7 Description Mistakes Every New Fantasy Writer Makes

so you've created an incredible fantasy world and now you're trying to explore it in the pages of your novel but you're probably about to make some critical description mistakes which could ruin your book and make readers abandon your novel and I know this because over the past year I've edited over 751 th000 words worth of fantasy stories and I see the same seven description mistakes come up again and again I'm going to show you how to avoid these mistakes and as we go through this process you'll also learn the principles behind writing effective immersive descriptions that suck readers into the world of your fantasy story and make them say things like this I really enjoyed this one only complaint I have is it's too short I wanted more I wanted more of this world and these characters and the first mistake is overreliance on sight if you're like most new fantasy writers you are massively overring on using sight to describe things in your story maybe you're sprinkling in a little bit of sound but I can almost guarantee that you're neglecting taste touch and smell and I've got the data to proof this I analyzed the fantasy books I've edited this year and on average 55% of descriptions involve site 23% involve sound 17% used touch 4% used taste and only 3% used smell I'll show you how to do this analysis in your own novel in just a minute but first of all you might be wondering Jeb why is that a problem well there's actually a scientific reason why this is potentially ruining the reader immersion in your fantasy story research in a 2016 brain scientist paper shows that odors can trigger strong autobiographical memories and Association and smell evoked memories tend to be more emotional compared to Memories evoked by other senses one possible reason for this is the factory center of the brain which is responsible for processing smell is right next to the hippocampus which is responsible for memories let's actually just do a quick exercise between us to show this in action so right now I want you to close your eyes now think of a smell that reminds you of your childhood Perhaps it is the smell of freshly baked cookies resting on the kitchen counter or maybe it's the waxy slightly sweet smell of cray which you associate with creativity and hours of coloring and drawing or perhaps it's cut grass the fresh green scent of newly mour Lawns that bring with them memories of warm summer days outdoor play and carefree times now come back and open your eyes what did you feel chances are it was probably quite a nostalgic experience maybe you even had a smile on your face and it probably conjured up all other sorts of memories associations and Sensations as well so you can see right there the power of gustery senses like smell and tast and touch for revoking memory and it's no different in your fantasy novel there's such wonderful ways to create a sense of immersion between your reader and your incredible fantasy world so how do we actually make use of this when it comes to writing descriptions in your fantasy book well first of all you should begin by understanding your own description Tendencies and you can do this by using Pro writing Aid to analyze your book So Pro writing Aid is a software that plugs right into word you can use my affiliate Link in the description down below if you want to grab a copy of this software at no extra cost to you that link also helps support this channel so I really appreciate it if you use it Pro riding a and not sponsoring this video but I have been using this software since 2017 and I'm on the lifetime plan with it as well really great when software companies offer lifetime plans I'm a big fan so you can see how in the first draft of the Thunder Heist which is my ocean Punk fantasy novel about a pirate trying to steal a device that channels electricity from lightning I had a lot of Sight and Sound descriptions so as I went through the editing process for this book one of the key jobs I gave myself was to include more smell-based descriptions more taste based descriptions and even though I only added in as you can see here a few extra instances of smell and taste based descriptions in the story it really makes a big difference to the sense of immersion and I think it's why so many reviewers said that they really love the world building in the story and felt like they were right there alongside kef and the other main characters now it's very important when you're going through and looking at these sensory descriptions in your story that you don't implement this advice the wrong way the incorrect way to implement this advice would be thinking that you need to make sure you have 20% of your descriptions being sight based 20% being sound based 20% being smell based and basically having an equal distribution of all these sensors don't do that that's actually not what you need to do it's okay to have a big difference between the number of site based descriptions you're having and smell-based descriptions for example because that is a very typical way that we approach the world and write simply when you're editing it is a matter of just finding those areas that your story might be a little bit deficient in and just asking yourself can I work in some more sensory moments for those neglected senses but of course to write great descriptions in your fantasy novel it's not enough to just be using different sensory modes you can be using all the senses in the world but it will be completely pointless if you make the next mistake which is not filtering through the character's identity this mistake is so so important to avoid because when you can avoid it you unlock a effortless and Incredibly natural way to convey Your World building while also developing and building your characters at the same time but to understand this we first need to talk about perspective so there are lots of different perspectives you can write your fantasy story in and there is no such thing as a objectively best perspective to choose however most modern fantasy