Writing Exercise: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

A common and mind-bogglingly cliche maxim is that a picture is worth a thousand words. I only included that as the topic title because I thought it was clever.

What I will do is every now and then post a picture. Your job will be to in at least one paragraph describe the picture in detail. The purpose of this exercise is to help you develop your imagery and descriptive capacities.

I'll post the picture and an example paragraph. Unfortunately, TV Tropes doesn't allow images to be hotlinked, so here's a plain ol' link.◊

The Chinese city Hengshui from Deus Ex Human revolution; maybe posting concept art isn't such a great idea. If it doesn't work, we can switch to images of real life things. Here's my descriptive paragraph:

Seeing Hengshui for the first time on approach was enough to rob a man of his breath. The sun long ago had retreated behind the horizon, leaving the city alone in lights and fabricated sunshine as the pock-marked black void of space bled through the once blue atmosphere. Tall skyscrapers crawled from the earth into the sky, once proud but now serving as nothing more than support columns buried beneath massive superstructures of the platform constructed above them. It was like a forest of industrial redwood, the buildings tree trunks and the platform canopy, hiding the common city from moon and cloud, sun and sky. The towering skyscrapers were covered with isolated groupings of illuminated, occupied rooms as if braille had been scrawled onto a wall like graffiti. Under the superstructure the city and its people were slowly choking themselves to death as car and smokestack belched a yellow smog that permeated through every alley and pore of the metropolis.

I'm still deciding whether or not we should also critique other people's paragraphs/descriptions to help them rectify mistakes they made.

Your turn!

edited 15th Feb '11 4:15:49 PM by Pyroninja42

No need for it to be locked, just post it plain like this◊

[[http://esscentualalchemy.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/pomegranate_detail.jpg this]]

edited 15th Feb '11 1:44:45 PM by EldritchBlueRose

Okay, it's fixed. You guys can proceed.

Does it have to be only one paragraph?

I said it could be at least a paragraph. Therefore, it can be more than one paragraph. Just don't go overboard with it. (I.E., thesis-sized description)

Here's mine. I hope its not too big.

Sarah let out a frustrated groan as the elevator slowly decended up at a snails pace.

That was the price of living in the Bottoms. It took so damn long to get to the Crafts. But then, what could you expect, living near the bottom of a 70 story building.

She did love it, though. Her floor was just a few feet beneath sea level. She was able to look out her window at all the aquatic wonders just outside her bedroom window. Most times, it was dark and murky, but when the sun shined threw on rare days, or she turned on the lights that her father had payed so handsomely to install around the outside of her window, watching the water light up and all the little creatures dart away in fright, before slowly coming back. It was amazing.

But sometimes she wished she lived in the Crafts like her friend, Marcy. While the Crafts didn't have the homey, small town feel of the Bottoms, it did have all the excitement, bright lights, and all the people! It was amazing!

She also loved going to one of the huge, bay windows, staring down from so high up at the waters crashing below, imagining that somewhere, down there was her home. It gave her a thrill, similar to the one she got when she looked out her window, but more intense, and frighting.

The city had changed significantly in the time Frederick had been been absent. It had grown massively. Skimmers now plied the routes between the stacks instead of antiquated helicopters, and the mid-rise had been completed. I added a whole 'nother level to the city completely. Literally as well. The mid-rise was roughly two hundred metres from the ground level, and from underneath it looked a mess of scaffolding and girders.

Up close, however, he could see that the mid-rise was carefully engineered from the get-go. The girders were in fact large maintenance catwalks and lowered areas that offered pedestrians a promenade view of the stacks themselves. It was currently night, but the light from the stacks and the mid-rise burned like a torch. So much had changed, but it was still good to be home.

The view from the simple maintenance machines which patrolled the city from above was a splendid one. At the level of the sixtieth floor of the mega-skyscrapers one could see the little pinpricks of light down below on lower roves. Nonetheless Micah preferred the view from the garbage skimmers in the harbour.

Once you got past the fumes you could concentrate on how the huge structures seemed to shrink, lights on all day due to the large suspended buildings blocking the sun out from the lower buildings.

The harbours inky surface reflected the lights, and Micah smiled despite himself, despite the way the thick smoke and garbage fumes which had threatened to choke him when he first arrived in the city from the boonies. "You done starin' at your reflection?" Micah ignored the jibe, nodding as if in agreement, but knowing he'd never be truly done appreciating the city.

—-

It's a little long, sorry.

edit to add some of these are really good! I've enjoyed reading all of them.

edited 17th Feb '11 10:03:19 AM by AwayLaughing

Yomiko sails upon the junk, passing along other convoys at the bay. Heng Shui's skyrises overwhelm, aglow within and without with neon, drowning away the natural dark of the night. Within the cluster of buildings, she recognizes Dokusensha headquarters — the company logo flashing red and suspended from the top. Her nose wants to twitch; the salty breeze makes her think she's fishing for Swordfish along the beach again.

edited 16th Feb '11 1:15:57 PM by QQQQQ

So...has it been decided if we'll be doing critiques or commentary at all?

WOW, where did you even find a picture like this one?

Describing the city might have been hard at first, you could start from the bottom and speak of the water at the city's base. But then you'd have to speak of the reflection of he metal towers, the hanging structures above, and all the light. It be best to start from middle.

Long tubes of buildings connecting the water below to the sky above. Granted it wasn't really a sky at all, it was dark like the night sky, it had lights like the night sky but it was not the night sky at all, it was actually noon. What it was, was dark metal, and lights that reflected off it's surface, a city cloaked in perpetual darkness by the crisscrossing metal bars of it's upper level.

A city above the city and a city above the sky. A place where helicopters and planes made their nest. It's was easy to get caught up in how big the city was that you might miss the little things. The first things reflecting off the water wasn't the buildings towering over you it was the bright neon signs only few feet above you adding to the feeling of perpetual night and darkness. Bright lights shown inside the buildings, advertisements for everything from casino's to strip clubs all over shadowed by the massive city above us. Boats jetted across the water, the only way to make it from peer to peer was on boat, sure you could have swam but with the number of motor boats in the water you'd be lucky to live, it was a better method of suicide than travel in his city.

This city below a city, this city without a sky, This place where the heavens touched the earth, this was my new home.