Writing with Stardust: The Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers and writers (19 page)

1. He had a bull’s neck and
skin as rough as tree bark
.

2. He had a gorilla’s shoulders and
skin as coarse as sandpaper
.

3. He had a Titan’s power and his
face was as riffled as snakeskin leather
.

4. He had Samson’s strength and
pockmarked, pitted skin
.

5. He had a brutish nose, Neanderthal muscles and an
alligator’s skin, ridged and scaly
.

                                       
LEVEL 1: BASIC SENTENCES

1. He had
serpentine
eyes.
ANIMAL EYES

2. They were
flaming with hatred
.
EVIL EYES

3. He had
wintry
eyes.
COLD EYES

4. His voice was
as lonely as a tomb
.
HEARTLESS VOICE

5. He had a
greasy
voice.
SNAKY VOICE

6. He had
razor-thin lips
.
OTHER FEATURES

7. He had a
hawkish
nose.
NOSE

8. He had
lank
hair.
HAIR

9. He
smirked
at me.
MOCKING GRINS

10. He had a
buffalo’s
neck.
STRENGTH

                                       LEVEL 2: A BASIC PARAGRAPH

The monster looking at me had
leonine eyes
. They were
gleaming with cunning
. His pair of
glacial eyes
stared at me coldly. He voice was
as empty of life as a crypt
. He spoke in a
fawning
manner, trying to lure me into his lair. His
tankard handle ears
were enormous. They matched his
vulturous
nose.
Grimy hair
plastered his fierce face. He gave me a
scornful look
when I took a step back. His
caveman’s shoulders
flexed once before he charged at me.

                                       
LEVEL 3: CREATIVE PARAGRAPHS

His
taurine
eyes were
glittering with hostility
. They were as wild and fearsome as any bull. He swung his mace and nearly decapitated me. I could feel its passage whisking my hair as I ducked. They were demons, these adversaries of ours. They hated the grain-eaters, or so they called us. They preferred to rip and gorge on human flesh and we were afraid of them. Some of them were hard of eye and stony of face. Others were wild-eyed savages with a berserk nature.

They all shared the same
Cossack-cold
look in their eyes. Their voices were
as lifeless as a
burial chamber
. Even when they taunted us, when they tried to be
honey-tongued
, their voices echoed with brutality. Their
callused, knotty fingers
beckoned us to fight them and they smashed their fists against their
bulbous noses
to prove their bravery. Hairs as hard as a boar’s bristles sprouted from their faces. Their head hair was
knotted
and clotted with dry, human blood. Cauliflower ears sprouted out from either side of the head, puffy and raw from countless battles. Even their faces were bestial, nicked and notched from axe and sword.

He gave me a
leer
as he swung his mace with that
demonic
power of his. Battle fever rose up in me and I blocked him. I was determined to spill his blood before he did it to me.

                                       
LEVEL 4: ADVANCED PARAGRAPHS

The battle had not gone as we had planned. Pockets of our men still fought for their lives, but it was looking grim for us. Our opponents were too strong, too fast and too deadly. I stared at the man trying to kill me. He had the
simian eyes of an ape, crafty and cunning.
They
were simmering with spite
as I raised a tired sword arm to defend myself.

They seemed
tundra-cold
and
merciless, two pools of chilling, cauldron-black
.
I was disturbed when he laughed at my weakness. He beckoned me to attack him and spoke with a strange, guttural accent. His attempt at a
wheedling voice
was laughable. It was cold and
echoed like a deep sepulchre.
There was a gravelly
aspect to it, as if stones were scraping together. His voice fitted his
pop eyes and saucy beard
perfectly. It seemed like he had fangs
instead of teeth because they were shaped like broken stalagmites
.

Hanks of his
lice-infected hair
lay plastered over a
pug nose
, crooked and dented. He had a pair of hirsute and crescent-shaped eyebrows
.
They stood out because his skin was as pale as
a winter’s moon
.
It was smooth and greasy
,
one of the hallmarks of a cannibal. I whacked the pommel of my sword off his granite jaw
,
but it had no effect.

He cast me a
lopsided grin
and I realized then that he had
Goliath’s strength.
I knew I wouldn’t survive for much longer. I was bone tired and battle drunk. It was almost a relief when he raised his cudgel for the final strike. I closed my weary eyes and waited.