novels tend to fall into using either third person limited perspective which might result in a sentence like Adam squinted into the darkness or they might use firstperson limited perspective which might result in a sentence like I squinted into the darkness most of the fantasy books on the shelf behind me fall into one of these two categories with the first category of third person limited being the dominant one now the key thing with both of these types of perspectives is that your narrator has limited knowledge and can only describe the thoughts feelings and experiences of the character being focused on without access to the inner worlds of other characters and I think this is such a great way to tell a story and it's why so many these books back here use this approach because it really creates a deep sense of intimacy and connection to a character it really makes you feel like you're in that character's head so maybe that sounds really simple to you but here's the thing most new fantasy writers forget about the the fact that limited perspective is limited it should be limited to only what your character can see touch taste hear and smell and what they think and what they feel and too often I see new fantasy writers getting this wrong but maybe not in the way that you expect so there's obviously one incorrect use of perspective here where you might have a character who is let's say walking down a dark Corridor and you've just been in a limited third person perspective the whole time so we should only be in their head but then you describe how there's someone sneaking up behind them and whacking them over the head however they couldn't really experience that there's no way that they would have known that that person was coming up behind them without it being something that was available to them through their senses perhaps you can describe you know the scuff of a footstep behind them or you can hear the whisper through the air as a club comes down towards them and readers can infer what happens but quite often a lot of new fantasy writers do make the mistake of you know head hopping from the main character's perspective into the perspective or the feeling or the emotions of a character who is not actually the narrator but that's not the main mistake I want to talk about here with this point instead the main mistake I see in you fantasy writers make when it comes to using the narrator's perspective is that they describe things in a way that any character could describe and that's a big no no what you want to be doing is writing descriptions when you're using third person limited and first person limited perspective writing descriptions that tell you abundant details about the person who's doing the describing think think about it this way every setting in your story is actually a character a city is a character a stand that serves noodles is a character a Countryside covered with Rolling Hills with massive thunderclouds coming in above turning the land into sludge that is a character and what do characters have with other characters they have relationships they have opinions of the other characters they have feelings towards the other characters maybe the characters remind them of other people from their lives they want to get certain things from these characters they hope that these characters don't do certain things to them there is a relationship between them and it's this relationship that creates tension and conflict and character growth and all the good things that we come to a fantasy story for apply that same approach to your setting descriptions the setting you're describing in the story is a character and the character who is describing that setting has a relationship to it maybe they are a fish out of water they are arriving at this big fantasy city after spending their whole life on a backwards Farm they're Fish Out of Water all of this is new to them how are they going to describe it are they going to be overwhelmed by the amount of noise in the markets the smell of spices from the various stores are they going to be keeping to the corners of the taverns because there's just so many people going around or is your character less of a fish out of water and more of a tour guide have they been through this city a million times before do they know the best places to eat in the city do they know the shortcuts to escape the busy traffic after work each day the character's relationship with a setting is something that can come across in your descriptions in a way that really just naturally conveys details about your world to your reader some useful questions that I ask myself when it comes to writing descriptions that are grounded through a character's perspective include what do they pay special attention to how do things make them feel what do they wish was different what do they appreciate about this setting what surprises them and then what does this remind them of what Memories does this conjure up and ideally from all these questions what you're getting at is the concept of the magic if which is if I were my character in this situation how would I describe what I see before me and something that enhances this even further is avoiding our third mistake using your first ideas so often when you're describing something in your fantasy novel the first description you reach for is going to be a cliched one it might not be something that you've thought about with great depth it's just a description that you perhaps remember from a similar story or it's just the obvious way of approaching this particular description but the best setting descriptions in my mind are the ones where the writer finds a unique angle they find a way to describing something we've read about a 100 times before whether it is approaching a castle or meeting a dragon for the first time or seeing magic being used or perhaps even a battle between two armies they approach something like this and perhaps they start with the cliche description in their first draft but as they go into the second draft and the third draft they