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dave_c Active Member

How do you envision hell..

Discussion in ' Setting Development ' started by dave_c , Jan 27, 2013 .

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I'm currently writing a scene where my main character is thrown into what is essentially hell (though not named hell as it is kind of a lord of the rings setting.) I'm looking for some other opinions on how you envision hell. Do you see lava and brimstone or do you see it like a desert or maybe a more constantine style where it is just a ruined parallel of the origonal world. Any and all ideas more than welcome and greatly appreciated.  

Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Norse Hel is a dark and frozen wasteland. Dante's vision of Hell, from the Divine Comedy consists of nine circles of varying characteristics appropriate to the sinners that each circle is populated with. The Twilight Zone has offered a number of interpretations of Hell. Islamic jahannum is a fiery pit much like the popular image of Christian Hell.  

Pheonix A Singer of Space Operas and The Fourth Mod of RP Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Oblivion from the Elder Scrolls games is a pretty good rendition of a fiery nether world, populated by blood sucking plants, bags of gore and organs, and dominated by imposing black towers and angry demonic creatures... Oh, and lava... there is lots of lava... Personally, I don't believe in hell... but if I had to say what my version of hell would be, it would be the repeated ten minutes before a math exam that you aren't studied for...  

Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Milton's hell seems to be like a really dark cavernous place with fire that never gives off light, only heat. The Greeco/Roman underworld of Elysium in Homer and Virgil is a place both of punishment, only of some 'sins', though I think that might only be in Virgil now that I think about it and a paradise, the Elysium Fields. The Underworld is typically reached by the river Styx and the river Acheron, and manned by the boatman Charon who ferries the souls of the dead (the rivers Styx and Acheron, and Charon the boatman also appear in Dante). How do I see hell personally? As an eternal episode of 'Jersey Shore'.  

Em_Anders Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); For me, my interpretation of Hell is somewhere where a person hated being, surrounded by people the person hated being around. I think Hell should be personal since nothing gets under the skin, tortures, and/or creates intense discomfort like that of something personal. A man who gets killed and goes to Hell wouldn't immediately feel or think "I'm in Hell" if it were a dark and barren wasteland. But maybe if he died and went to "Hell" and Hell turned out to be the living room of his grandparents house where he saw something horrific as a child. Reliving the horrific moment in a replica of the location of where it happened would be worse than a barren wasteland. My personal Hell would be... Being 10 again, living in my mom's house, forced to eat butter and broccoli and having an arguement with my mom every hour on the hour for all eternity. Ugh. Just imagining it makes me break out in anxious hives.  

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); The problem with all these visions of hell is that the torment never changes. No matter how horrific the torture, the tormented soul gets inured to the suffering. Sooner or later, it loses its power over the victim.  

JJ_Maxx Banned

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I prefer the Christian version of hell. You know what the most torturous thing about hell is? Awareness. The fact that you become aware that there is a loving God, who wanted to spend an eternity with you, and you made the conscious decision to reject His offer. So hell is an eternity of complete isolation from God. I don't believe it will have physical characteristics that we can describe. It will be more ephemeral. When judgement day finally comes, every man woman and child will stand alone before the throne of God, and many will hear him say, "Leave me, I never knew you." This is something that we can't understand while we still live in this faith-based world. You will be alone. You will experience a version of lonliness that doesn't exist among mortal men. A soul-crushing eternity of heartache and suffering. That's what I think, anyways. ~ J. J.  

wavodavo Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); There is an East Asian version of hell that gives me the shudders. You die and awake in a benign but impossibly complex bureaucracy. You have the equivalent of a Get Out of Hell Free card, but you have to get a million different stamps on it and card punches and fill out mountains for paperwork and have to trundle it all from office to office, building to building, forever trying to get to the right person who would let you out, but only if your card is in perfect order. Otherwise, off you go again to get it right.  

GHarrison Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Hell would be spending an eternity ruled by an overlord who demands you constantly praise Him.  

capturedpotential New Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I like CS Lewis' idea on it: “Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were Going to live only 70 years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live Forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse – so gradually that the Increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.” Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud. [Lewis, Mere Christianity]  

Rafiki Active Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Splinters underneath fingernails. All the fingernails.  

jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I don't believe in Hell as proscribed by any religion. But I believe in karma and reincarnation. I believe that each life teaches us lessons we failed to learn in the previous lives, and once we learn and become enlightened, our need for a physical body disappears and we join with the cosmic life-giving energy which different cultures call different things. Hell for me is on this Earth when a soul is given a terrible life full of pain and being born into another and another. Stagnation in self-development leads to this, as does vanity, greed, laziness, jealousy, hate and violent preoccupations. I believe those follow us through different lives until we atone for the hurt we caused other people and change ourselves into beings that contribute positively to the Universe and all those within it. But that probably won't help you with your story.  

EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); "Hell is the closet I'm stuck inside - can't see the light..." Dave Matthews' hell.  

prettyprettyprettygood Active Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I always picture the Underworld as depicted by Disney in Hercules, but that's because I'm proper cultured.  

The Tourist Banned

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Em_Anders said: ↑ For me, my interpretation of Hell is somewhere where a person hated being, surrounded by people the person hated being around. Click to expand...

tcol4417 Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); There are many different ways of suffering - envisioned, interestingly enough, by other people. The worst kind of hell is the one unique to us, though I'm not sure a Tokein-esque story will feature a journey into the mind's inner circles of self-inflicted suffering. If you're looking for an afterlife-of-the-damned setting, then it's probably tailored to the tastes of whoever's in charge. Fire and brimstone is all well and good, but a road paved with the living souls of the dead? Then you've got the seven rivers of the Greek underworld or the divine punishments: Eternally hopeless tasks or tortures (liver, anyone?) Personally? Hell is the place where the worst people have the best of things and the best have the worst. I shouldn't have to tell you how close we are to that already =(  

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); tcol4417 said: ↑ Personally? Hell is the place where the worst people have the best of things and the best have the worst. I shouldn't have to tell you how close we are to that already =( Click to expand...

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); thankyou for the input all. think ill combine a few of these to make a more generic but a little differant hell i was already thinking of using a dante-esc kind of hell (with multiple levels/circles.) Cogito, youve given me an idea, thanks.  

TimHarris Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Hell to me is having to speak with people before I've had coffee and breakfast  

D-Doc Active Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); I don't believe in hell, but I always thought that an endless, black abyss, devoid of anything at all, would be a much worse place to spend eternity than burning caverns where you're at least able to communicate with other damned souls.  

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); The Tourist said: ↑ Could you expand on this. As an older person, I have sold off almost 75% of my personal possessions because the thrill is gone. On the other hand, experiences and idiots take up most of my time. Are you referring to possessions like homes and cars based on revenue, or opportunities based on insider knowledge? Click to expand...

mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); i don't believe in any god, religion, heaven or hell, but if there is a hell, i hope it resembles larry niven and jerry pournelle's modern redo of dante's classic, "Inferno"... which is itself a classic worth reading more than once or twice... as a matter of fact, i'm more than ready for another read and will be heading for thriftbooks.com to replace my second lost copy as soon as i finish my daily writing site postings...  

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); mammamaia said: ↑ i don't believe in any god, religion, heaven or hell, but if there is a hell, i hope it resembles larry niven and jerry pournelle's modern redo of dante's classic, "Inferno"... which is itself a classic worth reading more than once or twice... as a matter of fact, i'm more than ready for another read and will be heading for thriftbooks.com to replace my second lost copy as soon as i finish my daily writing site postings... Click to expand...

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Canto XXXIII always gets me. It sends a horrible shiver up my spine whenever I read Count Ugolino telling his tale. I love that whole epic to be honest, and not just Inferno .  

Malkhalifa New Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_3c7d376f3122f43b247242509111caff'); }); Well, let me put it this way. That tube of Banana Boat ultra defense isn't going to cut it.  

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19,902 quotes, descriptions and writing prompts, 4,965 themes

hell - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

• a letter from god
• betraying satan
• gateway to hell
• guardian angel
• renovating hell
• Satan mocks humanity
• troubled times

The Money-Nexus world is the author of hell, the Love-Nexus world is the author of heaven.

The choice between the Money-Nexus and the Love-Nexus is the choice between hell and heaven or Satan and Holy Creator.

When humans care more for the Money-Nexus than all of creation, hell will arrive.

Hell is when the Money-Nexus has made virtues of vice and well delineated philosophical and scientific truths become blurred with opinion.

You can't have Earth "on life support" because she supports all life. You can't burn the ladder you stand on while you burn the tree canopy above and pollute the skies. You can see where it all ends, yes? With you all having no life or support. That is hell, my friends, and I'd rather you all made a heaven instead.

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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Setting Description Entry: Haunted House (inside)

May 23, 2009 by BECCA PUGLISI

Sight Dust, cobwebs, sheets on furniture, broken tables, chairs, windows, lamps, peeling wallpaper, gaps in the floorboards, holes in the walls, flickering lights (if there’s electricity) chandelier with broken strings of crystals, broken glass on the floor, spiders, cockroaches, rust, mildew, ripped curtains, shadows, gloomy staircases, old portraits & paintings, cracked…

footsteps on the stair, creaking doors, window shutters rattling on the outside, wind scattering/rustling paper through a broken window gap, words whispered in ear, screams, crying, wailing, laughter, glass smashing, the scrap of a chair moving, the scritch of tree branches scraping at the windows, rats squeaking, movement in the walls, a…

Phantom perfume or cologne, burning smells, pipe or cigarette smoke, mildew, rot, dank, rusty or metallic smells, wet wood and stone, rancid breath, yeasty beer smell, food, dust, dry rot, rat/mice feces, urine

Sour & dry mouth from fear, dust floating in the air and coating the tongue, salty tears

A phantom hand on the shoulder, the puff of breath on the earlobe or the back of the neck, the sensation of being grabbed on the arm, pushed, pulled, pinched, poked, slapped, burned, a feeling of light-headedness and nausea, hair rising on arms or the back of the neck, the body’s reaction to a drop in temperature (chills, shivering, breath puffing out…

Helpful hints:

–The words you choose can convey atmosphere and mood.

Example 1:  I cringed at each creak on the old warped stairs, but it didn’t sway my determination to make it to the bedroom on the second floor. Halfway up, a shadow flickered at the corner of my vision. I froze, and as I stood there, caught a woody scent lingering in the air. Tobacco smoke? A shiver curled through the hairs on the back of my neck then cascaded down my backbone. It was all I could do to not hurl myself back down the stairs toward the front door…

–Similes and metaphors create strong imagery when used sparingly.

Example 1: (Metaphor ) The dining room chair suddenly jolted back and tilted toward me, a gracious invitation by an invisible host…

Think beyond what a character sees, and provide a sensory feast for readers

Setting is much more than just a backdrop, which is why choosing the right one and describing it well is so important. To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers.

Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict, people commonly found in these locales, and setting-specific notes and tips, and the collection itself has been augmented to include a whopping 230 entries—all of which have been cross-referenced with our other thesauruses for easy searchability. So if you’re interested in seeing this powerful Setting Thesaurus , head on over and register at One Stop.

On the other hand, if you prefer your references in book form, we’ve got you covered, too, because both books are now available for purchase in digital and print copies. In addition to the entries, each book contains instructional front matter to help you maximize your settings. With advice on topics like making your setting do double duty and using figurative language to bring them to life, these books offer ample information to help you maximize your settings and write them effectively.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers —a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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Reader Interactions

May 14, 2021 at 1:51 pm

creepy…

May 8, 2021 at 6:48 pm

Oh wow. It hadn’t occurred to me to make a list of all the things to do with my settings. Thank you for this. Brilliant!

May 10, 2021 at 5:53 am

It’s so much easier to get the setting exactly where we want it when we know beforehand what to aim for :).

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March 20, 2021 at 6:59 am

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July 1, 2019 at 6:21 pm

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May 25, 2019 at 11:22 am

Amazing. Im a 14-year-old writer and all these descriptions inspired me on how to write my mystery book. Thanks so much Becca

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January 28, 2019 at 11:34 am

very good descriptions

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November 11, 2018 at 4:21 am

Helpful!!!!!

June 6, 2019 at 2:08 am

Good descriptive terms and phrases!!

October 24, 2018 at 1:23 pm

Thank you so much you have helped me so much.

October 23, 2018 at 10:49 am

This story describes the house and starts to leave an image of what the inside of the house looks like. I get shivers reading it.

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October 25, 2019 at 12:17 pm

lmao “that much”

November 9, 2017 at 5:32 pm

It Game Some Ideas What To Write

April 4, 2017 at 1:37 pm

Its just awesome because I get a idea to write it in my suspense story??

March 19, 2017 at 11:49 am

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December 3, 2016 at 8:15 am

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September 12, 2018 at 2:01 pm

October 25, 2016 at 2:12 pm

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October 6, 2016 at 9:45 am

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September 1, 2011 at 9:32 am

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October 14, 2010 at 8:47 pm

this story is awsome i want to read another one.

September 16, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Thanks Aloot It Helped Me In My English Homework:) But I Think It Would Be Better If There Were More Examples Of Haunted Houses:D x

April 3, 2010 at 4:53 pm

this has helped me a great deal with my story for my English class 🙂

May 27, 2009 at 11:34 am

I love the image of the child riding a phantom rocking horse — very effective.

May 25, 2009 at 11:48 pm

This one was so fun to do. There are so many unusual settings to explore–stay tuned!

May 24, 2009 at 6:08 pm

You gals cover some of the greatest topics!!! Hope you can get these out in book form soon or eventually! Keep up the good work!

May 24, 2009 at 7:21 am

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May 24, 2009 at 7:14 am

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May 23, 2009 at 4:09 pm

Gives me the shivers too. =)

May 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Gives me shivers just reading it. 😉

Hell: Describing Words & Examples – Adjectives Guide

If there’s one word that has captivated the human imagination for centuries, it’s “hell.” This fiery underworld is often depicted as a place of eternal punishment and torment. But have you ever wondered how to accurately describe this infernal realm? In this article, I’ll be exploring a range of adjectives that can help paint a vivid picture of hell. From scorching and malevolent to desolate and torturous, these words will bring the essence of hell to life. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the depths and discover the descriptive power of adjectives when it comes to hell.

Table of Contents

How to Describe hell? – Different Scenarios

Describing hell can be a daunting task, as it encompasses a realm of unimaginable suffering and torment. By using the right adjectives, we can paint a vivid picture of the horrors that await those condemned to this nightmarish realm. Here are some different scenarios that can help us in our quest to describe hell:

Remember, these scenarios are just a glimpse into the horrifying world of hell. By utilizing adjectives that capture the essence of these different scenarios, we can effectively describe the indescribable and convey the sheer terror and suffering that hell represents.

