Four Key Ways to Practice Writing Vivid Descriptions

By Jodi Clark

If you’re trying to improve your skill at writing descriptions, there is one quick piece of advice I can give you right now: practice makes perfect.

However, I think that phrase could be altered to more accurately say that instead of practice making you a perfect writer, practice makes you a better writer. You don’t always have to be drafting the greatest short story, novel, or screenplay in the entire world if you want to get better at writing descriptions. You just have to be dedicated to practicing your description-writing skills consistently, in whatever way you can.

Here are four ways that you can practice writing descriptions and ultimately improve your fundamental description-writing skills, so that when you’re faced with writing descriptions in your story, you’ll be confident in your ability to put the right words on the page.

#1 - Use Your Real-Life Experiences

Start paying extra close attention to what you see. When you are out and about in the world, hiking in the woods, on vacation at the beach, or even at a grocery store, pay attention to details in the setting around you.

Source: Giphy

Think of the five senses—what does this place smell like? Look like? Sound like? Feel like? And even what does it taste like if there’s food or drink? Notice the details around you, how they make you feel, and how they affect you. Is there wind blowing your hair? Snow falling on your hands and face?

Ask lots of questions during your observation of the setting where you are. Then, when you have a minute, write down a description of the setting you were in. It’s best to do this right after you leave the setting, or even while you’re still in it, if that’s possible. It can help to take a picture or two of the setting and refer to that when you are trying to describe the scene later on—just remember the order that you noticed things in, and try to recreate that sense of gradual discovery.

Then, take it a step further. Describe the setting from your point of view, and then describe it from the point of view of your main character in your current WIP, or from the POV of one of your favorite characters from a book that you like. Try to describe the setting how that character would describe it, and from different moods. Imagine if your character was happy, or if they were sad, and practice writing the description from different emotional foundations.

Additionally, pay attention to how the people around you express emotion. We all do things in a slightly different way. Observe how people express gratitude, happiness, and even sadness, and store it all away in your writing memory. Some express happiness by smiling and laughing and others might express it by crying happy tears. Some express sadness by crying and others might express it by laughing bitterly at their problems. 

Take note of the varied ways people express themselves and observe your own behaviors as well. Make different facial expressions at yourself in the mirror and write down how those look. Practice describing all the things that you’re seeing, and soon you’ll be well on your way to writing vivid descriptions.

One of the reasons that I’ve done some things that normally I wouldn’t go out of my way to do (fencing, riding a camel, trying new foods, etc.) is because I’m trying to seek out experiences so I can describe them more authentically in my stories. 

When it is safe and possible, you can try seeking out fun experiences like those to help you understand the details of the experiences you’ll be writing about in your story, so you can describe them better when it comes to putting them into words. 

My experiences truly help to inform my writing and make me feel confident in knowing the details about the things I describe in my stories. Fencing taught me that even light swords become hard to use effectively after many fights. It also made me aware of the tiny details you actually notice when you are trying to fend off an attacker while simultaneously searching for their weaknesses. Riding horses (as well as falling off a spooked horse) and camels has helped me to narrow in on the details of each experience so that I can accurately portray those experiences in writing. 

And while all these experiences have helped me learn to write with more confidence and clarity, they have also enriched my life and given me my own adventures to enjoy and stories to tell! 

I suggest practicing describing what you are seeing at least once a day. The descriptions can be however long you like, especially before you edit them, but keeping them short will give you more time to get out there observing, and it will also challenge you to make sure that you’re only using the words you need to use in order to craft an accurate and impactful description of what you’re experiencing.

#2 - Pay Close Attention to How You Feel

The second thing to do is to pay close attention to how you feel when you are experiencing different emotions, or even different physical states, like when you are sick, exercising, or even just tired of standing in line for hours. Ask yourself: how do I feel? What made me feel that way? And why did it make me feel that way?

The next time something makes you feel a certain way emotionally, pay attention to how that emotion shows up in you. Do you laugh when you’re nervous? Do you cry when you’re sad, or do you just stay silent?

Try describing your emotions and how they make you feel physically. I suggest making a list of emotions and then describing how each of those emotions affects you physically and internally (the thoughts that go through your head, a feeling of being stuck if you feel sad or angry, or a feeling of optimism and never-ending opportunity if you feel happy, etc.).

As I have become increasingly aware of how my emotions make me feel physically, I’ve been able to write better emotional descriptions. I’ve cut down on the melodrama in descriptions and instead have focused on the little things that you actually notice when you’re heartbroken or joyful or at peace. 

These kinds of authentic descriptions connect well with your audience, since if your audience has had a similar experience, they will relate to your descriptions and remember them.

