If you accidentally ran your car into a field of tall, green corn, how would you describe the experience?
You might say, "I drove right into the field!" Terse, but true. Expect to be applauded for succinctness, but prodded for details.
You might declare, "I smashed into the stalks and bounced around before grinding to a stop." Still pretty much an understatement. However, sights and sounds associated with cornfield invasion are captured by "smashed," "bounced" and "grinding."
Or, you might exclaim, "Man! Unshucked ears were banging off my windshield, shredded stalks were flying, and the rustling of all those leaves sounded like a tornado!" Now, that tells the tale.
A recent reading of a Ruydyard Kipling yarn offered a good example of vivid description. In his novel Captains Courageous, the famed 19th-century author wrote about commercial fishing off Newfoundland. The story centers on the life of a teenage boy named Harvey who fell into the sea from a transatlantic steamship and was saved by a Portuguese fisherman.
A particularly descriptive moment in Kipling's story occurs when an ocean liner slicing through a foggy night unknowingly barrels through a school of anchored schooners. Here's what the author wrote about the encounter:
Then Harvey felt that he was near a moving body and found himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping, it seemed, directly over the schooner. A jaunty little feather of water curled in front of it, and as it lifted, it showed a salmon-colored, gleaming side. It tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling 'sssooo'. A line of brass-rimmed portholes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the schooner, and the little boat staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water. As the liner's stern vanished in the fog. Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both..."
That's description. The liner narrowly missed the fishing boat Harvey was on, but bisected a nearby one, killing a man and leaving its skipper mourning the loss of his son. Like other readers, probably, I felt relief, before returning to the paragraph about the ocean liner's passage to relive the incident through the author's wording.
Here's my challenge to you: Try to be more Kiplingesque in your everyday descriptions. Even the humdrum can be rendered interesting. Just for fun, if your neighbor inquires about your weekend, go ahead and embellish the experience. Call it taking literary license.
"A woman yakking on her cellphone about March Madness ran her shopping cart into my knee. I reacted like Bobby Knight to a bum call --I looked for a chair to throw and settled for an Easter egg display. Pink and sky-blue plastic eggs skittered along the floor and then I did, too, courtesy of the woman's boyfriend. I came away with both knee and feelings hurt. That ever happen to you?"
You'll have your listener's attention.