In the next section, we’ll delve deeper into the specific adjectives that can be used to paint a more detailed picture of hell.

Describing Words for hell in English

When it comes to describing hell, there are numerous adjectives that can paint a vivid and terrifying picture. These words capture the essence of the torment and punishment that awaits those who find themselves in this dreaded place. Let’s explore some of these describing words and their meanings:

As we continue to explore the concept of hell, we’ll delve deeper into specific scenarios and adjectives that can be used to paint a more comprehensive picture of this nightmarish realm. Stay with me as we uncover the depths of hell’s horrors.

Adjectives for hell

Positive adjectives for hell with 12 example sentences.

When it comes to describing hell, you might think that positive adjectives would be hard to come by. However, even in the depths of this dreaded place, there are some adjectives that can paint a slightly less bleak picture. Here are 12 examples of positive adjectives that can be associated with hell:

These positive adjectives may seem paradoxical given the nature of hell, but they capture different facets of this dreadful place, making it an intricate and multi-dimensional realm of suffering.

Negative Adjectives for Hell with 5 Example Sentences

Let’s dive into the more expected side of hell: the negative adjectives that perfectly encapsulate its horrifying essence. Here are five examples:

These negative adjectives are just a glimpse into the true horror that awaits within the depths of hell. They represent the intense suffering and eternal damnation experienced by those trapped within its merciless grasp.

Synonyms and Antonyms with Example Sentences

Synonyms for hell.

When it comes to describing the concept of hell, there are several synonyms that can help paint a vivid picture of this realm of suffering. Here are some synonyms for hell, along with example sentences to further illustrate their usage:

Antonyms for hell

While hell is often described as a place of suffering and torment, there are also antonyms that give a contrasting perspective. These antonyms provide an alternative view of the concept of hell. Here are some antonyms for hell, along with example sentences:

These synonyms and antonyms provide us with a variety of words and perspectives to describe the concept of hell. From fiery realms of torment to heavenly paradises, these words help us navigate the complex and multi-faceted nature of the afterlife.

In this article, I have delved into the various adjectives that can be used to describe hell. By providing synonyms such as inferno, Hades, netherworld, abyss, underworld, damnation, perdition, and Tartarus, I have offered a range of descriptive words that capture the essence of this dark and foreboding concept. Each synonym has been accompanied by example sentences, showcasing their usage in context.

Additionally, I have also introduced antonyms for hell, including paradise, heaven, bliss, Elysium, utopia, Eden, nirvana, and eternity. These contrasting words provide a glimpse into the opposite end of the spectrum, offering a glimpse of hope and serenity amidst the chaos.

The adjectives presented in this article serve as powerful tools for writers, allowing them to paint vivid pictures and evoke strong emotions when describing hell.

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The importance of HELL in your story

So, in a twist of events, the Pope may, or may not have declared last week that there is no hell.

“Souls are not punished,” the pope was quoted as saying in the (BBC) article. “Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell — there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”

How ever you greet this news, we’re not going to have a theological debate today on semantics or the doctrine of heaven and hell. (Apparently, heaven still exists, so, phew!) But this discussion brings up an essential element in storytelling, without which, you don’t have a strong story…

See, in storytelling, “Hell” must exist. I’m not talking about the lake of fire, the gnashing of teeth, the eternal separation from God—that place. I’m talking about the Terrible Place Your Character Will End Up at if he Doesn’t Complete his Goal. I’m talking about his own personal hell.

It’s the Shire on Fire, overrun by Orcs.

It’s Hogwarts taken over by Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

It’s the Galactic Empire finally finishing a Death Star.

STAKES. Things that go wrong if the hero/heroine don’t win the day. The reason they can’t give up.

Of course, Stakes need to be balanced out by something positive (ahem, heaven?) waiting for them if they should be victors. The prize worth fighting for.

At Novel.Academy , we call this balance the Push-Pull. The Push away from “hell,” the Pull toward “heaven.” And this push-pull has to be present in every scene (in big and small ways) to help motivate your character through the story.

Are you stuck in your story? Feel like it’s not compelling? Ask: SO WHAT? What happens if your characters don’t succeed? Is there a personal hell looming over their failure? And if they win…what is the heaven?

To create tension in your scene, ask the same question, but make it situational for the scene. What terrible thing pushes them forward, and what positive outcome beckons?

Without stakes, there’s no reason for your character to get off the sofa. Or for your reader to turn pages.

(Or, really, for Christ to die on the cross. Which, if you’re looking at the Bible as the World’s Greatest Story, is the black moment/climax of the entire epic tale, right?)

If you’re writing today, give your story a hell.

Otherwise, there’s no point in the happy ending.

Your story matters! Go write something brilliant!

P.S. We recently opened the Deep Woods Writer’s Camp for registration. 6 days of in-depth, one-on-one writing time with me. I’d love to help you craft your epic, life-changing story. Check it out here.

P.P.S If you’re looking for FANTASTIC storytelling, I’d encourage you to watch I Can Only Imagine. It’s a great movie, not just a great Christian movie. You will walk away changed.

How can I describe it in my book though?

Um. Well the hell would be the Bad Thing that will happen to your character. It could be told through internal dialogue, external dialogue, action on the scene, there are many ways that you can describe the bad thing that could happen. As for real Hell imma defer to the Bible for that description. 😀

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What are the best depictions of hell you’ve read in novels and short stories?

I recently picked up A Short Stay in Hell and wanted to explore other lit that has hell as the focal point of the narrative. What recos can you guys provide that goes into super interesting and creative depictions of hell?

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Creative Writing Pieces

• Just end it
• Strength Of God
• It Should Have Been Me
• Time To Let Go
• Greed's Punishment
• Summary of Life
• Anticipation
• It's over now
• Aiming High, Aiming Low
• Stage Fright

YOU ARE READING

A little bit of everything. Horror & short stories Warning: violence and course language. Credit to Jeniffer Tran for the drawing used in the cover!!

# belief # brigadereads # broken # choice # conflict # confusion # death # decisions # energy # horror # inspiration # journey # justwriteit # liberation # life # shorterthanlife # summersunawards # teabubblescontest2016 # twca # wattys2016

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I watched. I watched as the snakes slithered up his legs, constraining him against a solid, slimy wall. I felt chills run along my spine, my nostrils intoxicated by the fetid smell lingering in the air. The smell of decay. His reverberating screams pierced the air, sharp and howl-like, filling the atmosphere with curdling agony. Trickles of blood slid from my ears, I too howled in utmost anguish.

A hooded figure appeared in the formation of a nebulous fog, thick and grey, alluring yet repelling all at once. He faced the man whom was coated in snakes. "You cannot escape me," the figure said, his voice thick with blood lust, "You must pay your dues." His hood fell back, revealing the same exquisite greens eyes as the man he faced. His doppelgänger.

The man repeatedly shook his head, his eyes pleading for forgiveness. To be let free. The hooded figure roared in humour. "You want me to let you go?" The man nodded rapidly, relief washing in his eyes. In a flash, the hooded figure grasped the man's throat, his mouth was parted in a wicked rictus. Anger environed his presence, emanating from his fingertips and through to the man's throat. "Never," he whispered. The light of his words were washed away by the heaviness of the air.

The hooded figure receded, calibrating his next move. I blinked away the tears that had formed in my eyes. Frozen, I watched as a knife materialised, glinting in the fiery lighting.

"P-please," the man's pleads only grew his doppelgänger's burning hatred and his fierce thirst for blood. With one sway of the knife, the man's head fell to the ground with a thud.

A gasp left my lips and suddenly a flash of white gleamed into my eyes, rendering me blind. I couldn't move, I couldn't breath. All oxygen was sucked into nothingness. As quick as it came, it went. I clawed at my throat, coughing hysterically as I tried to breath. I looked around. I found myself in dark hallway. A dreaded silence had developed. I meandered around, trying to find someone or something to ease my thumping heartbeat and my overwhelming confusion.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" a voice sounded in the distance. I followed the direction of the lady's voice. A door appeared ahead, slowly I opened it and glanced inside.

Strapped onto a chair tightly, a lady sat tense, yet at the same time held a constant tranquility. Facing her was an exact image of herself, a craving evident in her deportment. Ready to pounce at her prey at any given moment.

"It's me darling," her double cooed, "How does it feel to experience your own creation?" The original gritted her teeth. The double grinned irksomely, winking playfully. Spiders danced below her feet, teetering closer to the sitting lady's feet. Slowly they crawled up her legs, sinking their sharp claws into her skin. "No words darling? Well, maybe I'll make you talk." The black, hairy spiders creeped up her body, along her neck, surrounding her mouth. Rapidly, a covey of spiders snuck into her mouth. Muffling her panicked screams.

Her doppelgänger sighed in satisfaction. But she was yet to complete her torture. Swiftly, she pulled her slick belt off and swung it in the air, transforming it into a leathery whip. She began to cackle as her original's face had morphed into one full of horror. She circled the whip in the air three times before cracking it down onto her original.

I turned away, feeling the echoes of her screams ripple through the air. Trembling, my feet gave way, I fell to the ground. My grunts were muffled by her shrieks and the motion of the whip slamming down. An assemblage of black ravens slammed me against a wall; biting, pecking, poking. Alarmed, I rapidly swatted them away with my hands. It did not stop them. I realised then, that I too were to face my doppelgänger.

This time they went for my eyes. Clawing at them with their hooked nails. Slashing, scratching, grazing. Intense pain lit up throughout me, absorbing me. I let out one last painful scream.

Numb. All of me was numb. I slumped my shoulders, my breathing unstable and uneven. Dark spots flitted in my dulled vision. As soon as his finger tips grazed the warm, sticky blood, blackness consumed me.

The Underworld and How to Use it in Your Story

As writers, we can use the motif of the underworld in two aspects:

• The underworld as world of adventure
• The underworld as world of the dead

Why write the underworld?

• Create an internal or external site for the change your character undergoes, and the wisdom they extract from their experiences in the story.
• Explore your character’s unconscious , and how the archetypes of the collective unconscious manifest in their life.
• Explore your character’s reaction to the unknown in themselves or in the world.
• Explore your characters’ reaction to the nature of death , and to the idea of their own death.
• Explore your characters’ relationships with the dead (both those they knew in life, and those they did not).
• Create an “underground” “sub-culture” that resists or subverts the ways of the ordinary world.
• Create the home world of the antagonist.
• Remove the character from the home world in order to challenge and change them.
• Develop the rules, customs, and aims of your story culture; in particular, how their perception of death shapes their perception of life .
• Explore the boundaries of the upper world.
• Deepen your story world by portraying its inverted, mirror, or dark side .
• Tap into a rich literary tradition.

When to write the underworld?

• The underworld as world of adventure is usually entered soon after the character begins their engagement in the story . In the Hero’s Journey, this is in response to the Call to Adventure, when the character crosses the Threshold of Adventure and leaves the Ordinary World behind. The rest of the story takes place in this symbolic underworld, until the character crosses the Threshold once again and returns home.
• A literal descent into the underworld is likely to take place much later in the story . In the Odyssey , the voyage to the land of the dead happens in Book 11, almost halfway into the 24-book poem.
• A journey to the world of the dead is best undertaken when the character reaches a mental, emotional, or physical standstill in the story. Their work with the world of the living has progressed as far as it can, and in order to seek deeper truths, uncover secrets about themselves or their world, or achieve greater mastery, they need to overcome more difficult challenges.
• A journey to the world of the dead is the ultimate challenge a character can overcome, which is why those who succeed in returning are revered in myths around the world. You can prepare your character for the journey by having them first undergo adventures that take them to locations symbolic of the underworld .
• In the One Page Novel , the character enters the World of Adventure in the Quest , and emerges back into the Ordinary World in the Power (thus the two stages can be plotted as mirror opposites). However, a literal trip to the world of the dead might best be undertaken when the character is deeper in the underworld, particularly during the Shift and Defeat. The Shift suggests an overturning or inversion, and no location better symbolises a sense of loss and Defeat than the depths of Hell.

How to prepare for the Underworld?

• An external motivator (something or someone else), or,
• An internal motivator (the character themselves),

and their response may be…

• Willing (they are convinced of the need to respond), or,
• Unwilling (they are forced to respond).
• They have experience of previous symbolic descents to the underworld.
• They have tried their mental and physical powers and have achieved some success .
• They have a very strong motivation for undertaking the journey, and this motivation manifests both internally and externally .
• Pack essentials such as food, drink, clothes, shelter, power supplies, etc.
• Bring protection such as bodyguards, talismans, or powerful creatures.
• Leave instructions behind with a trusted companion as to what should be done if they haven’t returned by a set date, as Inanna does in Sumerian myth.
• Complete a mini quest to win or collect a protective item, as Aeneas, who was told to obtain the golden bough.
• Settle their affairs , such as their duties to their people, or their responsibilities to their dependants.
• Say goodbye to loved ones.

What to do in the Underworld?

The character’s task(s) in the underworld may be to:

• Try to bring a loved one back to the world of the living.
• Seek consolation.
• Discover arcane or forbidden knowledge.
• Learn a secret about themselves.
• Parlay or plead with the gods on behalf of their world.
• Retrieve a valuable item or creature (perhaps as part of a mini quest ).
• Bring comfort , or  free the dead.
• Challenge their powers and abilities.
• Accompany someone who has recently died.
• Face the  shadow  self.
• Sacrifice themselves or someone else, perhaps as replacement for one of the dead.

The Underworld as World of Adventure

In the Hero’s Journey, this is the world that the character enters by crossing the Threshold of Adventure. In The One Page Novel , this is the new world of the Quest. In opposition to the World of Adventure is the Ordinary World which is the familiar home that the character leaves behind (Stasis), and usually returns to at the end of the story (Resolution). The Ordinary World is the world of light, while the World of Adventure (being in the underworld) is characteristed by increasing darkness .

The World of Adventure is a conceptual story space, meaning it may not be an actual location in the story, but simply the part of the story where the character encounters new and complicated:

But often it’s easier for writers (especially within the constraints of genre) to turn the World of Adventure into an external location, and to physically remove the character to the new World. This also allows you to set up the important contrast and tension between the Ordinary World and the World of Adventure.

For example:

• Leaving home to start university/boarding school
• Starting a job at a new company
• Moving to an unfamiliar location
• Meeting someone in a strange neighbourhood
• Setting off to discover an unkown part of the world
• If you’re using a plot formula , identify the stages that belong to the World of Adventure/the Underworld.
• What physical location symbolises the Underworld of Adventure in your story?

