11 Ways to Describe Rooms

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. This one’s on how to describe rooms.

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. Viking, Miele, KitchenAid, Sub-Zero, separate freezer, wine cooler, radiant bulb cookers. Stainless steel and oak. Pots and implements sat in glass-doored cabinets along one entire wall.
2. Oversized reading chair
3. A lazy Susan in the middle of the table
4. Between them was a pot of something steaming and one upside-down mug and an ashtray with a cigarette burning in it.
5. Past the lobby, a central dining area held a dozen tables, all filled with patrons. A din of laughter and chatter, in Mandarin, inhabited the space as waiters moved quickly between tables.
6. I could settle into a deep overstuffed couch,  order a beer from a tuxedoed waiter and listen to the harp.
7. On top of the table were two tea cups, both filled, tiny clouds of steam rising up from the tea. Two plates, on top of one was a hard-boiled egg, cracked open, and a piece of rye toast, a bite missing.
8. Cabral’s threadbare apartment where like his bandmate Hernandez, he lived alone and sparely. There was no sign of a wife or children. No framed photos, no school drawings on the refrigerator.
9. Entering this room always felt like entering a time warp.
10. The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling in bookshelves, every inch filled, and in the corner of the room as a simple desk, neat and orderly, a few piles of paper stacked in the middle, and a small light on. In the center of the room, two red sofas faced each other across a large, round glass coffee table.
11. Dickensian warren piled high with yellowed catalogs

More descriptors:

17 Ways to Describe Law Enforcement

24 Ways to Describe Pain

57 Ways to Describe Talking in a Novel

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.