I read a lot. Well, by some standards maybe I should read even faster, but I also write full time, so I read a book a week. That's about 50 books a year, and my body being close to 40, probably another 2,000 books in the rest of my life. Although, who knows, maybe by then people will live all the way to being 200 years old (doubt it). It takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, or so Malcolm Gladwell says. That's 5 years of doing something for about 8 hours a day. I started writing full time in May 2012, so this spring it will be 2 years. In this time I have read 80 books. Of course, I've read books before this, but I didn't read them as a writer. I also wrote 4 books so far (if you want to count the little book of tweets, that's 5) which technically are 2. My first trilogy wasn't meant to be a trilogy, so let's count it as 1. This means I'm on my 3rd book now. I did this math to illustrate to you how fast (or slow) we learn. I read good stuff, really good stuff. Just look at my reading list. I'm trying to catch up on classics because I read them in English for the first time, as if I were a teenager (I'm about 16 years old by that count, having moved to US from Russia 16 years ago). Still. You would think by now I would've learned how to write the perfect description. I thought I totally got it. I felt it. It was flowing out of my ferocious heart laden with emotion. Feel, I told everyone, feel and write down what you feel.

RIGHT. WRONG.

Yesterday a lightning struck me, in the middle of a quiet evening at home. In fact, I wasn't even outside. My ass comfortably sat on the couch, and my eyes were glued to a book. You know the thing about patterns? How we're supposed to see patterns in nature to escape that tiger? Like, when we looked at the grass, we would see the pattern change because there would be black and orange stripes and not just green ones? Yeah. So. Thank you for suffering through this long introduction. Also, I totally lied to you. Please DO keep writing down what you feel, but take a look at what I have discovered (if you knew this before, laughing is optional).

BREAK DOWN EVERY DESCRIPTION INTO PRIMITIVE ACTIVE ELEMENTS.

So this is what struck me. How did I not see this before, I don't know. Kill me. Perhaps rereading THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Bulgakov (one my favorite books) first in Russian then in English did it, I don't know. But I read this sentence, and I saw it, and I punched myself in the jaw, hard.

"A key was turned in the door, Annushka's nose peeped out, then the rest of her followed, she slammed the door and was already on the point of going somewhere, when a door crashed on the upper landing and someone hurtled down the stairs."

BAM.

What do you see, darling? This is what I see, and what I started seeing after reading this sentence and bothering my boyfriend who sat reading next to me and politely nodded his head with this irritated smirk on his face while I exclaimed every minute: "OMG, look, he did it again! And here it is again! And again! It's everywhere!" Look at the parts of this sentence, the little sentences forming this long big one (by the way, you don't have to keep it all in one sentence, it can be broken into many little ones, doesn't matter).

"A key was turned in the door."

Here is the first little bit. Remember how every book or blog on writing you read, every advice you ever got from every writer always told you, BE LIGHT ON THE ADJECTIVES! DO NOT USE ADVERBS! STRIVE TO USE ONLY ACTIVE VERBS AND NOUNS! Well, this is the perfect example. I now want to go back and rewrite the beginning of 2nd draft of IRKADURA, like, all of it, to fit this principle, because suddenly I know how to fix those places that bothered me. Like, I would see a picture in my head but would be frustrating me to no end because I couldn't describe it perfectly. So, back to this sentence. See how it didn't say "Annushka turned the key in the door" but it said "a key was turned in the door"? Now, I know you might be thinking, hey, WAS is a total passive thing, aren't we supposed to avoid that? But! You don't see the key, you hear it. There is no way you can see it turn, and that's why it WAS turned. You could say, "a key clicked in the door" if you wanted to avoid WAS. This is a whole another blog post, so let's stick to the theme. For example, in some other places Bulgakov says "the knife flashed", describing a murder, and that's because we see the knife flash. Anyway. Let's get to the second little bit.

"Annushka's nose peeped out,"

In my past days I would've written something like "Annushka peeped out", and that's a totally legitimate sentence, but it limits me. Note how once you state what the character does, if you have to keep describing some accent or descent or other type of movement (or thinking, like, Annushka thought this and this), you are forced to adhere to repetition, and that is dull and boring, like, Annushka did this, then she did this, then she did this. Yawn. Look how Bulgakov does it. He first talks about her nose, then about the rest of her, and only after about the whole of her. Here is the next bit.

"...then the rest of her followed,"

Great, isn't it? You have a clear picture of this woman's curiosity without the author giving you a shred of bullshit like "Annushka felt very curious" or "curiosity possessed Annushka" or something like that? Guilty? GUILTY?!? I know. I'm guilty of this myself. See how you can not only avoid unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, you can also SHOW instead of TELL? Oh my God, I'm having goosebumps, okay? So, let's look at the next bit.

"...she slammed the door,"

Whack! Couldn't be simpler than that. But the pace accelerates. Here is another little rule at play that you have probably read somewhere about. Often we would resort to saying "shut hard" or "closed fast" or whatever combination you can think of. This is where you pause and sit with a thesaurus or just think about how to describe the action in one verb, and, suddenly, because you will be forced to use different verbs so they don't repeat, you will vary your prose and make it that much more rich and exciting. Let's take a look at the rest.

"...and was already on the point of going somewhere,

"...when a door crashed on the upper landing..."

"...and someone hurtled down the stairs."

Done. The entire scene fit into 1 sentence comprised of 7 action segments. Let me show you here again by comparison how I would have written it, before I knew about this beautiful way of doing it, so you can see the difference.

"Annushka turned the key in the door, peeped out, then exited, slammed the door and was already on the point of going somewhere, when she heard someone crash the door on the upper landing and hurtle down the stairs."

Confusing? (Like, who hurtled down the stairs again?) Repetitive? (How many more things can I make Annushka do? "Door" mentioned passively three times is annoying!) Boring? (You can only use the word THEN so many times before your reader will feed your book to the sharks in his neighbor's pool.) Oh God. Now, read this:

Beautiful. I'm having chills again. Brrrr. See how "door" repeated 3 times doesn't bother us, because our attention is pointed to it only once, when it crashed? Here is one more example for you from a new book I picked up from the store yesterday, the one I wanted to read for a long time. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole (it's the very opening):

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black mustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D. H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul."

Wow. Look. This guy is just standing doing anything, but we can sense the character immediately. The same rule I outlined above can be applied to descriptions that have little or no action. Notice how this opening is abundant in adjectives or adverbs. This is how you can slow down your pace. In quieter moments, add more of those babies. In faster moments, use less and cut to the chase. Or you can do the opposite, or mix it up, or whatever, this is a decision up to you as an author that depends on how you want to make your reader feel. But I wanted to put this example here so you could see the difference between the stark "she did this, he did that" structure and the more elaborate one. But still, Toole doesn't describe the way the guy looks, but instead he makes things do things! A cap squeezes a head! Green earflaps stick out and indicate! Lips protrude and sink! Eyes look down and study! Ignatius notices! Possession reflects! Look how clever this is. It's another point I wanted to make.

GO FROM SMALL TO LARGE.

Start with the cap then go to the person and finish with a grand concept (possession) that's bigger than the person. I found that going from small to large sucks you into the story, and, frankly, I'll be on the lookout for large to small descriptions now, just to see what they do. But look at this. Look how easily you can now hook your reader.

"A door creaked."

Mwuahahaha!!! I just hooked you, didn't I? You imagined it just now, didn't you? And it was a little creepy? Yeah? Yeah. So now you know how to do this, go write. I will do the same.

Oh, and participate in this awesome challenge by Chuck Wendig on describing 1 thing 10 ways.