Because of my goal to use my experiences as research, I have also been able to see the bright side when I’m sick. So instead of just being miserable, I’ve been able to identify the stages of a sickness, the way I feel during each stage (energy levels, pain levels, etc.) and I’ve kept these notes tucked away in my mind to use someday.

To close this section, I suggest reading through your favorite books with an eye for how the author portrays emotion in various characters. Learn from passages that describe emotions and thoughts. Decide for yourself if you agree with how this character is experiencing this emotion, or if you feel it is an inaccurate portrayal of whatever the emotion is—anger, sadness, joy, peace.

#3 - Watch TV and Movies with a Notebook

TV shows and movies have been influential in my writing journey. Even though I’m not as much of an avid reader as I was years ago when I could read hundreds of pages a night, I still end every day by watching about half an hour of a movie or a TV show. I remember the things I enjoy and critique the things that I don’t. 

If I’m not enjoying something in a film, I usually try to imagine what could be different to make it better, which has been a super helpful exercise not just for writing descriptions, but also for my overall writing skills. Since we’re almost constantly exposed to stories on screens these days, watching movies and TV shows critically can be a great way to consistently practice writing.

To practice writing descriptions, I suggest watching TV and movies with a notebook on hand. Or your phone, but preferably a notebook (there’s less opportunity for distraction that way!). Watch the scenes that come up and then pause the movie and try writing the scenes out in a narrative format.

See if you can identify what the characters are feeling and describe those feelings just based on what you see, and maybe what you can glean from the music in the scene. Also, describe the setting based on how important it is. You can usually tell a setting’s importance by what is zoomed in on, what kind of scenery is shown, and how the characters interact with the scenery.

If you do this, starting with movies that you know and love and then moving to movies and shows that you don’t know quite as well, you’ll be able to easily practice your description-writing abilities in ways that go beyond the everyday descriptions you might be able to practice from what we all experience in normal life. It’s not every day that we fight armies of orcs, go on life-threatening quests to save the world, or learn how to ride dragons, now is it?

#4 - Become an Excellent Editor

If you’re anything like I was when I first started writing, this advice might make you flinch. Why do I need to be a good editor to be a good writer? What does editing have to do with descriptions? 

These are definitely questions I would have asked years ago, especially since I thought that I would never be any good at editing. But after years of critiquing and editing books, I have some good news for you, and for my past self: if you can read, and you can write, you can edit.

Source: Giphy

What do I mean by editing? Mainly, I mean the self-editing that comes after you have finished writing your first draft. Learning which words need to be cut or added in your descriptions and using your editing skills to implement meaningful changes in your writing can help your description-writing skills improve. 

Over time, you will spot things that consistently do not work in your descriptions, and you will write better and better descriptions as you realize what you need to do differently, all thanks to the way you’ve trained your eye to recognize great descriptions through editing.

Another way to train your eye to recognize great descriptions, and teach yourself how to write them, is by reading and editing other people’s work. Now, we must always approach other people’s work humbly and with kindness, and with the appropriate response to things that must be critiqued. However, viewing the work of others and asking yourself why a description isn’t affecting you, the reader, the way it should can help you develop your sense of what a great description is and is not.

If you have permission, making suggestions in the document of a manuscript you’re critiquing about how things could be rephrased or where word count could be cut down to create stronger and more impactful descriptions can help you to try your hand at clarifying what the author is trying to get across while maintaining the integrity of their voice. This will help you in the future when you are trying to write and self-edit your own descriptions.

This also relates to reading published books critically! When you’re reading published books, try thinking about why something isn’t affecting you the way it should. Think about the author’s intention with a scene and how it falls flat. Think of ways that the descriptions could have been improved. 

Training yourself to recognize bad descriptions and how to fix them can greatly help you in your quest to write brilliant descriptions. But make sure that you also set aside time to read casually and not only critically. Constantly reading in a critical mode can take the joy out of reading for fun.

Sharpening my editing skills was one of the best things I ever did for my writing skills. Now, I can focus on what I want to say and confidently know how to get my ideas across as I’m writing. It feels so good to be able to just write without constantly second-guessing my choice of words, because I also know that even if I don’t write something well the first time around, I can always edit it and make it better later on.

A final tip: make sure that when you’re editing your own work and critiquing the work of others, your suggestions are specific. If you spot vague wording, try to make it more specific, so that it creates a more vivid picture in the reader’s mind. If you see a passage describing an “old coat,” try rewriting it to describe a “torn yellow raincoat.” Specific wording can help a great deal in writing better descriptions.

Four Takeaways

In conclusion, there are four things you can do to help your description-writing skills improve:

That’s it! I hope that these four exercises will be helpful for you on your description-writing journey.

What are some description-writing exercises that have been helpful to you in the past? What’s your favorite way to practice writing descriptions?