Imagine that you are blind. Someone is reading a story to you. It might be a news story. It might be an essay. It might be fiction. The page is turned and your reader discovers that in lieu of words, the author has inserted this image.

What words should the reader say to you to convey that image?

Or, imagine that you are reading the piece for yourself and you turn the page, the author wants you to have that image as part of the story, but there is no artwork. What words should he write to convey it to you?

If an author does not trust the reader, there is a tendency to over-write the description. Example: “It was an accumulation of hegari-based harvest product, probably wheat stalk, some fourteen meters in circumference and four meters in height, in the shape of a half-hemispherical ovoid, with shadows of a length associated with a southwesterly orientation at one-half hour after sunrise, blurred by ….” Snooze. 

For full post on how to write a descriptive scene, and other A Novel Approach blog posts written by Jack Woodville London visit his website http://www.jwlbooks.com.