DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
(more than "all that flowery stuff")
Carol Baxter is the author of six internationally acclaimed "popular histories" or biographies. She now teaches writing skills to genealogists through her Writing Fabulous Family History courses.
In her writing classes, Carol explains that there are four literary writing styles:
- Expository — also referred to as the "encyclopaedia" style of writing, which is the main style used by genealogists.
- Descriptive — sometimes called "all that flowery stuff" (although it really isn't).
- Narrative — also known as "storytelling".
- Persuasive — used in advertising and in "how to" book blurbs (not discussed further here).
Here we explore descriptive writing. Follow the links below to the other literary styles that should be used by genealogists.
Descriptive writing
Descriptive writing aims to describe a place, person or thing in such a way that the reader forms a mental picture of that entity.
Descriptive writing uses "descriptive language", such as adjectives, adverbs and evocative verbs, along with "sensory language" to help achieve this goal.
Unfortunately, most genealogists craft little more than "prose timelines" in their family history writing — that is, lists of facts turned into paragraphs of prose. This dry expository writing style usually fails to engage their readers. However, the addition of descriptive and sensory language helps to produce books and articles that readers want to read.
To assist genealogists, Carol provides the following on this descriptive writing webpage:
- Lesson link: Crafting Vivid Sentences that Hook our Readers teaches the skills of descriptive writing through the use of descriptive language.
- Course link: Words, Words, Words is a multi-lesson course that elaborates on the above lesson.
- Lesson link: Crafting Vivid Scenes from a Few Dry Facts teaches the skills of descriptive writing through the use of sensory language. These ideas will be expanded upon in future courses.
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Writing examples: Two versions of the same information from The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller are provided here. They are written in two different styles:
- Expository (not published).
- Descriptive (published).
Descriptive writing lesson focusing on descriptive language
Crafting Vivid Sentences that Hook our Readers
The simplest way to craft an interesting family history, or other piece of prose, is to make the most of the words in our language. There’s no need to send our readers to sleep when a simple word replacement or two can bring a sentence, a paragraph, a story to life.
Descriptive writing course focusing on descriptive language
Words, words, words: The soul of our sentences
When we're writing a family history or biography or other piece of prose, it's important to remember that every famous author has access to the same words and the same sentence structures that we do. They're famous partly because they've worked out how to use their words and sentence structures to maximum effect. Thus, the easiest way to empower our prose and engage our readers is to improve our prose at the basic word level.
Descriptive writing lesson focusing on sensory language
Crafting Vivid Scenes from a Few Dry Facts
We’ve learnt how to craft vivid sentences, but how do we combine them to produce a vivid scene, especially when we have little information to work with? This online lesson looks at how we can use sensory language — that is, the senses — using practical examples from Carol’s own writing.
More lessons and courses to come ...
Descriptive writing example
Most family histories and family biographies merely list the facts. However, if we weave descriptive and sensory language through our facts, we will engage our readers and motivate them to keep reading.
Version 1: The expository style (crafted for this webpage)
Mrs Miller's late father had always wanted her to visit his birth country, England. In 1927, she decided to leave her home and husband in Melbourne and take a six-month holiday to London. She found a different world to that experienced by her father.
Version 2: The descriptive style (published in The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller)
If she’d been asked before her holiday to imagine a word to describe London, it wouldn’t have been ‘freedom’. Her late father had long urged her to visit his home country. His England was a world of dainty whitewashed cottages nestling around spires that thrust resolutely towards the heavens, of church fetes and church dances and church picnics, where the vicar was loved almost as much as his god. It was a world of moral rectitude and righteousness, of class and, most importantly, tradition. Everyone had their place and—as long as they accepted it—all was right with the world.
The lure for her had been different, touristy more than anything. The chance to drink tea beside the Thames as it slipped through the greatest city in the western world. To stroll across the romantic London Bridge. To ogle the crown jewels that boasted the nation’s wealth and importance.
Yet it was the atmosphere of flapper London that proved so unexpected, so at odds with her father’s fond memories of a Victorian England. The ‘bright young things’ who dashed around London in their loose glittery dresses and daring knee-high skirts had not only abandoned the Victorian constraints of corset and crinoline, of piety and prudery, they had embraced the sensual. Their adventurous flamboyance expressed an intoxicating independence, an uncaging of body and soul. This freedom represented the dawn of a new era, with London as its centre, the quintessence of modernity.
It couldn’t have been more different to the insular world she had come from, the world that would drag her back when her six-month holiday had ticked away.
