Painting a Picture In Your Reader’s Mind Using Vivid Details to Improve Your Writing

Using Binoculars When you use binoculars you start big and move in. Details are boxes inside boxes. We start writing about a messy room and end up describing the argyle socks wrestling on the floor. Think of yourself as moving in closer and closer with the binoculars, exposing more and more detail.

Let’s take a closer look at this…. It was a very old rug. It was a very old rug, torn around the edges with big splotches of paint. It reeked of old dog and mildew, and when he stepped on it he heard it crunch like cellophane beneath his feet. The vivid details tell you what you see, hear, smell, touch, taste.

How does this sound? Listen to the description and decide if it brings in all your senses- Does it answer all your ‘mental image’ questions?

The bunkhouse was a long building. Inside it was plain The bunkhouse was a long building. Inside it was plain. It had three doors and small windows. There were eight bunks. Some of the bunks had blankets. Some had burlap ticking.

Each bunk had shelves. Each shelf had the cowboy’s belongings Each bunk had shelves. Each shelf had the cowboy’s belongings. There was also medicine and other stuff on the shelves. Near one wall was a stove. In the middle of the room was a table to play games on.

Some things to ask yourself: What did the walls look like? What did the windows look like? Can you tell me more about the shelves? What was on the shelves?

The bunkhouse was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. (Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck)

Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up of blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk.

And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum power, razors, and those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe. And there were medicines on the shelves, and little vials, combs; and from nails on the box sides, a few neckties.

Near one wall there was a black cast iron stove, its stovepipe going straight up through the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a big square table littered with playing cards, and around it were grouped boxes for the players to sit on.

Doesn’t that ‘Paint a Picture’ in your mind?

USE ALL THE SENSES Ask yourself questions while you write: What does it look like? Sound like? Feel like? Smell like? Taste like?

Let’s describe a BARN The barn was very large. It was very old.

How did the barn Smell? It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows.

It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope.

And whenever a cat was given a fish-head to eat, the barn would smell of fish. But mostly it smelled of hay, for there was always hay in the great loft overhead. And there was always hay being pitched down to the cows and the horses and the sheep.

It often had a sort of peaceful smell—as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.

How did the barn feel? The barn was pleasantly warm in winter when the animals spent most of their time indoors, and it was pleasantly cool in summer when the big doors stood open to the breeze.

What could you see in the barn? The barn had stalls on the main floor for the work horses, tie-ups on the main floor for the cows, a sheepfold down below for the sheep, a pigpen down below for Wilbur.

What was in the barn? It was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps.

Can you tell me anything else about the barn? It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in. And the whole thing was owned by Fern’s uncle, Mr. Homer L. Zuckerman. (Charlotte’s Web – E.B.White)

Your turn Read the following blurry sentences. Pick one and make it come alive with specific details. A) I have a dog. B) He is a disgusting eater. C) Dale got the feeling all night that Beth might not want a second date.