The Unconscious

In this clip, Joseph Campbell describes a diagram which represents the self as a circle, intersected by a line representing the Threshold of Consciousness.

The Threshold of Adventure – that is, the symbolic division between the upper and lower worlds that the character crosses – is also the Threshold of Consciousness. In this sense, any descent into the underworld requires the character to face the fears and insecurities in their psyche. The story is the process of bringing to light the shadow self that has been relegated to the individual’s or the society’s unconscious, and integrating this shadow back into the whole.

Loss of consciousness is sometimes an initiatory act that mimics a symbolic death, and for this reason it can be a meaningful element of a ritual that allows passage to the underworld.

• What has the character been unwilling to accept about themselves?
• What has the character’s society been unwilling to accept about themselves?
• How does the character commune with their subconscious?

Dissent & Descent

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. – Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost

When something is secret, illicit or illegal, we tend to use language such as:

• Underground
• Under the counter
• On the down-low

In contrast, we use language denoting “up” or “high” to express moral superiority:

• High ground
• High-minded
• Above board

Uprisings are put down , people who follow alternative ways of life are said to be part of sub-culture , and desires which contradict our social persona are relegated to the sub-conscious . Clearly there is a link between dissent and descent, and many writers have enjoyed the practice of overturning this order and making the underworld the site of life and light rather than death and darkness; chief among them, William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell .

Blake not only penned his own hellish proverbs and undermined the word of the Bible, he also reinterpreted the work of one of the greatest English poets (and perhaps of all poets) when he wrote:

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.

• What is the accepted social order in your world?
• Who goes against the social order? Who has been forced “underground”?
• How are the inhabitants of the underworld morally superior?

Note: I’m dying to deconstruct this  section, but I’ll leave that pleasure to you…

The Underworld as World of the Dead

While the World of Adventure is a story space, the World of the Dead is a physical location, although it can be either an internal or an external landscape. The World of the Dead is often the setting of the afterlife – the place where souls “live” after the body dies. But it can also be populated by characters who are spiritually “dead”, or who have been exiled, or who have chosen exile from the Ordinary World for various reasons.

In this sense, you can use a symbolic World of the Dead in your story without reference to a spiritual or paranormal explanation.

The Wasteland

A distinction may be drawn between the underworld and the wasteland motifs in literature, where the underworld involves a willing descent and a quest  to an existing location – usually to bring back some vital wisdom from the dead – while the wasteland often descends upon the character because of a (perceived) misdeed and transforms the world around them .

The prototype for the wasteland motif is the story of the Fisher King, whose ailing causes the land to become barren.   The worlds of post-apocalyptic fiction, no-man’s-land in war fiction, haunted locations in ghost fiction, and corrupt corporations in crime fiction are common equivalents of the wasteland in modern literature. For the underworld journey ( katabasis ), at least for the Western literary tradition, the prototype is in Homer’s Odyssey.

The difference is subtle, and as a writer you’re welcome to ignore it, however…

• If your characters spend most of the story in the “underworld”;
• If your characters don’t journey to the world of the dead, but instead…
• Their ordinary world transforms into the world of the dead;
• and if the appearance of the world of the dead is linked to a character’s misdeeds,

… then you might want to consider developing the wasteland motif as distinct from the underworld.

Types of Literary Underworld

THE URBAN UNDERWORLD: One popular use of the World of the Dead is as a “criminal underworld”, occupying the dark and dingy corners of a city. But it’s important to remember that, while society may regard its inhabitants as criminals, from another point of view the inhabitants may very well be a group of marginalised, disenfranchised, misfit characters living in their own “ordinary world”.

The urban underworld may also be the home of unusual or supernatural people or creatures who have been forced “underground”. As such they may use sewers, underground/subway tunnels, basements, bunkers, or other subterranean urban structures.

• The opium den in The Man With the Twisted Lip
• Knockturn Alley in the Harry Potter series
• London Below in Neverwhere

THE HEAVENLY UNDERWORLD: There may be some debate about whether this is really an under world at all, because worthy, long-suffering, “good” characters are often seen ascending to a higher plane in the sky. This is usually depicted as the celestial abode of the “good” gods – such as the Olympians, and the Asgardians, and of course the unified deity of the monotheistic religions.

However, not all descents underground are dark, grim, or hellish. Many cultures imagined subterranean worlds of light. In Zoroastrian scripture, the king Yima, in order to avoid a cataclysm, creates an underground city or Vara  lit by artificial light. In shamanic journeys, the shaman descends through a hole in the ground and emerges into a bright, sometimes watery underworld. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, the daily journey of the sun god, Ra, briefly brings light even to those grim nether regions of the Duat.

While for most characters the Heavenly Underworld is the end goal, for some it may represent boredom, being cut off from those they love, or a sense of unworthiness.

• Avalon in the King Arthur legends
• The Undying Lands (Valinor) in Lord of the Rings

Note: These examples are across the water rather than under the land, perhaps because the former represents a journey of hope and immortality, whereas the latter is more readily associated with death and burial.

THE HELLISH UNDERWORLD: Many religions foresee a painful end for those who don’t obey the rules, and the “hellish underworld” is where they end up. This is a world of eternal, sometimes fiery torment for wrong-doers. Often, each sinner’s punishment is tailored to them.

• Hell in Paradise Lost
• Mount Doom in  Lord of the Rings
• The Horcrux Cave in the  Harry Potter series

THE GRIM UNDERWORLD: This is one of the most common literary underworlds because it offers a real chance of a “life”, though nothing on the scale of the Ordinary World. Sometimes the Grim Underworld is an adjunct to the Hellish one, and may be depicted as limbo or purgatory. Characters in this world may have unfinished business which they need to complete before transitioning on to another state.

But in other mythologies, such as in the Akkadian underworld, Kur, there is no final judgement, and the dead exist forever, with nothing to eat but dust.

• The world of the dead in His Dark Materials
• Pandaemonium in Paradise Lost
• The underworld in Homer’s  Odyssey
• The land of the dead in The Earthsea Cycle

THE UNCANNY UNDERWORLD:  Elements of the underworld are often inversions of the ordinary world. Sometimes these inversions overturn expectations, sometimes they subvert the traditions of the world of the living, and sometimes they literally turn things upside down. This can be useful for comical effect, but it can also impart an unsettling feeling.

The German word,  unheimlich , is usually translated as “uncanny”, but also means, “unhomely”. This is particularly apt for the character who leaves their home world and travels to an underworld which bears the characteristics of a familiar setting, but in a way which renders them strange and disturbing.

• Wonderland in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• The house in House of Leaves
• Why do you want your characters to spend time in the underworld?
• What do your characters need to accomplish in the underworld?
• Your genre?
• Your character’s aim?
• Your story world?

Looking at depictions of the underworld of the dead in mythical and literary texts, it’s clear to see that they have been created by the living, and for the living.

• For example, some myths stress the importance of the judgement of the soul, clearly in order to encourage people to live well and do good while they’re alive.
• Others emphasise the harsh living conditions that are only alleviated by material wealth and proper burial in the upper world, perhaps to uphold the status of the rich, or of a worldly priesthood .
• For yet other cultures the key is to bear many children and keep up a line of descendants , and so they teach people how their dead ancestors suffer without regular libations and offerings.
• What is the most important social aim in your story world? Survival? Creation? Procreation? The accumulation of wealth?
• What belief about the afterlife could uphold this aim and motivate the living to live accordingly?
• Which type of underworld would be best suited to promote this social aim?

The Descent to the Underworld ( katabasis)

First—hell is not so far underground— My hair gets tangled in the roots of trees & I can just make out the crunch of footsteps, The pop of acorns falling, or the chime Of a shovel squaring a fresh grave or turning Up the tulip bulbs for separation. – from  Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother by A.E. Stallings

“Katabasis” is the name given to the journey down to the underworld, or to the entire underworld adventure. The monomyth or “Hero’s Journey” presents the mythemes that may be encountered in a katabatic narrative, whether in the World of Adventure, or the World of the Dead, or both.

Broadly speaking, a journey to the underworld of the dead may include the following episodes:

• Deciding to make the journey.
• Searching for the entrance to the underworld.
• Entering the underworld.
• Meeting the guide to the underworld.
• Paying the price for crossing.
• Learning about the organisation of the underworld.
• Meeting the souls of the dead.
• Meeting the rulers of the underworld.
• Being judged.
• Obtaining the prize.
• Journeying up out of the underworld…
• And succeeding in returning to the ordinary world…
• Or failing and remaining in the underworld forever.

A night-sea journey  (in the “belly of the whale”) may also be a part of the katabasis, or it may be a separate episode.

The Entrance to the Underworld

The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies. – from Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid

The entrance to the world of the dead is often a conduit underground. Depending on the story, and the purpose of the katabasis, the entrance may be nearby, in a familiar location, or at the ends of the earth or sea. It may also be in plain sight, or hidden and accessible only to a few.

• Alice, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, falls down a rabbit hole.
• Professor Lidenbrock in Journey to the Centre of the Earth , finds a passage through an Icelandic volcano.
• Percy Jackson, in The Lightning Thief , travels down an elevator in DOA (Dead On Arrival) Studios, Los Angeles.

Possible real or symbolic entrances to the underworld:

• An adit/mine shaft
• A lift/elevator
• A tunnel/underground passage
• A ravine/crevasse
• The roots of a tree
• A whirlpool/maelstrom
• A basement/cellar/bunker
• A grave/crypt
• A hole in the ground
• An underground/metro/subway station

The purpose of a physical gateway to the world of the dead is to distinguish the katabatic journey from the usual method of entry – through death. However, it could also be possible to transport the character when they are unconscious, or dreaming.

• Is the entrance to the underworld hidden or in the open? Why?
• Is the existence of the entrance known to all or only a few? What are the consequences for those who know, and those who don’t?
• Is the character reluctant to enter? Why or why not?

The Guide to the Underworld  (psychopomp)

At the Threshold of Adventure, a figure conversant with the ways of the underworld will appear to guide the character. This figure is often an animal or a therianthrope, but may also be human or divine. Sometimes the guide is an aspect of the traveller themselves, such as their soul, or anima/animus, as is the case in His Dark Materials when the children meet their personal death.

The guide may also be someone the character knew in life, in person or by reputation, as with Dante’s guides, Beatrice and Virgil.

Some mythological guides are:

• Hermes/Mercury – ancient Greek/Roman messenger
• Azrael – Jewish & Islamic angel of death
• Anubis – ancient Egyptian god of the dead & embalming
• The Grim Reaper – human personification of death

The guide may point out and describe…

• The organisation of the underworld
• The various divisions of the underworld
• The souls of the famous, or infamous dead
• The rulers of the underworld
• The rules that govern the underworld
• Who knows enough about the underworld to guide your character?
• What are their feelings towards each other?
• How good is the guide? What do they reveal, and what do they hide?

It’s also a common motif for the passage to the underworld to require a price of entry. In Ancient Egypt, people were buried with valuable objects for this very purpose, and in Ancient Greece, it was customary to place a coin in the dead person’s mouth or on their lips specifically to pay Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

There may also be a non-monetary price on knowledge from the underworld , famously in the form of the Faustian “bargain with the devil”, but also in prayers or offerings to the gods, or in the exchange of news or promises with the dead. For example, in order to speak to the dead, Odysseus pours libations on the ground, and vows to sacrifice animals when he returns home. In return for the wisdom of the runes, Odin gives up one of his eyes.

In some cases, the price may be even heavier, as a life for a life.

• What is the price for entering the underworld?
• How willing is the character to pay it?
• How do they try to bargain?

The Rules of the Underworld

Do not put on clean clothes, Lest the (dead) heroes will come forth like enemies; Do not anoint thyself with the good oil of the vessel, Lest at its smell they will crowd about thee. Do not throw the throw-stick in the nether world, Lest they who were struck down by the throw-stick will surround thee; Do not carry a staff in thy hand, Lest the shades will flutter all about thee. – from  Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World .

Often the underworld will have its own special laws that are not governed by the logic of the ordinary world.

One rule that holds in the underworld of the Persephone myth is that anyone who eats the food of the underworld is doomed to remain there for eternity. Another rule is that only those who have died are allowed in, and that no one is allowed out. Obvious, in a sense, and the crux of the katabatic character’s conflict, but their ability to succeed in their task and return to the world of the living will depend on their finding a loophole, or a compromise in the rules that govern the underworld.

In the World of Adventure, the character will often enter into a new society with different laws, priorities, and expectations than their home world, and their task will be first of all to learn the ways of the new world, and then to gain proficiency in them, and finally to synthesise them with the old world view.

• What rules can make the character’s work more difficult?
• How can the character bend or break the rules to get what they need?
• What are the consequences of bending or breaking the rules?

The Geography of the Underworld

Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. – from Don Juan (IV,4) by Lord Byron

Descriptions of the world of the dead often emphasise its vastness. If it is to contain the souls of every person who has ever died, the underworld needs to be much larger than the world of the living. This makes the underworld inherently suited to epic poetry. Even so, most writers feel the need to place some sort of order and division on the underworld.

In designing your underworld, you might consider…

• LEVELS: Dante famously divides his inferno into nine concentric circles, each one featuring a different sin and its punishment. This allows him to deal systematically with the dead.
• GATES: In the myth of Inanna’s descent, the Sumerian underworld has seven gates, and at each gate the traveller is stripped of a possession. This repetition is a way of showing the difficulty of the task, and of distancing the character from the world of the living.
• LANDSCAPE: In Greek/Roman mythology, the River Styx formed the boundary of the underworld, and the dead were ferried across it by the boatman, Charon. Using natural features mirrors the ordinary world and makes the underworld feel uncanny.
• CITIES: Milton, in Paradise Lost , describes the creation of Pandaemonium, the capital city of Hell. Again, this gives the reader an ordinary world order they understand, and which they can easily compare and contrast to their own.

