Once again it is time to practice my descriptions a little more. After all, practice makes perfect. And since I’ve started the Writing Wednesday Prompts, I definitely feel like my writing has been improving. So, let’s continue with this bit of practice as well.
Admittedly, this time around I did things a little differently. Instead of picking an aspect and writing a small paragraph on it, I decided to attempt making some poetry. Again, I’m not great at descriptions, and poetry is very descriptive and full of imagery. The problem is I don’t remember ever really studying poetry in school. I remember each English class in high school would just rush through the poetry section as fast as possible, or skip it entirely.
Needless to say, I am no poet.
I’ll share what I came up with, and then switch it to the format I am much more familiar with.
My Attempt at Poetry
The world fell silent
The horizon drew closer
Snow covered the ground in fluffy heaps.
More continuously followed
The blanket grew thicker with each hour.
The bright colors faded to white
The darker ones stood out against the pale new world.
Most creatures hid away
A few brave birds flitted from shelter to shelter
I remained inside with socks on my feet, flannel on my shoulders, and a fire burning bright.
The world outside becomes blinding as the sun peeks through the clouds.
The world grew still
The air absorbed warmth
My Notes
Again, I’m not really a poet. I think my biggest problem here is that I don’t really have a message that I’m trying to convey. Instead, I’m just trying, and failing in most spots, to write down some nice prose about what I’m seeing. I didn’t really have a goal in mind with the piece, and that shows.
By the last two lines, I’d given up with the poetry attempt and switched to just writing down observations about the world I was seeing in order to give me something to work with when I rewrote it.
Let’s Turn It into a Nice Description
The world outside the house fell silent and still as the horizon drew closer and closer with the approaching storm. The colors outside slowly faded away to the darkest of colors and brightest of whites. Snow drifted to the ground and covered it in steadily growing heaps of fluff. The flakes came down in bigger and bigger sizes as the hours passed with no end in sight.
The creatures outside hurried for cover, darting from shelter to shelter until they found one that suited them. There they would remain until the storm blew over and the weather warmed once more.
I, too, hid from the storm in the shelter of my home with fuzzy socks on my feet, a flannel shirt on my shoulders, and a warm fire burning in the fireplace. I didn’t dare venture outside until the snow lessened and the sun began to peek out from the clouds.
When that happened I donned my winter coat, hat, and gloves and ventured out into the bright new world. The sunlight shined off the freshly fallen snow in a blinding way and made me wish for my sunglasses. The cold air sapped the heat from me, but the sunlight’s increasing strength promised warmth and drew the critters out from their hiding. They began to explore the new world in much the same way I did.
Final Thoughts
With this method of jotting down notes about the environment, I didn’t give myself nearly as much material to work with as I did the last two times I did this exercise. While this description was a lot shorter as a result of that, I still had fun doing this.
I find it fun and relaxing to write something that I have no real intent of perusing beyond a certain point. It takes a lot of the pressure away that is normally present in writing. These little exercises aren’t meant to be the start of some complex story that needs to be perfect, they are me just practicing, which turns out to be a lot of fun.
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