According to Gretchen Bernabei, “Writers describe what they see, think, do, AND say to tell a story. They describe what other characters do AND say, too.”
In an effort to HIGHLIGHT the power of varied description, we analyzed a piece by Elizabeth featured in Bernabei’s book Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning.
We then colored up our “dull” drafts, focusing on the following four specific types of descriptions that could be added to or altered in our writing:
- yellow – everything the narrator thought
- blue – everything the narrator saw
- red – everything that anyone said
- green – everything anyone did (not counting thinking or talking)
This exercise caused us to notice the monochromatic nature of our writing. How much more potent would our writing be if we made a few adjustments? Could we change some of the actions into dialogue? Or, could we change something seen into a thought?
In addition to color, we associated each of the four descriptions and colors with a symbol. Below is a link to Bernabei’s Icon Glossary, a mini dictionary of symbols that we will explore this year as we work to grow as writers.
Ultimately, our goal is to paint a vivid picture in the minds of readers. In order to do that, we need to add “color” by CRAFTing our sentences and paragraphs carefully and taking time to REFLECT and REVISE when we get into the rut of seeing or doing descriptions.
Come back soon to see some examples of writing transformed by time and tints.