find a way to describe it in a way that no one else has described this thing before and this leads to our fourth fantasy description mistake disconnected descriptions the best fantasy novels always feel cohesive like you wouldn't be able to just talk about one specific element without talking about everything else and this reflects something that I really deeply believe which is that all the elements of Storytelling even though I talk about them in perhaps these disconnected ways in these YouTube videos ultimately at the end of the day they are all kind of merged together into this one clumpy concept so character in my mind is indistinguishable from plot because plot is simply made up of the actions that your characters take and your characters are defined by the actions they take over the course of your story aka the plot if you were to just describe a character from a fantasy novel that you love you wouldn't be able to describe that character without explaining the things that they do AA plot and even if you try to describe them in a way without using the plot from that particular story you're going to be describing their backstory which is still plot so character and plot in my mind are really fused together into this cohes ho and so too are setting descriptions and I think where a lot of new fantasy writers go wrong is they maybe designed this really cool character but then they feel like they're having to force the character to go down a certain plot and in my mind that means that this character and this plot you don't have synthesis between those two things and that's why there feels like there's tension and that's why it feels like your story is hard to write when you achieve synthesis between plot and character things feel effortless and they feel natural you can present any scenario to that character and you will know instantly how they respond because there is no Edge or there is no boundary between where that character ends and where your plot begins and vice versa but I think it's not just about a straight line connection between character and plot here I like to think about stories in terms of a triangle where you have plot character and your setting AKA Your World building all interrelated and again this comes back to that idea of how the best fantasy novels feel cohesive and they feel resonant in this way you couldn't take Harry Potter out of Hogwarts for example because those two characters just feel so deeply interrelated and even in the seventh Harry Potter book where he is out of Hogwarts for a bit he does eventually come back to the castle at the end the character progression of Frodo and Sam as they carry the ring across to moror is deeply related to the landscape and the world and the setting of Middle Earth itself when you synthesize these different elements of your story together that's when it becomes really magical as a reader to experience because it doesn't feel like the author is just you know dry using these different techniques on you it instead just feels like you can't see where the magic trick is it's just all happening at once and it feels so much more natural and resonant as a result so how does this all relate back to describing our fantasy Nos and writing good descriptions well I think that it's very important to always be thinking about how is this description exploring my characters inner lives their inner Journeys their inner struggles how is it exploring the plot how is it creating obstacles for that plot and then also so in the middle of character plot and setting there is another element here that is created by the synthesis of all of these things and that element is theme and for me a hugely important part of my writing process is figuring out what my theme is because once I know what my story is about at its core it just gives you so much inspiration for how to guide your characters through this world or what to do in certain moments with the Thunder Heist for example I realized that this was very much a world and a story about how do you deal with entropy how do you deal with the kind of slow but inevitable collapse of civilization and Order and all of those sort of things the story is set in this world where the characters live on these floating city ships that are on a monster infested Sea and the landscape all around them is infested with even worse monsters as well this civilization exists on these creaky Rusty ships that are falling apart the only way they get metal is by dangerous underwater mining operation and the occasional asteroid that maybe falls from the debris belt above carrying with it some precious metals as well and so the sort of desperation that that infuses into the story and into the setting descriptions is immensely hien because now I know when I'm describing let's say a simple interaction between my main character who was there to steal a particular item from the city and an inkeeper there is a subtle hint of kind of desperation the sense that both of them know that this is kind of a pointless action that is infused in the background of things and it gives you just this extra layer of conflict and dimension to explore in your narrative just by the reader experiencing one paragraph of your novel they should immediately kind of know the tone the style the voice and the overall ideas of the piece now that was quite an abstract point but the next mistake here is highly tactical and it's one of the quickest ways to quickly improve your writing in fact I can pretty much guarantee that within the next couple of minutes you will look at your sentences in a completely different way because the next mistake is repetitive sentence lengths this is one of the quickest way is to kill your readers interest in excitement in your story and drive them to sleep let me show you an example to explain what I mean here the forest was dark the trees were tall the path was narrow the wind was cold she walked slowly her heart was pounding the ow hooed loudly she felt scared the moon was hidden the Shadows were moving doesn't that just bore the crap