Description
Description is any type of communication that aims to make vivid a place, object, person, group, or other physical entity.[1] It is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, argumentation, and narration.[2]
Fiction writing
[edit | edit source]Fiction writing specifically has modes such as action, exposition, description, dialogue, summary, and transition.[3] Author Peter Selgin refers to methods, including action, dialogue, thoughts, summary, scenes, and description.[4]
Description is the mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Together with dialogue, narration, exposition, and summarization, it is one of the most widely recognized of the fiction-writing modes. As stated in Writing from A to Z, edited by Kirk Polking, it is more than the amassing of details; it is bringing something to life by carefully choosing and arranging words and phrases to produce the desired effect.[5]
Purple prose
[edit | edit source]A purple patch is an over-written passage in which the writer has strained too hard to achieve an impressive effect, by elaborate figures or other means. The phrase (Latin: "purpureus pannus") was first used by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica (c. 20 BC) to denote an irrelevant and excessively ornate passage; the sense of irrelevance is normally absent in modern usage, although such passages are usually incongruous. By extension, purple prose is lavishly figurative, rhythmic, or otherwise overwrought.[6]
Philosophy
[edit | edit source]In philosophy, the nature of description has been an important question since Bertrand Russell's classical texts.[7]
See also
[edit | edit source]Notes
[edit | edit source]- ^ Crews (1977, p. 13)
- ^ Crews (1977, p. 13)
- ^ Morrell (2006), p. 127
- ^ Selgin (2007), p. 38
- ^ Polking (1990), p. 106
- ^ Baldick (2004)
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
References
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- Rozakis, Laurie (2003). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style, 2nd Edition. Alpha. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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