Practice: learning to show, not tell

I found this piece on The Chronicle For Higher Education's website this evening, talking about how one professor (Mark Spitzer) teaches his students about description, and how with practice they might do it better. The idea seems to involve learning how describe a scene to a reader rather than simply explaining it to them in an ambiguous way; what some people call the "show, not tell" method.

"Showing" is something I work on a lot, particularly when writing letters. But I suspect a little practice wouldn't hurt, so I've decided to start a series of posts with the aim of practicing this "showing" form of description.

My plan is to make as detailed a description as I can in 150-words or less. For the first post, I'll start with something readily hand: my phone.

This is my phone, a rectangular object with rounded corners, and slightly perceptible curves to the top and bottom edges. The screen has a reflective, luminous look, tarnished only by a a scratch here and smudges of fingerprints there. On the side of the phone without keys a reflective patch shines up at me, where a circular lens marks the location where the phone’s camera receives input. Raised diagonal lines which cross at a repeated interval give this side of the phone purchase. When looking at the screen, the right side of the phone contains the button for using the camera, as well as the recharging port, while the left side contains the volume-adjustment buttons, and a port for receiving a microphone. The keyboard crosses the width of the phone, bending slightly in the middle as though pulled by gravity. The keys too shine, but not quite like the screen.

Word count: 150

Well there you have my first attempt. It's not as easy as I expected, and there's much I think that could be added (or subtracted) from the description to improve its efficacy. Nonetheless I think it's a good first start, and perhaps I'll give it a try again soon.

Happy Wednesday, friends :)