The Inhabitants of the Underworld

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? – from A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg

In populating your underworld, you might consider…

• THE GUARDS:  often ferocious, mythical creatures wait at the gates of the underworld, such as the three-headed dog Cerberus in Greek mythology, or the Cŵn Annwn, or hounds of hell of Celtic myth. The lion-hippopotamus-crocodile Ammit of Ancient Egyptian belief fed on the souls of those who failed the judgement of Anubis. These terrifying creatures can safeguard the treasures of the underworld, and attest to the powers of those who can get past them.
• THE BOATMAN (or FERRYMAN) : Charon, the boatman who ferried the souls of the dead across the River Styx in Hades, is one of the best-known inhabitants of the underworld. Perhaps the idea of a chthonic river is particularly evocative? Or maybe it’s the story of the ferryman himself?
• THE UNNAMED, UNNUMBERED DEAD:  with such a vast number of departed souls, the most difficult task may be describing the sheer extent of the crowd in the underworld. This may impart a sense of awe, helplessness, or insignificance. On the other hand, it may also spur a character on to escape back to the ordinary world.
• THE FAMED OR FAMILIAR DEAD:  creating the contrast between the vast crowd of souls and the few who are recognisable and important to the katabatic character can be a way to heighten the emotional impact of the journey. It can also work to comic effect, depending on the exchange!
• THE RULERS: They may be monarchs, military leaders, political leaders, or any character who mirrors or mocks the power structure of the ordinary world. The underworld is sometimes governed by a sibling of the ruler of the world of the living, to emphasise the opposition, but also the close bond that ties the two worlds together, as is the case with Hades and Zeus (Pluto and Jupiter), and Ereshkigal and Inanna.
• THE RULERS’ CONSORT: Many chthonic gods and goddesses choose consorts from the world of the living. This can develop their own backstory, as well as serving the usual mythical function of explaining various seasonal phenomena.
• THE JUDGES: The judges are sometimes the rulers themselves, but sometimes a separate deity or entity is chosen to judge the souls of the dead and find them worthy or unworthy to move on. This judgement is a great source of suspense, and can reveal a lot about the society, as previously discussed.

The Communion with the Dead ( nekyia )

O, that it were possible we might But hold some two days’ conference with the dead! – from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

Talking to the dead is one of the chief concerns of katabatic travellers. We all have at least one person we long to meet again, but communion in the underworld usually comes with its own challenges.

• In the Odyssey , Odysseus must hold the souls back from feeding on his blood offering, until after he has learned what he needs from Tiresias.
• In the Aeneid , Aeneas tries to embrace his mother, only to discover that she is no more than a shade.

There is a sense of urgency caused by the difficulty of maintaining communication, and staying alive in an environment meant for the dead. And no matter how long the character spends with their loved ones in the world of the dead, it is never enough…

The communion with the dead can also be a way for the character to uncover messages from their own subconscious, especially in discovering knowledge or resources that they already possess but are consciously unaware of. This is often the revelation that allows the character to rise up out of the underworld in the  Power .

The Return from the Underworld  (anabasis)

This lyre lark is for the birds, said Orpheus It’s enough to send you bats Let’s stay down here, Eurydice, dear And we’ll have a bunch of screaming brats – from The Lyre of Orpheus by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Characters who manage to navigate the underworld successfully, and complete the task for which they made the journey, eventually emerge back into the ordinary world, in a real or symbolic resurrection. However, sometimes the return journey is even more difficult than the entry, since escaping the world of the dead is not the natural way of things.

In the monomyth, Joseph Campbell describes several mythical events that might occur:

• Refusal of the return – the character may decide to stay in the underworld rather than returning to the ordinary world bearing the elixir of life.
• The magic flight – the character may be magically transported up out of the underworld, often pursued by a supernatural being who wants to keep them trapped. In response, the character may jettison items to try to slow the pursuit.
• Rescue from without – the character may be saved by another supernatural being, or by someone from the ordinary world who “pulls them up” and out of the underworld.

If you’re enrolled in The One Page Novel , see the article titled, Failed Heroes, Tragic Heroes, Antagonists, Villains, and Anti-Heroes for further guidance.

Nor is the character’s work done when they are back in the ordinary world. Their task is then to disseminate the knowledge that they have brought back from the dead, in order to help improve their society. In terms of their own life, they will often take some time to adjust to the ordinary world, which has not only changed while they were away, but which has also shifted due the new perspective they’ve gained through their katabasis.

It’s not unusual for a character to fail to integrate the teachings of the underworld. And so begins the journey anew…

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

• Does the character succeed in their task?
• Who or what must be left behind ?
• Who tries to keep the character in the underworld?
• Who helps the character return to the ordinary world?
• How does the character disseminate the elixir of life?

I write about literature, language, love, and living off your pen. Also, fortifying fiction, personal amelioration, and tea.

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Describe Crying in Writing—Without the Clichés

When your characters start to cry in your story, you want readers to be able to sympathize with them. When your characters are pouring their heart out, overcome by grief, or overjoyed at reconnecting with someone who they thought had died, the last thing you want is for your readers to be bored—or worse, rolling their eyes.

And yet, most writers fall short when trying to convey such strong emotions. If you want to write truly powerful emotional scenes, you need to be able to write them in ways no one has ever heard before. Language like “tears welled up in his eyes” or “his voice cracked” just isn’t going to cut it. You need to use language that allows readers to feel exactly what the character is going through, and you can’t do that by relying on plain language or clichés. 

How to Avoid Writing Clichés when Describing Crying

The first method for making your crying scenes more dramatic is to cut out the clichés, but first, you need to be sure you understand what a cliché is. A cliché is a phrase, idea, or story element that has been overused to the point of being annoying. Some examples are:

• When a character screams “noooo!” up at the sky.
• When a character cries in the rain.
• The phrase “crying a river of tears.”
• When a character’s heart “hammers” or “pounds.”
• The phrase “a blood-curdling scream.” 

I’m sure you get the idea. However, traditional clichés aren’t the only things you’ll need to be on the lookout for in your own writing. 

There are certain gestures and physical descriptions that aren’t exactly cliché but are overused to the point that they have a similar effect on readers. For example, take the gesture “she wiped at her eyes.” Wiping tears away is a common reaction to crying. It’s something people actually do, and often . So why is it a problem? 

When a writer uses gestures like a character wiping at their eyes or chewing on their lip, they are attempting to “show” how the character is feeling without explicitly telling readers “she is crying.” In theory, that’s a good thing, but by relying on the same phrases that every writer utilizes, their character will feel like a cookie-cutter copy of every other character who’s ever cried. How many times have you read any of the following?

• She wiped at her eyes.
• He sniffled between words. 
• She sighed heavily, letting her head drop.
• Tears welled up in their eyes.
• A single tear rolled down his cheek. 
• He felt his throat closing up.
• Tears streamed down her face.
• He looked close to tears. 

In general, if you’ve read it before (especially more than once), it’s probably a good idea to find a more creative way to write what you’re trying to convey. Use metaphors and similes to create more visceral feelings, and don’t be afraid to describe things strangely. You can always work backward to make weird imagery more relatable. 

For example, instead of saying that a character’s throat is constricting because they’re about to cry, say that it’s like they’re struggling to swallow down a still-beating heart. 

That imagery is slimy, visceral, and uncomfortable, but it likens itself quite well to the sensation of anxiously forcing down tears. Emotions can be uncomfortable, so don’t be afraid of using uncomfortable imagery to describe them. 

Writing Different Types of Crying

People don’t just cry when they are sad. The situations in which characters can shed tears are wildly diverse, ranging from receiving a thoughtful gift to watching a horrible tragedy unfold before them. Characters can cry because they are joyful, frustrated, angry, disappointed, confused, relieved, and a number of other emotions. The tone of your description should match how the character is feeling.

Not only are there different emotions behind a character’s tears, but there are also different levels of intensity to each emotion. The words you use should be reflective of that too. The words “weeping” and “sobbing” are not perfect synonyms for the word “crying.” If a character is sobbing, they are going to be gasping for air, overcome with emotion—they may even curl up or heave.

If your character starts sobbing after a minor inconvenience, readers aren’t going to feel bad for them. Rather, they’ll just be annoyed by the character’s overdramatic reaction. Take that same reaction, however, and apply it to a scene in which another character dies, and suddenly, it becomes powerful.

However, human emotions are complex and varied, so your characters could have many other reasons for breaking down besides just “sadness.” In addition to that, emotions are rarely expressed as separate experiences. Rather, emotions overlap and twist together, making them much harder to portray in the written word. 

If you want some quick tips and pointers for portraying complex emotions, I cover the topic more in-depth in another article: How to Describe Facial Expressions in Writing . For now, let’s dive into how different emotions can alter a character’s behavior as they cry. 

Sadness is a broad emotion, so the context for why your character is crying is important for understanding how they are crying. The way someone cries when watching a sad movie is going to be very different from how they cry after receiving sad news.

In general, when a character cries out of pure sadness, with no other emotions influencing their behavior, they are likely to cry quietly. Sadness is a numbing emotion, so characters who cry out of sadness would be rather subdued. Common responses include curling up in a ball, chewing on their lower lip, and prolonged periods of simply not moving. Tears may be wiped away, or allowed to freely flow down the character’s face.

If you want to give your readers insight into how the character is feeling as they are crying, focus on the numbing aspect of sadness. Your character may feel physically and mentally deadened, tired, and even nauseous. They may also feel isolated from others as if they are alone in their suffering and no one understands, even if that isn’t necessarily true. Depending on the character, they may seek comfort from others, or withdraw to compose themself alone. 

Happy Crying

When a character is crying out of happiness, their response is going to depend on the context as well. Crying after receiving a big surprise, such as an expensive gift or an acceptance letter to a great college, is going to look different from a character crying on their wedding day. 

When a character is crying happy tears, they are likely to gasp frequently, cover their mouth with their hands, and speak in a high-pitched tone. They are also likely to emote exaggeratedly with their body, such as bowing over, bouncing up and down, fanning their face with their hands, or clapping. In more subdued settings, such as a wedding, the character may restrain their emotions and simply cry openly with a sincere smile on their face. 

Feelings of happiness are difficult to describe, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from giving readers insight into the character’s mind. When a character cries out of happiness, they are likely going to be overwhelmed with joy, excitement, or even disbelief. Characters are also much more likely to cry happy tears if they think they don’t deserve whatever is making them happy. 

Angry Crying

Anger doesn’t always lend itself to tears, but when it does, it has specific and predictable effects on a character’s behavior. A character may cry angry tears when they are being treated unfairly, are arguing with someone, or have been hurt emotionally.

When a character gets angry, that triggers an adrenaline reaction (their “fight-or-flight” response to stress or danger). Adrenaline drives how they behave while they cry, and it may cause them to tremble, raise their voice, become red in the face, sputter, and breathe much faster than normal. Depending on the character, they may wrap their arms around themself defensively, curl their hands into fists, or lash out with aggressive gestures. 

If you want to describe how that feels from the character’s perspective, a good theme to focus on is temperature. Anger is often described as “searing” or “boiling,” and it can feel as if they are burning up inside. When anger drives a character to tears, it is usually because their emotions have reached a breaking point and must be released. 

For more tips on writing about anger, take a look at Writing a Character with Anger Issues .

Embarrassed Crying

Embarrassment by itself is often enough to motivate a character to cry. Whether they have been humiliated in front of their friends, made an embarrassing mistake, or said something stupid without thinking, embarrassment can result in a strong emotional response. If handled well, you may also allow your readers to feel your character’s pain, through the phenomenon of second-hand embarrassment . 

A character crying out of embarrassment is, above all else, going to hide away from others. They may cover their face with their hands, curl up as small as possible, and try to withdraw from other people. Though it depends on the character’s personality, most of the time, they will seek to be alone out of fear of being judged for whatever caused the embarrassment.

To give your readers insight into how the character is feeling, you should allow your character to overthink how others would respond to witnessing the embarrassing event. They may feel shame and fear, and they are likely going to feel quite self-conscious about themself and their abilities. They may even feel ashamed of their reaction to the embarrassment, and try to hide the fact that they are crying. 

Scared Crying

Not everyone cries when they are frightened, but it is not an unusual response. Some characters may cry after being spooked for a prank, while others may only break down when they genuinely fear for their life.

When a character cries out of fear, they will experience a rush of adrenaline (just like with angry crying!) They will experience tears along with the typical reactions to adrenaline, like increased heart rate, a flushed face, and faster breathing. They are also likely to freeze in place, stammer, tremble, and whine. 

Fear is a powerful emotion, and it can dominate a character’s thoughts and actions. When a character is afraid, they might not even be aware of their tears until after the danger has passed. Rather, the character is going to be focused on what they are doing to eliminate or escape from whatever they are afraid of.

Pained Crying

Pain is another common reason for characters to shed tears, and it is often unavoidable even for ordinarily stoic characters. For some, crying might be their response to any amount of pain or discomfort, while others may need to be pushed to the point of agony before they shed tears. Either way, pained crying can look different depending on the type of pain and the character affected by it. 

When a character is crying because of acute pain, such as a sudden wound, they are likely to cry out or groan loudly, curl up in a ball, or exhibit reactions similar to scared crying. However, when a character has been experiencing chronic pain for some time, they may simply break down from the exhaustion of having to put up with that all the time.

It can be tough to get into the head of a character in pain. Pain can overshadow other thoughts and feelings, or intensify negative emotions like anger, fear, or sadness. If your character is afraid for some reason, either of whatever hurt them, for the safety of their friends, or for their own survival, now would be a good time for them to hyper-fixate on that fear—and their own inability to do anything about it. 

Disappointed Crying

Disappointment is an emotion that includes elements of sadness, anger, and even embarrassment. When a character was looking forward to something, such as a gift, a trip, an event, or something else, and is let down, they express disappointment that the situation doesn’t go as they envisioned it. They may be angry at whatever messed up their plans, angry or ashamed at themself for being so let down, or simply sad that they didn’t get what they want.

A character crying because they are disappointed is likely to be pouty and subdued, but they are also likely to exhibit many of the same behaviors as angry, sad, or embarrassed crying. They might hide away, start yelling, or seek comfort from others. It all depends on the character, the situation, and what went wrong.

After being disappointed, a character is probably going to be thinking about what happened long after the situation is over with. Disappointment is a slow-burn emotion, and your character is probably going to feel pretty bummed out for a while even after they stop crying. 

Frustrated Crying

Frustration is an overwhelming emotion, and crying because of it can often worsen that initial frustration. Often, frustration is the result of a character getting fed up with their own inability to achieve something, whether that’s beating a hard stage in a game, convincing someone of something in a debate, or being able to overcome their personal struggles.

Characters become frustrated when something they worked hard for isn’t working out. When this pushes a character to tears, they might start behaving angrily, or their behavior could mirror that of sad crying. Often, a character who is frustrated will lash out violently, hit or throw things, and then sit down to cry. This pattern is almost always followed: the character lashes out to release their initial frustration, then gives up and begins to cry more passively. It is also common for a person to harm themself when they lash out, such as by pulling their hair or hitting something too hard. 

Frustration can feel like an eruption of emotion. It builds up over time and is then released all at once. This can lead characters to start crying suddenly, with very little warning before it happens. 