out of you like obviously it's not written to be a good description but the fact that all the sentences have more or less the same number of words in you know 4ish or so words in in every sentence yeah literally four words in every single sentence there it creates this dullness this monotony and it just ruins the rhythm of your story and puts readers straight to bed by contrast look at what happens when we begin to vary the sentence lengths Forest loomed dark and for boing with tall trees casting long Sinister Shadows across the Narrow Path a cold wind whispered secrets to the leaves Shivers ran down her spine as she tread cautiously forward her heart raced pounding like a drum in her chest while an 's haunting Hood echoed in the distance fear gripped her clouds obscured the moon and she couldn't shake the feeling that the Shadows themselves were alive shifting and watching her every move so you can see here how by simply forcing yourself to change up the sentence links in your story it creates so much more Rhythm and the pacing is vastly improved this is actually another editing feature that Pro writing Aid has you can literally see the sentence lengths in your story as a chart and you can quickly identify where there's areas where you've got overly repetitive sent sentences or sentences that are maybe too short or too long but even if you're varying your sentence lengths there is also another hidden danger that you might be ignoring in your fantasy novel and that is our next mistake starting sentences with the same words again if we look at that bad example I gave you before there is another issue here all these sentences start with the same words and in my experience as soon as you have more than two sentences in a row to repeat with the exact same word it begins to grate on readers minds they might not notice it immediately but once they do notice it oh boy let me tell you they're not going to be able to unsee it and it will be something that is just a constant source of annoyance for them especially if they're experiencing your book in audio book form when you're reading on the page the eye can give a little bit of a pass it can slip over some of these things but when someone is listening to your story all of these little ticks and these issues become more apparent and in fact one of the easiest ways to avoid these mistakes is simply to read your story out loud I'm doing this right now with Kingdom dragons which recently funded on Kickstarter raised over $20,000 thanks to all of you which was absolutely amazing right now I'm going through my proof reading for this book and a big part of my proof reading process is literally reading the entire story out loud it's very exhaustive but it really makes you aware of when you have repetitive sentence starts or when you have sentences that feel like they are too similar in length and then the last description mistake that new fantasy writers make are overly abstract descriptions so the Pyramid of abstraction is a concept that was coined by Brandon Sanderson I believe and essentially he talks about how there are sort of two different types of descriptions you can tell in your fantasy story first you have concrete language so this is specific detailed descriptions of things that actually exist in the world of your story so for example a red apple covered with a brown bruise that is something that objectively exists in the world of your story now these concrete descriptions should form the base of your pyramid the top of the pyramid are abstract descriptions so an abstract description is something that describes a thing that is not really there so it's an emotion it's a feeling it's an interpretation it's a thought it's an idea so for example an abstract description here could be the Apple reminded Adam of the same fruit which had cast him and Eve out of the Garden of Eden now you usually want to begin your descriptions in that concrete level describing things that are actually there those are the descriptions that ground readers in your setting that tell them the choreography of how characters are moving around that maybe tell them where things are in relation to each other and it's only once you've got that strong sense of grounding that then you can kind of go up to the abstract level of describing a character's emotions or thoughts or feelings or Memories the mistake I often see new fantasy writers make is they spend too much time in that abstract plane and it leads to this sense of almost floating away from the reality of your story if you do it too much with not enough concrete descriptions to remind you of where you are to bring you back down into that sort of solid base of the pyramid here it will make your story feel vague and it will make readers feel like they're not really immersed in your narratives now this isn't to say that you need every single description to be concrete I think if you do that you're probably going to create a fairly boring story because we do come to stories to see into characters Minds to experience their emotions to see what their feelings are about certain things it's simply about making sure you've got a good balance and mixture between these two things and of course it's not just enough to write great descriptions in your fantasy novel you also have to make sure that the very first chapter of your story is hooking readers from the start make keep them emotionally invested in your characters making them curious about your world building and ensuring that they have absolutely no choice but to continue reading on and finish your book as quickly as possible and if you want to learn how to do that in the most effective way possible then you should check out this video over here where I talk about first chapter mistakes that new fantasy writers make

Channel: Jed Herne

Views: 243,743

Keywords: writing, writing advice, writing craft, story, fantasy, author, jed herne, authortube, booktube, wizards warriors words, self-publish, indie, publishing

Id: 4PmOhOXzBTo

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023