Hey everybody

This coming Saturday (22nd) is the Setting contest round where you need to describe a setting in words. Use all five senses and make your reader experience the setting as if he or she were there.

My tips -

Describe the setting from the point of view of a character, it doesn't need to be your protagonist but what you should aim for is showing the place in an emotive way e.g. If the character loves the place or hates the place or is scared of it, then that should be apparent by your word choices.

Avoid non-descriptive adjectives like, large, big, massive, high, tall, short, small, and tiny without qualification because your readers will have no frame of reference for how tall or short something is for instance. Use comparisons/similies such as tall and wide as an oak tree or as tiny as a flea etc.

Make use of onomatopoeias - words which sound like the sound's they're representing e.g. bang, crunch, rumble etc - and metaphors - figurative language intended to convey a different meaning than the literal denotative meaning of the word or phrases used. E.g. The curtain of night fell upon him; The cold air pierced her skin.



From one of my short stories -

For a mile or two, the lane undulated and wound through cool green woodland. Lily smiled with delight as the coach passed drifts of sweet-scented bluebells and sun-dappled grassy banks bejewelled with yellow and white anemones. A small brook splashed and burbled down an incline, finding its way between rocks and roots to a lake glittering in the sunlight in the valley below.

In the valley, the road ran beside the lake. Reeds and purple marsh orchids hid the water from sight, but the chirrups of warblers, concealed in their midst, filled the air with music. The line of reeds ended in a grassy shore, bringing into view the expanse of water. The castle ruins on the far bank were a picturesque carcase left from the civil war. A flight of ducks landed on the water like the fall of autumn leaves and left ripples of light behind them as they drifted toward the shallows.


Good luck