Panicked Crying

Panic can bring a character to tears in the blink of an eye. When a character loses something they treasure, finds themself in an unsafe place, or encounters a person who has harmed them in the past, they may begin to panic. Past trauma is a common reason many characters have for breaking down into panicked tears, but characters with anxiety and panic disorders can experience panic attacks with no clear triggers. 

When a character is panic crying, they are going to be hyperventilating, and they may have a frenzied look, pace around wildly, rock back and forth, or clutch onto someone or something for comfort (or protection). They are also likely to scream, shriek, or whimper. In a lot of ways, this type of crying manifests very similarly to scared crying, but with much more restless energy.

Panic is an emotion that can overshadow all other emotions and rational thought. A panicking character will feel numb and lightheaded, and they may have a difficult time staying upright without someone or something to lean on. They may have a difficult time stringing words into a coherent sentence, and they’ll likely have a much harder time thinking of solutions to problems, formulating complex thoughts, and rationalizing their behavior. 

Panic isn’t just experienced; it takes over a character’s thoughts and behavior completely. 

Hopeless Crying

Hopelessness is a straight path to tears. When a character believes that nothing matters, they cannot save the world (or their loved ones), or that they simply cannot go on the way they have been living, they may begin to cry hopelessly. 

Hopeless crying goes beyond sadness. When a character is feeling truly hopeless, they may become lifeless, apathetic, or even downright catatonic. They will not bother to wipe away tears, so make a point to draw attention to the tears dripping off the end of their nose or splattering on different surfaces. Many surfaces, such as clothing, wood, and concrete, change color when they are wet, so if your character is crying onto a surface like that, you could also comment on the dark spots that appear with each tear that slips off the character’s face. 

A character who is feeling hopeless may feel as if they are alone in their struggles, and they can’t do everything themself. They may feel as if they have been abandoned, let down, or held back, and that they are powerless. This sense of powerlessness can cause a character to simply give up and shut down, leading to hopeless crying. 

Writing Dialogue when a Character is Crying

When writing dialogue for a character who is crying, it is important to remember to not go overboard. Once you have established that the character is crying, you shouldn’t have to do much extra work with the dialogue to further convince your readers of that. With that said, if you just type dialogue completely normally, that may come across as jarring if the tone doesn’t match how the character is feeling. 

The best way to indicate that a character is crying as they are speaking is to break the dialogue up to slow it down. One way you can do that is with the use of ellipses, like this:

“I don’t know… Maybe it’s just… better this way.” 

However, this is really easy to overdo. Make sure you read your dialogue out loud to ensure that the pauses sound natural for the character who is speaking.

Another option is to break up the dialogue with narration that reflects the other things the character is doing as they are speaking. These interruptions are called “ action beats ,” and they are a helpful little tool for controlling the pace at which your readers move through dialogue. Here’s an example of a beat in dialogue, using the same example as above:

“I don’t know,” Nate sighed, pausing to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “Maybe it’s just better this way.”

You might be tempted to misspell words as the character is speaking to emphasize the fact that they are slurring words together as they cry, but do not do that. Either state that the character is slurring their words, or that the other characters had difficulty understanding them. Misspelling words to look slurred is awkward, and it almost never feels authentic. Not to mention, that can make it difficult for readers whose first language isn’t the one you’re writing in. 

How to Describe a Character Trying Not to Cry

Sometimes, a character who feels compelled to cry may want to hold it in, either because they are afraid of what others would think, too proud to be seen crying, or because it isn’t socially acceptable in a particular setting. If you can show your readers how your character is fighting back tears, instead of simply telling them that, the scene will be much more emotionally charged. 

When a character is trying not to cry, they may employ several techniques to try to keep the tears from coming. Here are some options you can use to indicate that a character is trying not to cry:

• They could avoid eye contact with others, or look upward or downward. Alternatively, they could close their eyes.
• They could focus on keeping their breathing steady and slow, so much so that they miss what others say to them. 
• Their face may become red.
• They may avoid speaking, out of fear that their voice could crack.
• They may bite their lip, fidget with something, or seek other sensory distractions such as chewing on something, picking at their nails, or humming. 
• They may try to hide their sadness by expressing a different emotion, such as anger or happiness. 
• They may try to think of something else to distract themself. 

Remember to keep the character’s personality, and their reason for being upset, in mind as you are writing this scene. No two characters are going to react to the same situation in the same way. In addition to that, the same character who would ordinarily stay quiet in one situation may lash out violently in a different one. 

How to Describe Fake Crying

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may have characters who aren’t upset, but want (or need) to shed tears anyway. People have many reasons for wanting to fake tears, including connecting with others, expressing remorse, getting attention, or getting themself out of trouble. However, the most common reason people have for fake crying is manipulation. It’s much easier to get someone to do something for you if you shed a few tears first. 

Here are some quick examples of things you can include to show that a character is fake crying:

• They may squeeze their eyes shut tightly, trying to force out tears.
• They’ll likely scrunch up their face, and exaggerate their expression to look sad (such as pulling down the corners of their mouth, pulling their eyebrows closer together, and potentially pouting their lips).
• Their nose will not be running, and they won’t have any difficulty with breathing. If they want to be convincing, they will have to consciously sniffle and force their breathing into a more irregular pattern. However, their sniffles won’t sound the same without their nose running, so keep that in mind. 
• They are likely to hide their face with their hands since it will take them much longer to produce tears—if they can manage to do that at all.
• They are much more likely to wail, cry, mumble, or make any other distressed noise than someone who is actually crying. 
• They will be working harder at keeping their performance consistent, while someone who is actually crying may express a variety of other emotions as they try to get a grip on themself. It’s not uncommon for someone who is genuinely upset to express nervousness, fear, anger, and even a smile. 
• They will exaggerate everything they do to try to be more convincing. 
• They will be able to stop “crying” suddenly, whereas someone who is actually upset is going to need some time to pull themself together. 

If your story is told from the perspective of the character who is faking tears, or from an omniscient perspective, then you have an additional advantage. You could give readers insight into what the character is thinking, which you could utilize in a couple of different ways. You could be explicit, and simply show readers that the character is thinking of how to be more convincing, or you could simply show that their thoughts are clear and unrelated to what they should be upset about. Even if you don’t state it, your readers should be able to figure out that the character is faking if you give them enough clues. 

Write Crying Realistically

The most important thing to keep in mind when you are writing about characters crying is that strong emotions are not pretty. No one looks good when they are crying—they just don’t .

Here are some examples of things that happen when a character cries:

• Their face will be red and scrunched up.
• Their nose will be running.
• They’ll be sweaty.
• Their eyes will be bloodshot and puffy.
• They’ll produce more saliva.
• Their glasses may fog up.
• Tears (and snot) will get on everything.
• Their voice will crack, change pitch, and rasp.
• They may stutter or become incoherent.
• They may drool. 

When you’re describing a character crying, don’t be afraid of making your readers a bit uncomfortable. Crying is gross , so that’s how you should describe it if you want to do so realistically. If you want more tips about portraying emotion (or anything else) realistically, you should check out Show, Don’t Tell: What it is and How to Write it .

Finally, I’ll end with one last piece of advice. Your character’s reactions to different situations and events can reveal a lot about them. If they overreact in a particular situation, such as encountering a rude stranger, getting lost, or misplacing their phone, you can use that to reveal more about the character’s past. Their reaction to a rude stranger could reveal that they were hurt by someone in the past, while breaking down at the notion of being lost could suggest that they struggle with anxiety. Utilize those reactions to help you tell their story. 

Best of luck with your stories, writers!

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10 Fascinating Descriptions Of Hell

Almost every culture or religion in the world describes the existence of some sort of underworld or hell. These descriptions are often unusual in the way sinners are dealt with and even how sinning is defined. While each is unique in its own way, there are elements that are strikingly common across many cultures and religions.

10 Niflheim

Niflheim is a rather bizarre form of hell found in Norse and Germanic cultures. Rather than being a fiery pit, it’s a freezing landscape , ruled by Hel and located next to the Shore of Corpses, where Nidhogg resides. Nidhogg is, of course, a giant snake that feeds on the dead.

Of the nine worlds in Norse mythology, Niflheim is said to be the deepest and darkest of them all, and the myths claim that the Earth was created when the icy Niflheim and fiery world of Muspelheim combined. The realm is home to the wicked and also serves as an anchor for the Yggdrasill—the World Tree that holds up the universe. Hel became the mistress of the dead after being banished from Asgard, as she was the daughter of Loki . The souls brought to Niflheim by Hel’s messenger Hermodr are kept in constant pain .

The pre-Christian Finnish believed that the souls of the dead arrived on the shores of the river Tuoni , and were brought into Tuonela by the maid of Death, Tytti. Unlike most of the other underworlds on this list, Tuonela was pretty much a gloomier continuation of life on Earth. Those that found themselves going to Tuonela had to bring items to survive with. It even allowed visitors who wished to come and see their deceased relatives, though the journey was dangerous and often deadly. Particularly dangerous was the river Tuoni itself, which was filled with poisonous snakes . No real punishments were carried out in Tuonela, unless you consider eternally living a life just as mundane as reality a punishment.

8 The House of Lies (Zoroastrianism)

According to the Zoroastrian religion, the first thing the soul encounters after death is the Chinavat Bridge , which separates the worlds of the living and dead. The bridge is thinner than a hair, yet sharper than a blade, and is guarded by two four-eyed dogs. Souls are then judged based their deeds in life. If the bad deeds outweigh the good the bridge turns on its side , dumping the soul into the demon-filled pit below. Alternate descriptions talk of the demon Vizaresh emerging from the pit and dragging the wicked soul into the House of Lies—the Zoroastrian version of hell.

The House of Lies itself is described as a place of disgusting filth, where people are served spoiled food and continuously tortured for their deeds. The demons of the House of Lies number in the hundreds , with each representing a specific sin. For example, Apaosha is the demon of drought and thirst, while Zairika is the demon that makes poisons. Descriptions of the House of Lies vary depending on the translation of ancient Zoroastrian texts, but the elements described above are commonplace to all descriptions.

7 Duat (Egypt)

The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts describe a version of the afterlife known as Duat, ruled over by Osiris, the god of the dead. The Book of Two Ways contains a map depicting the journey one must take through Duat. The book describes a landscape similar to Earth, but also containing mystical elements like a lake of fire and iron walls. When approaching Duat, souls had to pass through gates guarded by half-animal, half-human creatures with evocative names like “Blood-Drinker Who Comes From The Slaughterhouse” or “One Who Eats The Excrement Of His Hindquarters.” After passing through the gates, the deceased person’s heart was weighed against a feather. If the heart was heavier than the feather, it would be eaten by the demon Ammut. The souls of the wicked were then condemned to face justice in Duat. Many were forced to walk upside down or receive punishments from serpents and devouring demons.

The name “Gehenna” originally referred to a valley outside of Jerusalem where followers of the god Moloch sacrificed children in great fires. It later came to refer to the Hebrew interpretation of hell, where the wicked were sent to pay for their sins. Gehenna resembles the Christian version of hell more closely than most entries on this list. It’s described as a deep and desolate place where flames continuously burn and rain from the sky. The heat given off by the flames is 60 times hotter than any flames found on Earth. Noxious sulfuric gasses hang in the air and rivers of molten metal flow freely.

Found in Greek and Roman mythology, Tartaros is described as a deep black dungeon full of torture and suffering. While most believe Hades to be hell, it is actually just a place for all the dead, with Tartaros being even deeper than Hades and reserved only for sinners. People are sent to Tartaros after Rhadamanthus judges them and decides their punishment.

In Roman mythology, Tartaros is surrounded by three walls and the fiery river Phlegethon. It is guarded by a nine-headed monster known as the hydra, along with Tisiphone, who watches over everything while constantly whipping people from his post. At the bottom of Tartaros are the Titans, enemies of the gods who were defeated and imprisoned.

Similarly, Greek mythology described Tartaros as a place that began as a prison for those that would endanger the gods, but later began functioning as a hell for all sinners. Wicked souls are punished in ways appropriate to their sins. For example, Tantalus was banished to Tartaros after cutting up his son and serving him to the gods as food. He was punished to suffer hunger and thirst, while standing in a pool of water he could not drink, below fruits that he could not eat.

4 Dante’s Hell

Many popular conceptions of the Christian hell can be traced back to the Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri. His Divine Comedy describes allegorical journeys through heaven, purgatory, and hell. Inferno begins with a sub-level where people are doomed to reside for doing nothing in life. They are punished in this realm by having to eternally chase after their self-interest while being followed by a swarm of insects and infected by maggots. A river known as Acheron surrounds the nine circles of hell itself. The first circle is a fairly pleasant place called Limbo, which is home to non-Christian souls who committed no sins.

The remaining levels correspond to each of the seven deadly sins. In the second circle, the lustful are punished by being blown around aimlessly by strong winds. The third circle houses gluttons and addicts, who are forced to remain in a disgusting slime. The fourth level contains two groups of sinners, those who hoarded money and those who wasted it, who must endlessly battle each other. Those who commit sins in anger remain in the fifth circle, where they fight each other in the river Styx, unable to ever feel happiness again. In the sixth level, heretics are locked in flaming tombs.

The seventh circle is divided into sections for violence against others, suicides, and violence against nature or God. The eighth circle is reserved for frauds and split into sub-levels where sinners have their heads twisted backwards and are whipped by demons, submerged in feces, burned on the soles of their feet, placed in a boiling lake, bitten by snakes, dismembered, and diseased. The last of the circles is home to those who committed treachery and are doomed to a specific icy punishment. In the center of hell, Satan himself is found chewing on Cassius, Brutus, and Judas.

Naraka or Niraya is the concept of hell for some branches of Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism. While the exact descriptions of Naraka differ between religions, it is a place of punishment based on a soul’s karma. Naraka is only a temporary destination and once the sinners have paid the price for their karma, they are reborn.

It is thought to be divided into several levels depending on the sins committed during life. The number of levels in Naraka varies from four to over 1,000 based on different descriptions. For example, Maharaurava is a place for those who gain at the expense of others. In Maharaurava, the sinner has his or her flesh eaten by a serpent demon known as Ruru. The realm Kumbhipaka is home to sinners that cook birds and animals. They are punished by being boiled in hot oil for the same amount of time as there were hairs on the animals they killed.

In the Hindu and Jain culture, Naraka is thought to be ruled by Yama Loka, the God of Justice. Once a person passes away, their actions throughout life are audited by Loka’s assistant and they are either sent to Svarga (heaven) or Naraka. Unlike Hinduism or Jainism, Buddhists believe that all souls are sent to Naraka to be cleansed of their sins, and no ruler exists to audit people’s actions in life. Regardless of cultural variation, it is believed that souls can remain in Naraka for billions of years until their karma has been restored and their souls may be reborn.

