70 Collections to Infuse Your Writing

For the next few months, weekly writing tips will include word choice suggestions. That includes:

• colorful and original descriptions
• pithy words and phrases
• picture nouns and action verbs
• writing that draws a reader in and addicts them to your voice

I keep a  collection of descriptions that have pulled me into the books. I’m fascinated how authors can–in just a few words–put me in the middle of their story and make me want to stay there. I’ve shared 48 themes in the past:

A note: These are for inspiration only. They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly from an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted when published).

1. Actions That Are Timeless
2. Actions (Era-Specific)
3. American
4. Appearance
5. Body Language
6. Body Parts
7. Body Parts–Moving
8. Character Traits
9. Clothing–General
10. Clothing—Women’s
11. Depression
12. Dogs
13. Emotion Part I
14. Emotion Part III
15. Emotion–A to D
16. Emotion–E to O
17. Emotions
18. Emotion–S to Z
19. Fascinating Character
20. Fight
21. Genius
22. Hacker
23. Headaches
24. Homes I
25. Homes II
26. Horses
27. Intel Devices
28. Jobs
29. Landscape–African
30. Landscape—General
31. Memorable
32. Nature
33. Neighborhood
34. Noses, Mouths, Legs, and more
35. Pain
36. Protagonist
37. Sensory Actions
38. Sick and Illnesses
39. Sickness and Illness
40. Sight and Eyes
41. Similes
42. Sneak Around
43. Sound
44. Talking
45. Time
46. Vehicles–Cars, Boats, Planes, More
47. Weird Traits
48. Wild Animals

Over the next months, I’ll add 21 more. The links below won’t be active until the post is up. If you arrive at the link early, please come back!

1. Animals
2. Birds
3. Buildings Homes I
4. Buildings Homes II
5. Buildings–Neighborhoods
6. Buildings–Work
7. Detectives
8. Eating and Drinking
9. Family
10. Furnishings
11. Geeks
12. Geeky-Techie
13. Law Enforcement
14. People
15. Room
16. Scents
17. Spies
18. Ticks
19. Transitions
20. Weather
21. Workouts

All of these are for inspiration only. They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly out of an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted).

When you read the collections, I’d love to have you add your descriptions.

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I like to collect descriptions other people have of life. I keep them on a big spreadsheet that I’m constantly updating. I read a lot and I pay attention to how my fellow authors get their ideas across, how they create pictures of scenery from their words. I’m in awe of people like Peter Matthiessen with his nature descriptions and Margaret Meade with her emotion-invoking portraits of people.

Here’s my collection of nature. I’ve drawn many of them from the following authors:

• Matthiessen, who I think is the quintessential writer on our environs
• Margaret Meade–to her, people don’t exist outside of their habitat. I agree
• Barry Lopez–a beautiful nature writer
• many more I don’t remember, just copied their words down, in awe over their ability to draw me into their worlds

Here’s my list. I hope it inspires you as it does me:

• big pink-lavender grasshoppers sail away on the hot wind, the burring of their flight as dry and scratchy as the long grass and
  

  Credit: Web Design Elements

  the baked black rock

• grasshoppers clicking in the dry air
• worn trail
• the dusty trail led through desperate-looking junipers
• every trail disappeared as thoroughly as water dried under Sun’s scorching heat, and then he just didn’t have time
• the whisper of our passage through dry grass
• stands out like a scar, catching your notice like the pain that caused it
• mother nature’s store
• pastoral scene
• examine the lichen growth of low-lying boulders and the moss encircling the trunks of trees
• the old decayed log, long softened by rot and spotted with moss
• detect smoke for a distance of two to three miles
• deep shadow of a maple tree
• the air was rich with winter jasmine and cold, and grew even colder
• a rough-skinned frog camouflaged against cracked and lined bark
• leaves hung limp in the gray, damp air
• nothing so black in Africa as the thorn tree
• the day was out of sync with his mood
• daylight had begun to drain away
• air was cool but the sun was out
• sky as gray-white and sunless
• one-quarter of a moonlit night
• cold light
• silver-white moon hung
• a half-moon rests in the fronds over our heads
• watching the horizon drain of color
• inky blackness
• thick clouds blotted out the stars
• a thin layer of clouds masked the full moon, filling the room with blue light
• cool restful shady world with light filtering lazily through the tree tops that meet high overhead and shut out the direct sunlight
• it supplies them with all of their needs
• the season turned and the night was clear and cold
• dusk blanketed Bakersfield
• domesticated tree
• cuts lengths of vine, softened it by running it quickly from hand to hand, pulling it sharply through the fork of the thumb
• reeds and head-high marsh grass
• dry and stalky and lost all nutritive value
• dry grass, stalky brush and deadwood
• hot scrub
• tall tussock grasses
• cattails (edible, soft fluff)
• a green meadow bathed in the humid light of a sinking sun
• gigantic gnarled spirals, almost as thick as a man’s body (the roots) joining the main trunk which towered above. Called ‘elephant tree’ because they always took refuge in one if they were attacked by elephants
• the fire popped loudly as a stone exploded
• splashed through the water, into a copse of juniper, pushing through the calf-high grass and scrub to a small rock outcropping
• the damp air, the gigantic water-laden leaves that are constantly dripping, the violent storms that come with monotonous regularity, the very earth itself heavy and cloying after the slightest slower
• whizzing chirr of the insects

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga, Man vs. Nature which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers and Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Savage Land, Winter 2024.

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