1. DESCRIPTION
in FICTION

2. An Example
"If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing
to the man sitting astride it. He was twice
as tall as a normal man and at least five
times as wide. He looked simply too big to be
allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy
black hair and beard hid most of his face,
he had hands the size of trash can lids, and
his feet in their leather boots were like
baby dolphins."

3. An Example
"If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to
the man sitting astride it. He was twice as
tall as a normal man and at least five times
as wide. He looked simply too big to be
allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair
and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size
of trash can lids, and his feet in their
leather boots were like baby dolphins."

4. An Example
"If the motorcycle was huge, it was
nothing to the man sitting astride it. He
was twice as tall as a normal man and at
least five times as wide. He looked simply
too big to be allowed, and so wild — long
tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid
most of his face, he had hands the size of
trash can lids, and his feet in their
leather boots were like baby dolphins."

5. Another Example
We wore our best dresses on the outside to make a
good impression. Rachel wore her green linen
Easter suit she was so vain of, and her long
whitish hair pulled off her forehead with a wide
pink elastic hairband...Sitting next to me on the
plane, she kept batting her white-rabbit
eyelashes and adjusting her bright pink
hairband, trying to get me to notice she had
secretly painted her fingernails bubble-gum pink
to match.
Barbara Kingsolver

6. Another Example
My brother Ben’s face, thought Eugene, is like a piece of
slightly yellow ivory; his high white head is knotted
fiercely by his old man’s scowl; his mouth is like a
knife, his smile the flicker of light across a blade. His
face is like a blade, and a knife, and a flicker of light:
it is delicate and fierce, and scowls beautifully forever,
and when he fastens his hard white fingers and his
scowling eyes upon a thing he wants to fix, he sniffs
with sharp and private concentration through his long,
pointed nose...his hair shines like that of a young boy—it
is crinkled and crisp as lettuce.
Thomas Wolfe

7. What
about
places?
I have learned that there are actually intensities
of blue beyond very, very bright blue...I have seen
fuchsia pantsuits and menstrual-pink sportcoats
and maroon-and-purple warm-ups and white loafers
worn without socks...I now know the precise
mixological difference between a Slippery Nipple
and a Fuzzy Navel. I know what a Coco Loco is. I
have in one week been the object of over 1500
professional smiles. I have burned and peeled twice.
I have shot skeet at sea. Is this enough? At the
time it didn't seem like enough. I have felt the full
clothy weight of a subtropical sky. I have jumped a
dozen times at the shattering, flatulence-of-the-
gods sound of a cruise ship's horn. I have absorbed
the basics of mah-jongg, seen part of a two-day
rubber of contract bridge, learned how to secure a
life jacket over a tuxedo, and lost at chess to a
nine-year-old girl.
David Foster Wallace

8. What about action?
He could remember when he was good and it had been only three years
before. He could remember the weight of his heavy gold-brocaded fighting
jacket on his shoulders on that hot afternoon in May when his voice had
still been the same in the ring as in the cafe, and how he sighted along
the point-dipping blade at the place in the top of the shoulders where it
was dusty in the short-haired black hump of muscle above the wide, wood-
knocking, splintered-tipped horns that lowered as he went in to kill, and
how the sword pushed in as easy as into a mound of stiff butter with the
palm of his hand pushing the pommel, his left arm crossed low, his left
shoulder forward, his weight on his left leg, and then his weight wasn't
on his leg. His weight was on his lower belly and as the bull raised his
head the horn was out of sight in him and he swung over on it twice
before they pulled him off it.
Ernest Hemingway

9. DESCRIPTION
in FICTION
is about
observation

10. DESCRIPTION
in FICTION
is about choosing
something to represent
the whole

11. DESCRIPTION
in FICTION
is about sensory
details

12. DESCRIPTION
in FICTION
is about metaphors and
comparisons

13. YOUR TURN
describe
a nervous surgeon
a typical Seattle morning
a car crash