An Author’s Art
There are some works of art that you will love. You can see why this book or film or painting or whatever has the reputation it has. You feel it.
Then there those things that are admirable, that are impressive, but your appreciation is detached and objective. You get it, but you don’t feel it.
And of course there are some works or art you have no idea what all the fuss is about. That’s natural—after all, art is subjective and we all have our own preferences.
When it comes to making art—in the case of myself and most of the readers of this tumblr that art being in the form of the written word—what kind of art do you want to make?
Behold, my powers of description!
Of all the different aspects of writing a story (character, story, plotting, theme, pace, suspense, what-have-you) by far the easiest to get on the page is description. You may not know who Jack is, what he’s going to do or how he’s going to do it, but you can still get 400 words down about the boots he wears and the view from his window.
Describing stuff is a necessary part of any story, but it can also go on for quite a while. Certain genres suit a more flowery style (romance, fantasy, historical fiction) and literary fiction in general can tend towards a more deliberative use of language. But it’s not enough to describe something well, you also have to know why you’re describing it.
stuff that's interesting (hopefully to at least one other person)
