stories. Good descriptions are difficult to write, so it would be far too difficult to fill an entire novel with just good descriptions, so it is understandable that there will be a couple less aesthetic descriptions. However, the most annoying ones are the works with absolutely no good descriptions and just follow through with crystal, blue, bright skies like the Pa

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