                    
LEVEL 5: COMPLEX WRITING: THE BATTLE

The arrows whizzed over our heads. They glinted and fizzed, their shafts causing the air around them to sizzle. They were like little pins of hissing silver under the doom-laden sky, whistling their way gleefully towards their targets. The clouds above them were Barabbas-black and churning. I looked at the army we faced and the thought struck me that we would not survive the day.

Our enemies were more beast than man. Their
arachnid eyes
were pitiless and
as gelid as a mausoleum.
They were
scorching with odium
under their
oleaginous hair.
Their
hair
hung over their
witches’, crooked noses.
A
troglodyte’s muscles
lay within those ox-yoke shoulders. Fountains of volcano-red blood would vent into the air when their pulverizing weapons hit the target. They carried maces, pikes, shillelaghs and bludgeons; weapons designed to smash, club, pound and shatter.

Our thin, zinc-silver armour was no match for their brutality. It gleamed like moon flame and was just as fragile. The sound of bones snapping and cracking rent the air. It competed with the screams of the dying and the curses of the living. The lucky ones died quickly. Their last sight would not be a set of scalpel-sharp incisors straining downwards to rip their soft flesh.   Our foe had the
cruel hearts
of a nest of devils.

I hated them for their corpse-white skin. It was
as scaly as an alligators, ridged and tough. I hated them for their
galling, sardonic grins
and their
ingratiating voices
. They were constantly calling out in a tongue alien to ours. Most of all, I hated them for their eyes. They all carried the same look, two soul-withering pools of Acheron-black
.
Boiling with fervour
,
all the hatred of a thousand years was festering in them.

At my feet, the battle field was anointed with the blood of the fallen. It was glossy and slick, a slippery web of entrails and bowels. Fire arrows fell all around me, frizzling and spitting when they scorched into the blood. A huge beast with a singed face appeared in front of me. His eyebrows were fire worshipper-black and scythe-shaped
.
He clanked his huge mace into my helmet and the world went dark…

*Type ‘
Describing a Zombie
’ and ‘
Describing a Witch
’ into Google to see further examples of this genre. They are both to be found under the ‘
Best Descriptive Writing
’ heading.          

                                              
TRIPLICATION

Triplication occurs when words or phrases are repeated in groups of three
. It is a highly impactful device when used in a constructive manner. Although technically it is the threefold repetition of a word or phrase, there is a case for arguing that grouping nouns, verbs or adjectives in sequences of three qualifies it to be called triplication. The desert chapter has examples of both.

“We were flamed and fried in the desert heat. It seemed to hate
everything that
walked,
everything that
crawled and
everything that
flew”. This is a very obvious example of triplication as the words “everything that” are repeated thrice. It is less clear if using three nouns followed by verbs for each one qualifies, but I would argue that it does. In the desert chapter, a sentence using that formula is used. “Your
blood simmers
, your
brain stews
and even your
bones smoulder
”. The sentence is alliterative also and it is a mnemonic sentence as a result. There is a rhythm and a balance provided to the sentence that is conveyed by the arrangement of the words.

Triplication can also be used to make a scene seem dramatic or to pause the movement of the action. In the mountain section, Level 4, triplication was employed to evoke the sense of emptiness and loneliness at the roof of the world. “
Nothing
stirred.
Nothing
sounded.
Nothing
sang”. Its purpose in this case was to leave the reader with a sense of the desolation of a mountain. By mirroring and repeating the word “nothing”, it reinforces the concept of nothingness and solitude. In this way, the mood of the passage is affected.

Some of the world’s greatest writers have used the idea of objects and events occurring in threes. Shakespeare, Tolkien, the Grimm brothers and Chaucer were particularly dependent on events taking place in groups of three. Many of our most ancient folk tales and heroic stories have their genesis in this basic concept. Whether it is a genie granting three wishes or three bears in a cabin, they remain the enduring legacy of earlier folk myths.

Getting a student to use verbs in groups of three is a great way to provide a punch in their story. It can change the narrative style to dramatic effect and may even provide a musical resonance within the story. A simple sentence using three verbs can capture the manic energy of a sports stadium. “The crowd were a
chanting, cackling, cantankerous
bunch”. “The stadium was a
throbbing, trembling, threshing
army of bodies”. Both of these sentences, although not examples of triplication, are good examples of how to encourage its use in the long term.

                        
THE DESERT                            
                          

                                                       COLOUR

LEVEL 1         LEVEL 2         LEVEL 3         LEVEL 4         LEVEL 5          OTHERS

1. The blasted-brown desert was
an arena of death
.