Blending Dialogue With Description - Post #2: "Making It Interesting"

It is too often a time when I find myself falling into the trap of unnecessary dialogue. And if it's not necessary... Well, it's probably boring. In other words, *yawn* your audience is butterfly hunting at this point. Yeah. Butterfly hunting. Where on earth do I get this stuff... Seriously?

Let me clear one thing up for you. When your audience is reading your book, you don't want them off hunting for butterflies.

"But-but-but, my description! It is not butterfly-hunt-distraction worthy! It is beyond perfect!"

First of all, no.

The first part in learning to use GOOD, USEFUL description, which will keep the interest of your reader, is learning to accept some criticism. If your friend says that you have too much description, then you do. She wouldn't lie to you, just to keep you happy. That's not what real friends do. And that just got really deep. We're not going there...

Here are some steps, to insure that your description is interesting to your readers.

1. Answer all the five senses questions - I briefly covered these questions in a previous post. Basically, you describe what your character is feeling/seeing/smelling/hearing/tasting.
2. Cut out all the extra words - If your description is too wordy, most people won't take the time to read it.
3. Use vivid words - If you can create a beautiful picture in just a few sentences, chances are, you won't have any problem with description.
4. Describe things as they are - Sometimes, I find myself exaggerating things... It's hard, I know from personal experience, to not get overly excited about something. Well, let me rephrase that. It's okay to get overly excited about something, but when you start using that energy in your writing, it can get kind of weird.

That's about all I got for you today...

You'll want to be on here tomorrow! We have something really special for  you all :) (It might just be a guest post from one of the girls over at RaWD... You never know... ;))

Keep writing!
<3
Patricia Rane