: Re: How can I keep my writing from being perceived as "too complicated" This is from a piece I wrote a couple of years back: The sky seemed like a big, large pool of grey smoke. The weather

@Pierce369

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The sky seemed like a big, large pool of grey smoke. The weather was
cool, moist. A fresh, earthy smell hung on the air.
I peered through the window with slick navy blue curtains, swinging to
and fro to the movement of the minibus, blocking my view to some
extent. Tiny rain droplets drizzled onto the closed glass pane with a
light tinkle, creating a rhythmical musical tune which doubtlessly was
perceived by quite a few. I could see the vague reflection of a
stressed me breaking into a little grin on the damp window pane, as
well as my surroundings. I became lost into admiring the lovely shower
for a few moments before reality struck me hard.

It sounds a lot like you are trying to add words for the sake of it.
Just in the first sentence you have 'big, large pool'. At least one of big or large is redundant as they mean the same thing, equally we know that the sky is big and 'big' seems a bit weak when describing the sky.
Later on you have 'musical tune' again something of a tautology. I would also question whether tiny droplets of drizzle (another tautology) really do fall onto glass with a light tinkle.
One think I would say is a lot of writing (and indeed art in general) is about observation. Think about what very specific things really matter in a scene rather than what you know or assume to be present.
I've reconstructed your original in a way to illustrate this, while trying not to alter the sense of what you have actually written very much.

The sky seemed like a pool of grey smoke. The weather was
cool and a fresh, earthy smell hung in the air.
I peered through the window, its slick navy blue curtains, swinging to
and fro to the movement of the minibus. Tiny droplets drizzled onto the glass pane, creating a rhythmical pattern like a visible piece of music. I could see the my own reflection in the glass, superimposed on a damp landscape. My faint smile distorted by the tiny beads of water.
I became lost in admiring the lovely shower for a few moments before reality struck me hard.

In the above version I've cut out about 50% of the adjectives and played with the structure a bit. Long sentences aren't necessarily a bad thing but they need to flow, you don't want a sentence where the actual sense is broken up by long subordinate clauses so that by the time you get to the object of the sentence you've forgotten how it started.
In particular you have a couple of fragments tacked onto the end of sentences which don't fit very well eg. blocking my view to some extent not really adding much, that's what curtains do and it seems a bit sort of utilitarian in a description which seems to be trying to evoke a daydream. Also ...which doubtlessly was perceived by quite a few a bit clunky and again doesn't really add much.
Also you can use metaphor to give a sense of how a character feels, how they perceive a scene will be affected by their mood. Here rather than just saying they were stressed the phrase My faint smile distorted by the tiny beads of water paints more of a picture.
So to summarise.

Be economical with adjectives and only use them when they really add something .
Sentences should flow, try reading them out load.
The objective is to give the reader a sense of the scene, to do that you need to decide what is important. Many people will have sat on a bus in the rain so you can tap into that experience, if you choose the right words.

There is no trivial way to achieve good sentence structure but almost always a dense piece of description will benefit from careful re-reading and refining.
Also economy of words in descriptive passages if often more powerful than cramming in as much as you can think of. That way you are left with only the important bits but equally you often need to write a lot and cut it down in order to work out what is important. With experience this will become more of an automatic process.
Finally poetry is not about verbal gymnastics but rather about wringing the maximum possible meaning out of your writing and considering the effects of every aspect of it from the nuanced meanings to words and what associations they might have to structure, rhythm and word order.

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