When words alone can describe your vivid imagination, what then?

When I write my chapters, I have a DIFFICULT TIME showing and telling what is happening!

The way I see it in my mind is so different from how I wrote it down.

Like in cases like that, do you sugarcoat it or something?

In my mind, I vividly see a female warrior about to face off against a monstrous foe. Yet when I try to show that in my writing, it comes out horrible.

So, what do you do about it? Does anyone else get like this?

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This is one of those things you learn from reading books, but you don’t like to read fiction. You don’t mind nonfiction, though, right? Maybe you could look for a nonfiction book about how to write descriptively. I can’t think of anything else that might help, except maybe watching YouTube videos about writing vivid descriptions. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯

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You might not like this, but reading nonfiction isn’t my thing either.

So, I guess I am stuck on what to do. I mean I can looking at YouTube videos for help as a start.

I am a weird ass writer. I PREFER to write over read and that alone speaks volumes. I only read in spades which isn’t all that helpful.

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Off Topic: I have to really stop searching up random things online just out of curiosity because I am start to psycho-analyze myself based on my findings.

Anyone else?

It’s so hard, isn’t it?

I just try my best :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m particularly horrible with action scenes. There ends up being so much stabby stabby and I forget people can kick their legs up or use their fists. I also find it hard to imagine what the opponent might do in response. Then magick battles…oh boy. There’s just like…colorful light shooting out of hands…and that’s it. I need to get better somehow.

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Sometimes, the only recourse is to draw

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That would make my situation worse. I can’t draw and to draw how I see it in my mind will make me highly bitter.

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When you can see your imagination the same way you see the everyday world, how do you put it into words when you can’t fully explain it in descriptive detail?

Seriously, how? Is it cheating to just “try your best” or sugarcoat it or something else?

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Ah…man, I wanted to add fighting scenes in my stories one day whether it is magical or not, but the way I see the action pack fight scenes is so unreal.

A manga artist or an anime director would be green with envy. That comes off as exaggeration or plain bragging, but my vivid mental imagery is really out there.

I just can’t put that into words without sounds too much.

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I think you need to find inspiration. Word inspiration. Look up something that is similar and find times where people have described the thing.

I once tried to describe an ancient stone temple which was inspired by Angkor Wat. So, I looked up documentaries of Angkor Wat because usually those give flowery descriptions and tried to use that as inspiration to describe my fantasy temple.

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Just search on the internet “word inspiration” then go on from there?

Am I misunderstanding things?

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Not “word inspiration” that’s my own term :stuck_out_tongue:

So, say you want to describe a battle scene and what you want is to describe the opponent monster. What is the monster like? Is it like a giant alligator? Maybe look up “alligator encounter” or “documentary swap creatures” or something like that to get words like “massive” or living, breathing dinosaur or mammoth bodies that towered over all heads with sharp white teeth gleaming in the sunlight… idk what you’ll find. I just imagined a nature documentary and made that up.

Or maybe the monster has lots of fur. Are they like a giant cat? Bigfoot? Look up bigfoot encounters?

Anything that you can find where a person is describing something.

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I play with a more is less mentality. The reader usually can fill in missing information, so I just need the base material established, not each blow.

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Oh, my bad! LOL!

Like researching? I get it now!

Exactly. Get descriptive words from the descriptive pros. I find documentaries to be the best. That, and any kind of expert. I wanted to know how to describe a Victorian mansion, so I found an architect channel on YouTube and just listened and picked up words they were using to describe the structure. It did help enough.

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This is usually one of those things you figure out on your own. Sure, you can ask for help or get advice or look at other examples but, ultimately, you have to do it your own way. It won’t ever be perfect but you’ll reach a stage that’s close enough

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I get it, but it is sometimes defeating when I can’t go into descriptive detail the way I want.

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Ah. White room syndrome. It’s a very normal thing because as writers, we tend to see things perfectly in our heads and we try to show that in our writing but it comes up vague because sometimes, unintentionally, we feel as though our readers can read our minds. Which honestly, I wish was a thing because it’d make writing so much easier. :rofl:

But the trick to describing stuff is to make it enough to where it’s decently imaginable—not too vague, but not too detail-dumping. Like, we don’t need a play-by-play of what they’re doing or what they look like or what the scene is. In some cases, it becomes boring if we read an action sequence where the writer redundantly said how many hits someone did: “He punched his jaw, then he punched his stomach, and his rib, and his jaw again.” It can also become awkward and choppy, like if there was an intercourse scene, we don’t need to know how many times they grinded or thrusted against each other. Like… we get it. :upside_down_face:

When describing something, I like to have an imaginary check-list because you need to describe not only the scenery, but the inner thoughts and emotions as well. That, too, can be tricky. But they tend to go hand-in-hand in most scenarios. But on this check-list, I’ll ask myself questions like textures, or what it’s made of, or colors, or designs it may have. And depending on what it is I’m describing, I also think about environments: is it cold? Wet? Dry? Humid? Hot? The smells? The atmosphere? For people, I’ll think about similar things but in regards to how they feel and or think.

So like, in your example, think about the environment first. Where are they? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Then think about what they may be feeling in the moment. Are they scared of this monstrous foe? Are they excited to fight because maybe they haven’t been able to fight something real in a long time? And what about appearances? What does your character look like in terms of her warrior outfit, stance, etc.? What does this monster look like? So on and so forth.

But even with this check-list, it can still be hard to manage and tricky to do, and in that case, it’s always best to read published versions of fight scenes or whatever scene you need help to describe and kind of mimic those. You can also try to mimic movies/shows with how the characters or scenes look as well. The only difference is understanding the emotional/physical part for characters because people do get tired and they do get hurt, so it’s harder to only go off movies and shows because they don’t show how much in pain someone becomes if they get their leg chopped off or when someone stabs them. With that, you do have to do your own research into how other people have written it or if someone can actually describe it to you (which can either be found through writing forums, social media (like if a YouTuber can describe it) or through writing blogs).

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This might be helpful, and could also be useful as inspiration for your future YouTube channel too, since she doesn’t appear onscreen in any of her videos; she just uses stock footage to illustrate her points. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯

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