Diyu is a version of hell in traditional Chinese culture, and vaguely resembles Naraka. It consists of several levels, with the exact number differing from four to 18. Each level is watched over by a judge and punishments are carried out on sinners based on their actions during life. Chinese culture believes Yama Loki of Naraka was asked to watch over Diyu, where he eventually condensed the 96,816 hells into 10 sections that sinners would pass through before reincarnation. During the Tang Dynasty, this description changed to 134 hells , with 18 levels of pain and torture.

The most common description of the levels includes the Chamber of Tongue Ripping, The Chamber of Scissors, The Chamber of Iron Cycads, the Chamber of Mirror, Chamber of Steamer, Forest of Copper Column, Mountain of Knives, the Hill of Ice, Cauldron of Boiling Oil, Chamber of Ox, Chamber of Rock, Chamber of Pounding, Pool of Blood, Town of Suicide, Chamber of Dismemberment, Mountain of Flames, Yard of Stone Mill, and Chamber of Saw. The worst level of this hell is known as Avici, which is reserved for the worst sinners. Avici is unlike the other levels of Diyu because souls that end up here remain for eternity with no more hope to be reborn.

Xibalba is the Mayan version of hell and is thought to actually exist as a physical place in a cave system near Belize. It was said to be a place of pain, where the lords of the afterlife inflicted various odd forms of torture on unlucky souls. The lords were said to work together to inflict the punishments on Xibalba visitors. Ahalpuh and Ahalgana caused pus to gush from people’s bodies. Chamiabac and Chamiaholom caused the bodies of the dead to decay into skeletons. Ahalmez and Ahaltocob worked much like Mayhem does in those Allstate commercials by causing people deadly disasters in their homes. Xic and Patan brought death to people on the road, either by causing them to vomit blood , or squeezing them until blood filled their throats.

Souls were forced to complete a difficult and humiliating path just to reach Xibalba. Their journey began by crossing several rivers filled with blood, scorpions, and pus. Then the path split into four roads designed to entertain the lords by humiliating and confusing the travelers. Visitors were further tested by being sent into one of six deadly houses. The Dark House is pretty self-explanatory, as is the Jaguar House, Razor House, Hot House, and Bat House. The last house, known as the Rattling or Cold House , is filled with hail and freezing temperatures.

Shelby is an undergraduate at Arizona State University studying psychology and medicinal biochemistry. She is constantly fascinated by the mysteries of the world around her. She hopes to go on to medical school once she graduates to be able to search for and solve these mysteries.

More Great Lists

Using Descriptive Detail

This guide will explore the various uses and applications of description. Its purpose is to demonstrate the effectiveness of writing which includes descriptive details.

A Definition of Descriptive Detail

Descriptive details allow sensory recreations of experiences, objects, or imaginings. In other words, description encourages a more concrete or sensory experience of a subject, one which allows the reader to transport himself or herself into a scene. Writing that lacks description is in danger of being plain or overly general.

Uses of Descriptive Detail

There are many different uses of descriptive detail. Although most commonly associated with creative writing, description enhances a wide variety of subjects. Writing which effectively uses descriptive detail will allow a reader to do more than merely see words on a page. Original description gives writing a sense of honesty and believability, while concise details can help enhance your focus. Descriptive details cause a reader to feel, to hear, to taste, to become intimately connected with the images and experiences being recreated.

Cara McDonald, GTA - Department of English Look. Your reader is a bored, tired little person, maybe sitting at a bus stop. Take care of them. Transport them. Let them smell your mom's coffee, let them see the ugly flowers on that dress you had to wear on the first day of Sunday School.

Mary Kate Perry, GTA - Department of English One of my favorite ways of explaining the importance of vivid description in fiction writing is E.L. Doctorow's "Not that it's raining, but the feel of being rained upon." You don't tell your reader that it's rainy, because they won't care. They won't identify. You have to make them care through speaking to their senses. We perceive the world through our senses.

In fiction writing, it is important to make your scenes and characters as vivid as possible. One way this can be accomplished is through the inclusion of descriptive details. Fiction which incorporates original sensory description has the power to actively involve and affect the reader. Without such details, fiction is in danger of becoming listless or flat. Description is equally as important as dialogue and plot in moving forward the action of a story.

Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind "William Carlos Williams wrote a poem about standing by the water tap in his kitchen and waiting for it to freshen. You know city water: sometimes it comes out rusty and you wait for it to run clean. I've done it, but I've never thought about it until I read Williams's poem."

Poetry often begins with an image. Therefore, poetry is in a unique position to explore and exploit the possibilities of language. By utilizing effective descriptive details, the language of a poem is able to achieve power over the thoughts and feelings of readers. Rhythm and meter are important to poetry, but without descriptive detail a poem cannot engage the imagination or the senses.

Narrative Essay

Gilbert Findlay, Departement of English All writing is an act of definition. The writer uses some terms that are key to the subject. Take for example this passage from Itabari Njeri: 'Because of my family, I learned to see and hear the complexity and grand drama that underlay the simplest of human actions.' The key terms here are 'family,' complexity,' and 'human actions.' Then, the writer is obliged to follow with descriptive detail. It must be concrete in order to 'define' these terms in context . Without descriptive, contextual detail, the reader may only understand 'family' with reference to his or her own family, while what Njeri may be promising about an understanding of culture through family may be 90 degrees off from what the reader assumes. "

Persuasive Writing

Karen Wuest, GTA - Departement of English There is a significant difference between choosing details simply to describe something and selecting details that not only describe, but also reveal . This is particularly true in fiction—selective details which reveal character, or which might enlighten the reader about the narrator. It is also true in general, where details often reveal some deeper issue throbbing beneath the surface. That details can be used to describe is essential and true, but they should also go beyond that. Sheer description bogged down with details lacks energy, verve. The details must carry weight, reveal something beyond just the surface they have been describing.

In the Creative Writer's Handbook , Philip K. Jason and Allan B. Lefcowitz explain that "sensory experience is primary experience: we see, feel, taste, smell, and hear before we think, analyze, choose, and argue" (130). Therefore, before an argument can effectively persuade an audience, the writer must carefully select and utilize descriptive details. If a writer can effectively engage the reader's primary senses, then the audience can be more easily enticed to feel the validity of the argument. For example, an argument which provides a plea to end deforestation is far more moving when it includes an emotional and sensory depiction of the desolate environment, the ravaged wilderness, the displaced animals. Descriptive details can cause emotional triggers which are key when attempting to persuade an audience.

Summary/Response

Gilbert Findlay, Department of English The human mind cannot communicate in abstractions. If I write, 'communication is the most crucial element in contemporary society,' you, the reader think, 'gotta talk to my girlfriend.' But if I am more specific and write, 'Instant technological transfer of information from the World Wide Web to in-progress network reports of delicate diplomatic negotiations require that we reevaluate the way we respond to communications in contemporary society' then you, the reader, think, 'Oh! This writer is focusing on communication by the electronic media.' Bingo! Descriptive detail means clear communication.

Summary response writing is not exempt from the need to include descriptive detail. A descriptive summary/response essay will be effective if it includes both objective and subjective details. Objective details refer to concrete facts, while subjective details stress feelings about facts, places, people, and events. A balance between objective and subjective details will help the essay involve the emotions of the reader, while still relating the important facts.

Overall, a descriptive essay will focus upon one clear, dominant impression or idea. This dominant idea should be made clear in the thesis, and should guide the writer's selection of detail. Although the summary is not an appropriate place for a large amount of description, the main idea in the response can be effectively emphasized through the addition of clear creative and critical descriptive detail.

Types of Descriptive Detail

There are many different ways in which descriptive detail can be included in writing. Whether to describe, persuade, illustrate or demonstrate, the descriptive details you include in your writing should serve a purpose not just pad your writing with more words.

Sensory Detail

It is important to remember that human beings learn about the world through using the five senses. They are our primary source of knowledge about the world. Therefore, writing which incorporates vivid, sensory detail is more likely to engage and affect the reader.

The following writing sample uses sensory detail to create concrete images. Because the most effective way to incorporate sensory detail is to use all five senses in harmony, this sample provides an effective example of how sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste work together to strengthen writing. Each of the views highlights exactly how each sense is involved in improving the paragraph's imagery.

Example Text: Paragraph Without Sensory Detail

Grandmother Workman reached over and grabbed her grandson's arm. He was nervous because the staircase was so steep, but she leaned against him and they began to climb.

Comment: These are the beginning sentences of a paragraph which describes a boy helping an elderly woman up a flight of stairs. The scene seems simple enough, but it leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. Without the inclusion of sensory detail, the writing seems vague and non-specific. How might the author use descriptive detail to make the scene more vivid?

Example: Add Sight

Gandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand . The folds and creases beneath her skin coiled themselves out like electrical wiring, like the bloated, roughly-textured relief map of the world that his mother just posted above his bedside table. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey , and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him, breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck. She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs.

Comment: Visual details are often successfully incorporated into writing. Details which appeal to our sense of sight ensure that the reader is able to give faces to characters, or add concrete details to a setting. For example, through adding visual detail, a room can become more than just a blank, vague receptacle. It becomes a small, oblong room with peeling maroon wallpaper and cracked ceiling tiles. A visual description allows readers to place themselves within a text.

In the sample text, visual details help accomplish this through encouraging the reader to create a mental image of the characters, setting, and action.

Example: Add Sound

Grandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand. The folds and creases beneath her skin coiled themselves out like electrical wiring, like the bloated, roughly-textured relief map of the world that his mother just posted above his bedside table. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey, and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him, breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck. She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs .

Comment: The human sense of hearing is an important means of communication. Next to visual details, auditory details are most commonly included in writing. This is because sounds give us a primary experience of the world. Sounds can remind us of personal memories, or can create images in our minds. For example, the sound of a ship's whistle might remind a person of a summer's night in New England, or of a tour of duty in the military. Sounds recreate personal, sensory experiences.

The addition of auditory details gives the writer the opportunity to create a more detailed, layered, texture. In the sample text, the writer has incorporated references to sounds which allow the reader to infer the state of the old staircase, as well as the physical condition of the grandmother.

Example: Add Smell

Grandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand. The folds and creases beneath her skin coiled themselves out like electrical wiring, like the bloated, roughly-textured relief map of the world that his mother just posted above his bedside table. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey, and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him, breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck. She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs.

Comment: The sense of smell is commonly overlooked in writing. However, it is the human sense of smell that is most closely linked to the brain. The receptors in the brain which are responsible for processing smells are very close to the area of the brain responsible for the storage of memory. Because of this link, scents are able to cause vivid sensory re-creations of memories.

Our sense of smell has an uncommonly strong power over our feelings, thoughts, and emotions. In the sample text, the addition of olfactory details helps set the mood of the paragraph by triggering our senses.

Example: Add Touch

Grandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand. The folds and creases beneath her skin coiled themselves out like electrical wiring, like the bloated, roughly-textured relief map of the world that his mother just posted above his bedside table. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey, and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him, breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck . She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs.

Comment: The sense of touch encourages us to investigate the world around us by feeling it and learning the texture, shape, and size of things. Tactile images can be powerful sensory triggers. They allow a reader not only to visualize a scene, but to experience it. Inclusion of the sense of touch prevents the reader from remaining distanced or detached from the writing.

In the sample text, the sense of touch has been engaged through allowing the reader to recreate a primary sensation: the feel of a person's breath on the back of his or her neck. This is a sensory experience that most people have encountered. Therefore, through recalling familiar tactile sensations the writer encourages the readers to put themselves in the place of the characters.

Example: Add Taste

Grandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand. The folds and creases beneath her skin coiled themselves out like electrical wiring, like the bloated, roughly-textured relief map of the world that his mother just posted above his bedside table. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey, and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him , breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck. She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs.

Comment: The human sense of taste allows a person to do much more than simply select and enjoy food. There are four familiar tastes:

By appealing directly to any of these tastes, a writer has the unique opportunity to affect a reader's senses. Memories, feelings, people, and places can all be suggested through the sense of taste.

Characterization

Characterization refers to the process of describing the appearance, action, and thoughts of the persons discussed within a text. Characterization is an important part of description, because it causes readers to more fully understand the motivations of characters. Effective characterization works in harmony with setting and plot to make the reader connect on a more intimate level to a text. In order to create realistic characters, a writer should be certain to give each person within the text:

• a unique way of behaving
• a unique way of speaking
• a unique appearance
• a unique was of thinking

If this can be accomplished, the text will achieve a heightened sense of believability.

Techniques for Writing Characterization

No matter how insignificant a character might seem, it is important to provide insight a to their thoughts and feelings. Fully-developed characters are the basis for effective writing.

In order to complete a more thorough characterization, a writer might ask himself the following questions:

• When was the character born?
• Where was the character born?
• Who were the parents of this character?
• What was this character's family life like?
• How much education has the character experienced?
• How does the character speak? Move? Relate to others?
• What do others think about this character?
• What does this character think about himself?
• What does this character do for a living? For a hobby? In his free time?
• What did the character dream last night?
• What is the worst thing that ever happened to this character?
• What is the best thing that ever happened to this character?
• Who/what does this character love?
• Who/what does this character hate?
• What does the character want and why?

The more thoroughly the writer has researched the characters, the more realistically developed they will seem.

Observational Writing

The key to effective observing is to be able to show your reader people, places, evens, or objects through the use of specific detail. In The Prentice Hall Guide For College Writers , Stephen Reid explains the process of observational writing:

If your reader is going to learn from your observations, you need to give the exact details that you learned from, not just your conclusions or generalizations. Even in writing, experience is the best teacher, so use specific details to communicate the feel, the data, the sights and sounds and smells.

Through the use of the following observational techniques, a writer will be able to more vividly describe a subject:

Using Comparisons

Describing absences, describing changes.

• Point of View

Comparisons most often come in the form of analogy or simile. An analogy demonstrates the similarity or similarities between two things or concepts, while a simile compares two distinctly different things using the word "like" or "as." Comparisons are created by writers in order to help readers create vivid visual images of the subject matter. Comparisons can also help readers connect something they have not experienced with something they are very familiar with. Not many people have jumped out of an airplane but many have ridden on a rollercoaster, so a writer can compare the experience of skydiving with that first drop on a world class rollercoaster.

