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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing a special conversation on descriptive language.

Both Fable and the Verbivore have found themselves over the last several years, needing to find the language to describe symptoms to doctors in a way that would help them better understand what they’re experiencing. These personal experiences with the need for visceral and tactile language led us to a desire to do an episode talking about how our words (both verbal and written) can affect perception and ways that we’ve found have helped us communicate more clearly.

In this episode, we talk a lot about things that help a hearer or reader connect more deeply (empathetically and viscerally) with what we’re sharing. Things like:

• Using specific and visceral/tactile words - Ex. The shooting pain in the nerves in my feet feel like an electrical current is being run through them.

• Avoiding passive language - Ex. Pain was experienced by me.

• Avoiding state of being verbs - Ex. I am in pain

• Avoiding words that are overly general - Ex. words like pain

• Avoiding words that are specific, but have been overused to the point of being stripped of meaning - Ex. words like tingle, numbness

• Using Simile - Ex. My feet feel like they are dried leaves.

• Using Metaphor - Ex. My nerves in my feet are on fire.

• Using a Thesaurus like WordHippo to identify what you’re intending to communicate

• Using strong adjectives and active verb lists to more quickly and easily access descriptive words

We also talk about checking with beta readers to ensure that what you’re trying to communicate is being received on their end, doing things like mad libs to help expand the words that readily come to your mind, and taking note of and writing down great descriptions of experiences when you read them.

Towards the end of our conversation, we talk about how powerful it is as a reader to discover a piece of writing where we recognize that we’ve had this same experience, but have never been able to put it into quite the right words - until now. We also feel that as writers, it’s powerful to feel you’ve been able to authentically communicate your feelings and experiences in a way that truly connects with the experience of others.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Here are a few articles and videos we referenced for this conversation:

• Ted Ed Video “How to write descriptively - Nalo Hopkinson “

• MasterClass Article “What’s the Difference Between Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy?”

• MasterClass Article “How to Write Deep POV: 8 Tips for Using an Immersive Point of View”

• MasterClass Article “How to Write Descriptive Sentences”

• Pen and the Pad Article by Liza Hollis “What is Descriptive Language?”

Books and Films Mentioned:

• The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday by Rob Walker

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)