: It's a sign of a poor writer if they have to use color and weird visual hints and the likes to express nuances of the scene on regular basis. There are writers who can use that skillfully

@Deb2945533

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It's a sign of a poor writer if they have to use color and weird visual hints and the likes to express nuances of the scene on regular basis. There are writers who can use that skillfully and for real impact (bows to sir Pratchett with his full-page "YES") but even they use it sparingly - or all the impact will be lost.

Thing is, if you go into too convoluted visual hints, they will start detracting from the story. They will kill immersion, and immersion is one of the most important factors in a good story.

A talented writer will normally approach this task from opposite side: build mood. Physical details are not that important. As long as they fulfill the premise, their precise layout or detail may be arbitrary. It's the feel of the moment one must convey, and this is done by painting minute, apparently insignificant details that affect the whole. A drop of sweat on someone's forehead. A ticking of grandfather clock suddenly piercing through unexpected silence. A drop of dew on a straw of grass, refracting sunlight into a spark of rainbow. Give a couple of details like that, and the scene becomes much more vivid, detailed and rich than most convoluted notation of nuances could make it.

ps. Shell out a couple dollars, visit Deviantart and find a couple amateur artists accepting cheap commissions. Order pictures that follow exactly textual descriptions you provide, and then boggle at how wrong - how totally not how you imagined it they are. It came to me as a shock to realize how different people can imagine the same, very detailed description entirely differently - and still true to the description!

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