Effective observation does more that merely report data. While observation requires an explanation of the persons or things which are present, often a more thorough, layered text through can be created through also revealing the things which are not present . For example, if a writer wished to describe a young woman getting dressed for her wedding day, it would be necessary to explain what she was wearing: an antique dress with a satin train, plain white pumps with a faint black scuff on the toe, and her future mother-in-law's ugly, yellowed veil. All these details are important. But much could also be explained about the woman's emotional state by also observing what was missing: a smile.

To make a subject less static, writers often choose to relate observations about changes in the subject's form or condition. Such details give people, places, and things a sense of history. Good writers will look for evidence of these changes in their subjects. From a speck of rust on the frame of a car to a potato in the pantry which has grown roots, the observation of changes is an effective way to breathe life into subject matter.

Choosing Point of View

The phrase "point of view" refers to position from which an object, person, or event is observed. Before beginning to write, an author must decide upon which point of view would best complement the subject matter. Choosing to approach a subject from the most interesting or informative point of view is essential to effective observational writing. Perhaps a story might be better told from the point of view of the grandfather as opposed to the daughter? Or perhaps a critical essay would benefit from scientific, rather than conversational, point of view? Point of view holds the power to determine the audience's response to writing. As Stephen Reid explains in The Prentice Hall Guide For College Writers , " what is seen depends on who is doing the seeing."

Effective observational writing employs many different techniques, yet must always do so with purpose. It is not useful to describe everything about a subject. If this occurs, a reader will become bogged down with inconsequential information. Rather, a writer should be careful to focus his or her attentions upon a clear dominant idea. Ultimately, successful writers are able to focus primarily upon details and images which enhance or expand upon the reader's understanding the dominant idea. Knowing what to exclude from a piece of writing is as important as knowing what to include .

Showing Versus Telling

Showing vs. telling is an important aspect of creating effective description. The distinction between these two types of writing can be defined in very basic terms. "Telling" refers to the process of creating text which does not speak to the imagination of the reader. Writing which "tells" is plain and straightforward, yet often has difficulty involving the reader. An example of a "telling" sentence would be, "Kathy was sad." This sentence tells the reader what judgment needs to be made about Kathy, yet does not provide the evidence to support that judgment. For example, how do we know that Kathy is sad? How is she behaving? What does she look like? Writing which "shows" generally incorporates vivid descriptive detail in order to help the reader evaluate evidence in order to make the appropriate judgments.

Example: Telling in Creative Writing

Mrs. Jones loved gardening.

Comment: This sentence tells the reader exactly what judgment need to be made about Mrs. Jones. However, because this analysis of Mrs. ones' feelings has been "forced" by the writer, the reader is unlikely to feel any real emotion or understanding towards the character. We know that this woman loves to garden, but "love" is an ambiguous word. For example, how much does she love to garden? How does she express this love? There is no room for interpretive analysis, because none of the pieces of the puzzle have been provided.

Example: Showing in Creative Writing

From the moment she woke up in the morning, Mrs. Jones smiled at the thought of her garden. Most mornings, she'd scald her mouth trying to gulp down her coffee so that she could get outside while the ground was still damp from the morning dew. Once she knelt down in the soil, she lost track of all time and all concerns of her body. She would work well into the evening, barely noticing when the nails of her left hand would break to the point of bleeding. Mrs. Jones' Jones jeans were always stained on the knees with thick mud, and her arms were always bruised and scraped. But she didn't mind a bit.

Comment: The "showing" version of Mrs. Jones' story does a more effective job of involving the reader. Although the word "love" is never mentioned in relationship to her garden, the reader can clearly infer Mrs. Jones' feelings through the descriptive depiction of her actions. Readers have not merely been "told" that Mrs. Jones loves her garden. Instead, readers are able to see and feel this love for themselves.

Example: Telling in Critical Writing

Dennis Rodman is a poor role model.

Comment: In this sentence, the author makes a clear statement of opinion. However, an unsupported opinion does not have the power to affect or influence a reader. Instead of merely claiming that Dennis Rodman is a poor role model, the author must describe the situation in order to fully explain why he has come to that conclusion. The reader must be given all of the necessary evidence to "show" that Rodman is poor role model. Otherwise, the argument is neither moving, nor convincing.

Example: Showing in Critical Writing

Dennis Rodman continues to break the rules of the NBA. He is rude to officials, excessively violent on and off the court, and has publicly claimed he holds no remorse for his actions.

Comment: In this "showing" example, the author has reserved judgment for the audience. With the evidence provided, it is likely that a reader would come to the conclusion that Dennis Rodman is a poor role model. However, because this is a conclusion that the reader has come to of his or her free will, the argument is far more effective.

A simile is a comparison of two seemingly dissimilar objects. Its purpose is to make a unique connection between things which appear essentially unlike, usually through using the words "like" or "as." Simile is an important component of effective writing, as it provides the writer with a creative means of description.

The following paragraph, written by a student writer, makes fairly effective use of sensory detail. However, visual imagery could be greatly improved through the addition of simile.

Example: Paragraph Without Simile

Grandmother Workman lurched over and grabbed the pale skin of Randal's thin forearm with her leathery hand. Randal looked ahead toward the winding spiral staircase, fidgeted with a small hole in his baseball jersey, and bit his lip. His mouth filled with the sweet, coppery taste of blood as she leaned in closely toward him, breathing her hot breath on the damp hair at the base of his neck. She smelled of wet cigarettes and bacon. As they slowly climbed the long, steep staircase, the only sound was his grandmothers' labored breathing and the mournful creak of the wooden stairs.

Example: Paragraph With Simile

Comment: With the addition of simile, the descriptive details in the text are much more concrete. The unusual comparisons of a woman's arm to electrical wiring and to a relief map make the writing stand out. Simile allows the reader is able to create a visual image of a much more unique character.

Additional Resources

Bernays, Anne and Pamela Painter. What If?: Writing Exercises For Fiction Writers . New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995.

Brown, Renni and Dave King. Self-Editing For Fiction Writers . New York: Harper Perenneal, 1993.

Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind . New York: Bantam Books, 1990.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones .Boston: Shambhala, 1986.

Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary For Writers and Readers . New York: Random House, 1990.

Jason, Philip J. and Allan B. Lefcowitz. Creative Writer's Handbook . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Newlove, Donald. Painted Paragraphs . New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.

Reid, Stephen. The Prentice Hall Guide For College Writers . Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Stare, Jerome. Making Shapely Fiction . New York: Dell Publishing, 1991.

Sample Text: by T. Alex Myers, CSU student.

Citation Information

Tiffany Myers. (1994-2024). Using Descriptive Detail. The WAC Clearinghouse. Colorado State University. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/writing/guides/.

Copyright Information

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How to Describe Anger In Writing

I wanted to make a list about how to describe anger in writing

because I know a lot of writers get stuck on it, whether they’re describing frustration, annoyance, or flat-out rage. Even when you’re just looking for a few words or a phrase, you can get bogged down. With that in mind, here are ways to write anger descriptions in a more vivid way than “he felt angry.”

Here’s something I can’t stress enough. When you’re writing about anger, there are a lot of ways to show the emotion…through what they say, how loudly they say it, what they’re thinking, and their actions (such as aggressively loading the dishwasher.)

My list of ways to describe facial expressions and my list of body language and gestures

can both help in showing emotion. But once in a while, you want to describe your point of view character’s internal feelings of anger.

Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list. There are one hundred phrases here. A few of them hint at physiological reactions to the emotion of anger, and some employ similes. You can adapt them or mix them up a little, and they’ll probably make you think of more.

The ones that contain a verb can be turned into a phrase. For instance, “she was breathless with anger” can be used in a sentence like, “Breathless with anger, she stood up and walked out.’ Oh, and you can probably change some of these to describe hatred or loathing. And as long as the context is clear, you don’t need to name the emotion at all—a physiological reaction is often enough!

Be sure to pin the article to a Pinterest board or bookmark it for future reference!

he smoldered with resentment

rage flowed through her like lava

molten anger rolled through him

rage gripped her

anger poured through her

her temper sparked

anger stirred within her

his fury sprang to life

rage nearly consumed her

raw anger shot through him

rage pulsed through his veins

anger thrummed through her veins

anger flooded his veins

rage quickened her blood

she felt a flash of irritation

he felt a flicker of irritation

his anger spiked

anger rushed through her

anger overpowered her

rage overtook him

fury overcame her

he swallowed down his frustration

she tamped down her irritation

he mastered his anger

he kept his frustration in check

fury roared through her mind

a fresh swell of rage rose in her

anger rose in him like a tide

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anger welled up in his chest

fury vibrated through her being

he burned with anger

irritation pricked at him

inwardly, she was seething

he trembled with rage

she shook with fury

he was quivering with anger

her resentment grew inside her like a tumor

his resentment festered in him

anger spread through him

rage filled her

his irritation flared

it roused her anger

it woke her anger

his edge of irritation had returned

fury surged through her

he went cold with fury

she was breathless with anger

he was wordless with rage

he was almost choking on his rage

nearly suffocating on her fury

she was simmering with anger

he was boiling with anger

a wave of fury crashed through her

he was running on sheer anger

her frustration kicked in

fury twisted inside of her

she was a ball of pure anger

she was about to explode with rage

he felt about to burst from rage

she was in a red rage

rage ran red through his brain

he stoked his anger

a vortex of anger swirled inside him

she fought the chaos of her rage

he tried to still his rage

he pressed down his anger

she struggled against her anger

he bit back his anger

anger heated her blood

rage seared through him

anger swept over her

resentment clouded her thoughts

he was blind with rage

she felt a jolt of anger

anger hardened her heart

rage beat at her heart

rage churned inside of him

he felt drunk on his rage

anger ripped through him

anger rippled through her

fury tore through her

inside, he was smoking with anger

his anger was mounting

her anger coiled in her stomach

he felt a stab of anger

she felt the anger building

he could taste blood

her irritation crackled

she was immobilized by fury

he was brimming with hostility

anger settled over her

rage throbbed in her like a heartbeat

rage pounded in him like a drumbeat

flames of anger licked through him

rage seized her

resentment blossomed within her

his anger felt good

she felt a cleansing anger

he felt a sick anger

he marinated in resentment

It actually took me a really long time to think about all of these! 🙂 I hope it’s a helpful list! I’m going to make a few more for other emotions. If you don’t want to miss those, be sure to follow the blog, if you aren’t already — there’s a place to sign up on the lefthand side of this website.

And in my book Master Lists for Writers , you can find a lot more lists. Take a look!

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!

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40 thoughts on “ how to describe anger in writing ”.

Thank you, these alternatives to anger are excellent. xxx

So glad you like them, Adele! And nice to see you. 🙂

Thank you. x

Writing a Behavior Support Plan for an individual in crisis and I needed to find ways to capture the person’s state-of-being. Thanks for the inspiration and descriptions as some of these are helpful even though what I am doing is not creative writing. Thanks!

I really like those ways of showing anger without mentioning the word but it’s also great to have a hundred examples of how to use it with such variety.

Thanks, Maria! (Great last name, by the way. 😉 )

It is! Do people ever spell yours Donavon? Is there in the whole world anyone who spells their own name that way? Bryn is also good. A good Welsh word.

They do spell it that way! Haha!

Nice, thank you. Some of those, very evocative!!

Thanks so much, friend!

Thanks, Bryn. This long list is stimulating. So often expressing emotions, especially anger, is quite difficult. It is probably easiest to express anger through physical violence – but it is more challenging for a character who is angry and yet wants to/needs to express it in a non-violent way.

Hi, Keith! Thanks. And you bring up such a good point! I think it can be really powerful when a character is angry and _not_ really showing it, or else showing it in more understated ways.

Great list!! I’ve had many times when I wanted something other than ‘She wanted to punch something–preferably his nose.’ Or something similar to that. 🙂

Thanks Bunches!! I’m sure I’ll be referring to this list A Lot for my stories. Romances need to be full of conflict, and anger is certainly a product of that, especially in close relationships. Now that I have this list to refer to, I won’t need to burn up all my brain power trying to come up with a way to describe this emotion, so Thanks Again for burning up your brain for all of us. LOL 🙂

I might just start printing out these addendums and paste them into my copy of MLfW 🙂 These are super helpful, Bryn. Thanks for thinking them up! <3

🙂 Thanks, friend!

Thanks for sharing, Bryn! These are helpful. I reblogged your post on my blog for Write it Wednesday. (I also wrote a 2,218-word short fic today!) Write away!

I always say this, but it’s true: you are so prolific! Thank you so much for sharing…it means a lot, always!

I love all of your alternatives for anything. I’ll be sure to take note of these as well. Your book Master List for writers has become my bible. I even add my own twist on them sometimes to suit whatever’s going on in the scene at the time.

Hi, Nicole! Oh, that means a lot to me. I’m so glad the book is helpful! And I thought people could put their own spin on things, just like you’re doing. 🙂

I’ll be sure to leave a bibliographical reference to you when I’ve completed my book. Thank you so much Bryn. Xx

Oh my gosh, you don’t have to do that, of course! (Even though that would be amazing 😀 ) I hope the book is going well!

Awesome list. Thanks Bryn.

You’re welcome, Dalton! Thanks for stopping by!

I was scouring the internet for a compendious list of expressions to aid my essays. Growing restless by the minute I shuddered at the thought of exams creeping in the corner when I came across your blog. Very helpful. You’re a true lifesaver.:)

Thank you is an understatement Thanks though Thanks a great deal

Hair-trigger temper is another good description.

Just wanted to say thanks trying to make my own book right now and I always struggle with expressing anger

wow. these phrases are extremely useful and really realistic. thank u so much for compiling it

You are so welcome!

These are so good! Thanks so much xx

thx for the phrases

thanks you helped me a lot

Thank you so much! This is great!

Oh yay! So glad you liked it! 🙂

Very good writing resources!!! This is one of the best website I have ever been! There is just a bountiful amount of phrases that I need when writing a composition. Thank so much!! Much appreciated.

Hi bryn donovan , thank you for this list! I was actually quite stressed out as i am going to have my english composition tomorrow and i also didn’t know a lot of good phrases for anger. Upon stumbling on your website, i saw MANY good phrases! so if i write about a character being angry tomorrow , i would definitely hv good marks!UwU THANKS again!!! 🙂

Btw my name is isabel oops i forgot to include it! UwU

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65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your Writing

Ever since William Shakespeare said:

“The Eyes are the window to your soul”

… people have been trying to decode ever glitter, wrinkle, squint, and gaze that passes from those orbs. When I read a description that catches my attention, I copy it down, using it later to remind me there’s more to a character’s eyes than ‘she looked’ or ‘his blue eyes’.

Here’s my list of 65 (and growing):

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).

