Monday, October 27, 2014

Police Descriptions...Uh-Oh.

Well, I just made myself laugh on accident while I was reviewing / editing for a lady in London.  I was giving some advice on descriptions, and I ended up writing something funny and not at all expected. Here's the excerpt. The punch line is at the end.


     Ah, and the reason this was highlighted was it is a police description, with a couple of words added, like gorgeous' and 'perfect'.

Pick one striking feature and mention it. Put the rest in your p
ersonal story guide as reminders for yourself of what the character looks like, and occasionally draw one or two other striking features for purposes of giving the readers new features to focus on. All at once is like reading a grocery shopping list. Except it's worse. It's more like a list of college books and math utensils. There isn't even anything yummy on that kind of list--unless you're a goat. In which case, paper is absolutely-frickin'-delicious.


 Hahaha. 


This is a thing, though.  A lot of less experienced writers tend to list features in their descriptions, and it comes out sounding like a police descrip on a suspect or a missing persons report.  Follow the advice I gave to my client here.

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