Balanced Description
“It was mid-October, the harvest well stored. The sun was as hot as if it shone in the first week of September, but a tumbling sky threw great clouds before the wind, and when the sun was obscured then all the promise of winter was in the air. But it was magic weather, a gift to sweeten the sadness of the ending year. There were still blackberries, thick and dripping with juice, but these would remain on the bushes, for by now, as it was said, the Devil had spat on them and they should not be eaten. So birds gorged themselves, and the ground and the leaves of the brambles were strewn with purple droppings. The water, half shadow and half glitter, threw back the colours of beech and bracken tossing them over the boulders like gold and copper coins.”
This excerpt is from Barbara Willard’s The Sprig of Broom. It is a little bit longer side, but it is hard to break up. The section is a great exzmple of good descriptive writing. So far in our unit we haven’t read or written or even talked about descriptive writing, but it is one of my favorite genres of writing to read. I love how good descriptive writing allows the reader to be transported to a new scene. My mother always told me as I was growing up, that as a child she would read books to travel to countless places, from the Swiss Alps to the sandy beaches of Jamaica. Barbara Willard is certainly a very talented descriptive writer and her writing almost goes “over the top”. A good writer, though, breaks convention and in stretching the rules creates something unique. Some would say that her writing is simply too descriptive and rich in detail, but it is important to remember her purpose. Why has she written the passage as it is? She obviously wants her audience to feel the hot sun, smell the ripened blackberries, and see the long shadows. If she wrote with less description, the reader would not be able to re-experience the scene. By her description, we know that it is autumn. She doesn’t need to tell us it is October because she “shows us”. In class we have talked about “decluttering” our writing, but Willard boldly goes against the grain. Her writing is not cluttered, it is important to state. Almost all of her words have meaning and add something new to the overall scene. I know that this is good writing because I can taste the dripping blackberries and feel the promising chill of the impending winter. Her writing reminds me of how much I am going to miss the Fall season back home…. the apple picking, the bonfires, and the vast piles of leaves in shades of brown, orange, purple, and yellow.
3 responses so far
I love this description. Reading it, I could picture the setting and imagine myself there. I also liked how you put in the picture. It is unique to your post and again, makes the scene come truly alive.
I really liked your post and your reference to Zinsser. I agree that Willard goes against the idea of simple writing in her description but her risk is well worth it because her narration is beautiful. I believe there is a fine line between being descriptive and saying too much and Willard toes that line very well.
That is a great quote. I just wanted to focus on one thing though. In the eleventh line of your writing, you used the word “re-experienced” to show how the reader is impacted by the writing. I like to think as reading a passage -such as the one you provided- as an experience. I think that sometimes the author wants the reader to be lost in the text and feel as though they are there, in the scene being described. The word ‘re-experience’ makes it sound like the reader is watching a movie of what the author is experiencing. Maybe I am making something out of nothing, but that one word made me think. However, I like how you compared de-cluttering to descriptive writing. At first glance, some pieces of writing look very cluttered. But, when looked at closely, it becomes apparent that the words are necessary to the story. That point is very interesting.