• Eyed me as though his bullshit meter was ticking in the red zone.
• He blinked as his eyes adjusted.
• an alertness in the eyes, behind the glasses that sat crookedly on the nose
• Cold gaze fixed on the anxious young man
• Cast a skeptical eye
• Sure, we know that, said Herrera, taking off his glasses to inspect the lenses.
• Gaffan saw Marley’s eyes open wide in surprise and recognition.
• Eyes bleary from surveillance and the two-hour drive
• Vision narrowed to a pinprick
• Eyes clouded
• eyes locked on like magnets
• four pairs of eyes blinked in unison
• studied her with a predator’s unwavering attention
• blinked a couple of times

• eyes narrowed to slits
• Narrowed his eyes
• eyes locked in a shared understanding
• yellow rimmed eyes narrowing
• peer sightlessly at a wall
• eyes turned inward
• shook her head and stared at the pool
• Staring sightlessly into the darkness
• Stared off into the crowd but didn’t seem to see anything
• Stared into the distance
• Fixed expression
• Looked at a place somewhere over his shoulder
• focused on an empty space in the air between them
• eyes narrowed, she got a vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her lips pursed slightly.
• Their eyes met, but he broke it off
• meaningful eye contact
• studied Hood with her level gaze
• risked a peek
• she screwed her eyes shut
• stared brazenly into her eyes
• opened her eyes wide
• dark eyes radiated a fierce, uncompromising intelligence
• rubbed raw eyes
• eyes felt scratchy and I was jittery with coffee and raw from sleeplessness.
• His eyes flickered past me.
• His eyes were never still and he never looked at me except in passing
• Caught her peeking at Hawk sideways out of a narrow corner of her right eye.
• Watching the bystanders from the edge of his vision
• Looked him over with the respect men who have not served give those who have

• Ferret-like eyes
• Dark eyes smoldering
• Lined from squinting into too many suns
• Eyes were dark pools of fear
• looked like hell—purple bags under her eyes,
• eyes carried a mixture of shock and barely contained anger
• bright eyes of an optimist
• one eye clouded with a cataract
• wounded eyes
• his body felt heavy
• eyes were dark, cupped by fleshy pouches
• wire-rimmed glasses
• Slate-blue eyes
• Dark solemn eyes
• Spark in his grey eyes
• Steely-eyed
• Huge blue eyes that gave her a startled look
• black circles beneath her eyes had become bruises
• Wide-spread aquamarine eyes
• brown eyes wearing reading glasses
• Piercing stare
• Close set black eyes
• Watery blue eyes
• Memorable only for his bleak eyes
• Nets of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes
• Eyes flat as little pebbles
• Steely eyed
• long eyelashes
• laughing eyes
• predatory eyes
• Eyes were red-rimmed from allergies
• Under heavy lids; heavy-lidded
• Sensitive brown eyes
• Eyes sunk into his sockets
• Competitive, fixed, dead-eyed, and querulous stare of people who weren’t getting far enough fast enough
• I’ve-seen-it-all eyes
• bedroom eyes, dark hair falling into them
• Crows feet radiated from corners of eyes
• the light fades from his eyes until they are dark and empty
• eyes were brown in the middle and bloodshot everywhere else
• stared through him
• Looked left and right before starting
• Pingponging his gaze between A and B
• His glance, as conspiratorial as a wink
•  eyes watched her the way a tiger watched a bunny
• Shadow passed over his eyes
• Flicker in his eyes
• Said without looking at him
• looked for a common theme, a thread of some sort
• She frowned–couldn’t recall the incident
• Heard little and cared less
• Hovering over her shoulder
• His eyes flattened
• His face hardened in concentration
• Thinking about my conversation with the old detective
• shot a look over the top of his glasses
• Squinted at the sun
• Arched an eye brow
• Looked at me with a strangled expression
• Bushy eyebrows
• eyebrows of white steel wool
• a single bushy bar above the eyes

More descriptors for writing:

Lots of them

48 Collections to Infuse Your Writing

What is a ‘Hacker’

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

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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152 thoughts on “ 65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your Writing ”

These tips would also help in writing better essays. Thankyou for sharing

Like Liked by 1 person

They would. Great suggestion.

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So interesting!

Thank you! It’s easy to fall into the traditional color/size/that sort, but there is so much more to eyes than that. Which–of course–you understand, with your interest in music.

Thank you again for this wonderful reply 💝

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There is no copyright on most if not all of these. You may have copied them from a particular manuscript but the phrases themselves have been used thousands of times…”arched an eyebrow” , “Cast a skeptical eye” – c’mon…look at these phrases…they are all quite generic.

You are right–just an abundance of caution. Thanks, Vicki.

I think they’re pretty neat, Jacqui.

I absolutely love this list. Thank you so much. I’m always searching for lists. One of my favorite lists is finding words to use instead of said.

Glad you found it helpful!

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Jacqui, Can’t comment on just one post — I find something helpful in your posts on matter the subject. For now, the “eyes” have it. Thanks, also on commenting on my posts and for your regular blurbs. Mask up and enjoy the holidays.

I have quite a collection of masks these days! Thanks for the greetings, Nancy!

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Thanks for visiting.

Hi Jacqui, I just got your last book from Amazon and I started to read it. When the Thames is finished I will write about it, as promised. Joanna

Thank you, Joanna! I’d love that. But don’t rush. Your series on rivers is fascinating.

Very useful to many budding writers. Thank you, Jacqui, for your comments about the posts on my blog naturetails.blog I am back home from the hospital but still not very well. Nothing serious. Joanna

I’m so sorry to hear that, Gaby. It’s awful to be sick, especially now.

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Love this! Very helpful.

Thanks! Glad this was helpful.

Wow thanks!! These are worth remembering – or at least remembering where they are.

Pretty amazing how many ways there are to discuss ‘see’!

Reblogged this on Home – SFH and commented: This is such a good list for anyone need good sight words!

Thanks for sharing!

wow amazing list , Thank you for compiling it very useful to me !

I am so amazed by the creativity of writers. These really caught my attention.

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I will look at this list when I’m writing 🤔 my eyes would read. She looked through her red itchy eyes and decided he was a hunk. But what could she do about it at 61 and wrinkled skin. Go to Walmart for Gold Bond!

Like Liked by 2 people

Hehee. You and me both!

I think you are amazing with the wealth of words you provide.

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Just found this – these are great! My eyes are wide with admiration….

I see what you did there!

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Hi Jacqui, Thank you for liking my poem, I love writing poetry…and playing around with words::my passion! Add people and I’m made up! I enjoyed your lists and ideas; thank you.. To think there are only 26 letters in the English language. Isn’t it amazing what us writers do with them. Magic! Best wishes. xx

Well, Nature has us beat. Only 4 bases for DNA and look at all the variation. Yikes!

Thanks goes to you for promoting my work as a powerful Psychic spiritual healer in usa and for liking my blogs, let me live my number here +27634299958 whatsapp. THANKS

Like Liked by 3 people

Thanks for visiting me, too!

Love this! Thanks for taking time away from your writing to visit my blog!

Fun visit, Lily. I’m new to #authorstoolboxbloghop and am enjoying all the new writers I’m meeting!

I’m looking for some advice. I want to describe the look someone gives another person when the former is deliberately feigning interest in a way meant to convey mockery and contempt. I’ll try to give a brief example.

Person A says something person B finds ridiculous or uninteresting.

Person B, being a jerk, makes a sarcastic remark to the effect of “wow, how fascinating!” while giving person A a look that matches her attitude.

It’s all about body language…and the fact that it’s nearly 6 am and I am struggling to be descriptive! Thanks for your help.

Snide? Or dismissive? Or like you just stepped in a cow turd?

Hmm… Let’s see what anyone else has to offer!

some great ideas in this list Jacqui to stimulate the imagination. also, a good reminder about copyright 🙂

I’m pretty paranoid about copyrights. I’m perfectly happy paying for images rather than worrying they’re in the public domain.

exactly. i bought 5 images recently from shuttlestock. not very expensive.

Also technically you can’t copywriter a phrase you didn’t make up. “Narrowed his eyes” is on this list and I’m sure that’s been used thousands of times in manuscripts for many, many years. Copying a whole paragraph that a phrase is imbedded in is wrong, but using common phrases in your writing but putting it in your own context is not violating a copyright.

You’re absolutely right. Good to point this out!

“Eyed me as though his bullshit meter was ticking in the red zone.”. Awesome.

I’ve felt that way myself at times!

Seriously, this is a great list!

Great examples. You had me at the first one.

Yeah, I like that one too. It evokes some good mental images.

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This is excellent! Thanks.

Thanks! They are all quite authentic.

Thank you Jacqui! it was helpful..

I love hearing that, Vijaya.

This is a thorough and useful list, Jacqui. Thank you. 🙂 — Suzanne

I get a lot of inspiration from this one. Thanks, Patricia.

I love posts like this, Jacqui. They make me reach beyond the self-imposed limits of my little grey cells 🙂

Every time I prepare to write “he squinted” or “his ferret eyes”, I check this list. I can do so much more with eyes!

I’ve bookmarked it and will be using in the future 🙂

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Brilliant Jacqui thank you. The eyes are such a crucial element in connection with someone. Eyes meeting across a crowded room has been the start of many a wonderful romance…..

Thanks so much for sharing this post on your blog, Sally. It’s been fun hearing the feedback.

Pleasure Jacqui. x

Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady .

Thanks for the reblog!

Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog .

Thanks for the reblog, Chris!

Welcome, Jacqui – great info 😃

It’s in august company on your blog.

THANK YOU, Jacqui ❤️

Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented: Awesome writing tips for Sight and Eyes 🙂

Fantastic list, thank you!

My pleasure.

Excellent, Jacqui. Thanks for sharing.

These definitely inspire me when I get stuck. Thanks for visiting.

Haha! Love the 1st one, I have to use that on my hubby. LOLz

Oh yeah. I use it a lot on mine!

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Awesome write-up. I wonder if a person used some of these phrases in their own book or novel would it be considered plagiarism? I posted earlier but I wrote the wrong address.

It could be–and some of them are so outstanding, genre readers would recognize them for where they came from. Not worth the risk!

thanks for your response. But I think it depends. As I look over some of the words in sight, I already have them in my book and chances are some of the phrases are in other books. Phrases like “Eyes turned inwards”, “Looked him over”, “Blinks several times”, “Squinted into the crowd.” In my novel I used, “His eyes darted back and forth.” coming to find out that the phrase is used in over 15 other novels that I found and I am sure there are more. I’m sure there are probably other phrases that I use in some of these books as well. Can I call it plagiarism if I see phrases I used in my book?

I guess it depends on the complexity of the sentence.

You are right–those types of general phrasing is pretty much public domain. Good to point that out!

Thank you! This is perfect for when I’m sitting there thinking, ‘how should I say?’ which causes me to stop and think too long and uh-oh I wind up in the writer’s block zone!

Thanks exactly what it does for me, too. Inspiration.

Well, isn’t that thorough. i love the first one about the bullshit meter.

We’re so far beyond ‘beady eyes’ aren’t we?

This is so much help. Thank you.

My pleasure!

Wow, so many ways to describe and possibly we still have even more things the eyes express. Magical are the eyes, small organs with great power. Thanks miriam

That is true. I think that veil with just the eyes showing is a perfect example.

Reblogged this on lampmagician .

Thank you so much for sharing. Sometimes my thoughts gets stuck and I need something to give it a kick start. 🙂

That is exactly what these lists are for. Sometimes, I just read the dictionary, find great words that evoke an image that leads to a plot point. I love writing.

If only I had a photographic memory … as long as I didn’t have to sacrifice my busy, sometimes all over the place, creative mind. 😳

This was such a help. Thanks for sharing!

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Thank you so much! These will definitely help me in my writing!

Great writer tips. Thanks for your recent visit to my blog.

These are fun, aren’t they?

This has helped me so much! I always get stuck describing how characters ‘look’ at certain things. Thank you!

It’s amazing how many ways you can say the same thing. Glad you like these.

it was of great help for me.. beautifully expressed…

Thanks! And, I’m sure the cute dog doesn’t hurt it’s read-me value.

no it didn’t… rather its my favorite breed so its just an add on cuteness & more expressive 🙂

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Awesome list!! Thanks for sharing 😀

and a free cute dog picture–what could be better!

Excellent… Being language my second language you have no idea how this post helps me, dear Jacqui… Best wishes! Aquileana ⭐

I bet many of them seem quite odd to you. I’m highly impressed with your writing skills.

Exactly!… But I am learning with your post!… Oh and thank you, Jacqui!… I’d humbly say that I feel I have made considerable improvements! … Best wishes! Aquileana 😀

Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented: Can someone explain the copywrite law when it comes to using common phrases? I’ve used quite a few of these in my writing and even my nurse’s notes. I did not think using a common phrase would be considered infringement.

My old eyes can’t ‘see’ as much as your young ones and writing brain can Jacqui. You’ve given me so much great tips over the last couple of years, I wish I knew long time ago. These are the ones came at a critical juncture of my [nonsensical?] book. Thanks for your help Jaqui. Arun from over the pond.

I see your eyes laughing! Ah, you are the master of subtle humor, Arun.

You know, I’m always scratching my head and pulling at my hair trying to think of others ways to say “looked”. These will help. Thanks.

And ‘saw’. These aren’t like changing the tag, ‘he said’. They aren’t supposed to be invisible. Gee, it gets hard sometimes.

These are great. Eyes are so expressive and are a must to mention when writing.

They are. Shoulders, feet–they can be ignored, but not what’s communicated with eyes.

With this post Jacqui “The ayes have it”! You are such a great resource, thank you.

Fabulous as always, Jacqui. Thanks so much. Something to chew on. ❤

Chomp chomp!

Great post. I was reminded tonight how important expressive eyes are while watching the Voice.

Since so much of communication is the body, it makes sense we should be aware of what’s being said.

Thanks, Jacqui. This should prove very helpful.

So much more expressive, aren’t they?

Great tips! Thank you so much for sharing! Have a lovely week 🙂

Lots of ways to say, ‘he saw’, aren’t there?

Yes, quite! Thank you. Very useful tips 🙂

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10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery". 

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too. 

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind. 

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view . 

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines. 

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

 A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions. 

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined. 

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

 You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship. 

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

 ​​If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue. 

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.” 

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama. 

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid . 

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.” 

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good. 

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. 

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success. 

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps. 

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything. 

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about. 

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well. 

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels: 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers. 

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.  

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural. 

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.” 

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine. 

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure." 

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between. 

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." 

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible. 

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them. 

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through: 

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years." 

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story. 

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is." 

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales. 

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.” 

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be. 

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it. 

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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