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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25562
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25562
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The problem with description is that description is the wrong word for it. The right word is evocation. You are looking to evoke a response in the reader which brings a sense of place flooding into their minds. You can't build it for them; you don't have the materials. You have to pull it out out of them.

Consider:

> Our revels now are ended. These our actors,  
> As I foretold you, were all spirits and  
> Are melted into air, into thin air:  
> And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,  
> The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,  
> The solemn temples, the great globe itself,  
> Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve  
> And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,  
> Leave not a rack behind.

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples" is not exactly a passage rich in detail, but it powerfully evokes an image. "cloud-capped" towers is a particularly economical way of suggesting not only great height but a kind of misty insubstantiality. But the words don't work as well when quoted in isolation from the larger passage. The preceding lines are not themselves description, but they set the mood in which the descriptive passage evokes images from the reader. As in so much of writing, it is mostly about the set up. Do the setup right, and the effect itself can be summoned with a few quite ordinary words.

The passage you quote is quite lurid and overwritten, though that may be a deliberate attempt to summon the ghost of Edgar Rice Burroughs. But much of its effect it achieved by evocative rather than descriptive language. It is weakest when it is being descriptive:

> The clearing was a rough oval some five hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide: broadest in the north, narrowing in the centre and tapering into thorny undergrowth at the southern end.

It is strongest when it is being evocative:

> rain ran down the length of a longsword hanging by a thongbelt at his slender waist.

Here the focus on a particular detail immediately evokes the wider picture in the reader's mind.

So, you are right on the money when you say, "I want my text to extract an image out of the reader." It is always about building an image by evoking images that are already in the reader's mind. To do that, you have to focus on two things: the evocative detail, and the setup that allows the evocative detail to work as it should.

Original score: 6