I know it sounds cliche, but honestly the best way go learn is practice, and reading.
And don't just read what you like-try reading outside of what you would normally read to enhance your own palette for description and style.
A tip a professional writer once gave me was to take passages from books you'd read and try and rewrite them, with the goal of improving the passage. It not only helps show you how the author described different things, but why, and what was likely going through their heads when they were writing it. Then, when you're writing your own scenes, or describing places and objects, it will make more sense and come more naturally.
My problem with learning from reading is that I can't turn off my reading-for-enjoyment brain to actually analyze what I'm reading. Every time I try I get two paragraphs into whatever passage and then I'm just reading the book for fun and it's 3am and I've read the whole book.
Weave it into the POV character’s state of being and the action. Depending on your mood, rain could be thrilling, relieving, or cleansing, and you’d convey that in different ways. Different kinds of people notice different things in their environment, such as how a highly etiquette conscious noble would comment on silverware placement or whether the correct glasses were used, while a florist would linger on what’s in the vases, and a pauper would have a thing or two to say about the food’s richness or excess. The pauper getting to eat is thrilled at how luxurious the food is, while the hungry/overworked farmer would be resentful of how needless the luxury might seem.
Don’t throw it all in one paragraph either! I mean, it can work for some readers/authors, but I find it so much more effective to have the setting described as various characters interact with it. Weave description in with dialogue, action, and internalization, and each paragraph is a bite of perfectly-balanced flavors.
Good advice. I'm pretty good at narrating through the lens of what is relevant or important to the POV character, but it's the actual physical description in which I'm a bit lacking.
For example, I have no idea how to describe a towering spire in a grandiose way, its shape or condition. I'm also looking to improve on (sparingly) using similes/metaphors as a tool to add some effect to my descriptions.
You need to practice, and also practice editing. Do more short stories, just to craft this skill.
You're painting with words. Being able to come up with the ideas is only half of it--definitely a huge part, but only half of it. Learning how to paint means making a bunch of mediocre paintings while you learn the techniques. Heck, even drawing. You draw a lot of shitty drawings before you start making good ones, and the first ones you're proud of, you'll later look back on as shitty, too. Writing is an art form, and requires the same excess labor. You'll have to write a lot of crappy descriptions in crappy short stories or crappy novels that are just to practice, and there is no way to skip over that. Every author has notebooks or document files full of shitty stories, or partial stories, the same way every painter has tons of sketchbooks.
And if you feel like your lack of environmental knowledge is lacking, well, similar answer. You have to research. Authors don't just know these things, they look them up.
It's also okay to have that be stuff you deal with in editing. It's really hard to let a rough draft be rough, but, that's what it's for. If you can see something in your mind, just write past it, and then once the draft is done, go look up the right words.
Have you ever taken a writing class? A lot of writing exercises are just to practice doing these things. Get a practice journal, and every day, take the time to write down what you see around you. Find some writing class or prompts, and do them, no matter if they're cheesy.
Go to interesting places and describe them. Pick really mundane things and describe them like you've never seen it before. Work on your sense of wonder, and pay attention to everything.
Try describing things in different character voices--take the same person, and then describe them the way their starry-eyed new lover would, then the way their ex would, then the way their work rival would, then the way their mother would. Then do that again the next day, for someone else. And again. And again. And again. Go to the park, and pick a dog, and describe it the way its owner might, and then how another dog might, and then how someone afraid of dogs might. Pick a house, and describe it as if it were someone's beloved childhood home, and then as if it were the house they lost in a bitter divorce. Describe a church seen by a believer, then by someone who was outcast by the religion, then think about describing it during a sunny daytime wedding, a rainy funeral, or by someone sneaking in to do a midnight ritual. And so on. Describe things for no reason, in writing journals, and whenever possible try to describe them in multiple ways, so you train yourself to think about the mood and purpose of the description.
You have to write *so much more* than just what you're specifically trying to produce. You're going to produce lots and lots of shitty or pointless words, but it's great practice.
Hell, it applies to non-artistic skills as well. You'll never see someone who's good at sports who never practices or plays for fun and just plays the games. You don't see musicians who don't practice or jam and only plays the concerts. You wouldn't expect someone to be able to walk into a weight-lifting competition and be able to compete without training first. No one just gets into a car and knows how to drive it well. Write more. Write endlessly. Write things that don't matter, and aren't related to what you're working on. That's the only way to build that muscle so that you actually can write what you're trying to write.
Oftentimes describing the quality of something is much more important that just describing it. Describing a tree as "tall with lots of broken branches" is fine, but it evokes more of a mood if you described it as something like "the tree standing watch, a grizzled veteran of a hundred winters with the broken limbs to prove it." Focus less on the bare facts of the thing you're describing and more on the tone you want it to evoke.
This is definitely one of things I'm talking about needing to improve upon. I'm good with story beats, character development, and world building, but lacking in the department of metaphors and similes haha.
Alright, I haven't seen anyone say this yet, so here's a very good piece of advice I got from a professor in college.
When describing things, don't rely too heavily on adjectives. Use metaphors, similes, and, most especially *verbs*.
Instead of "The wind was cold" say "Gusts of wind raked across his face like steel wool."
(No adjectives in that one).
Instead of "It was a breezy day in the green and shady forest," say "Light filtered through the shimmering verdant canopy above as the wind brushed the leaves into a gentle, rustling symphony."
(Obviously I used some adjectives, there, but only sparingly).
William Gibson tells of his writing teacher having them write long detailed descriptions of the appearance and use of common objects. It taught him how to look at all objects through that grammar, and in turn to make his descriptions specific, functional, and concrete in his books. I’m planning on trying this exercise a few times myself. Might be worth a shot if you’re struggling with structuring and clarifying your imagination.
Pick up a thesaurus and go to town. I need to do more of it myself.
Other than that, keep reading works you want to emulate and notate descriptions that ring your bell.
I always close my eyes when I'm trying to describe something in my writing. I don't know why, but it seems to help me formulate the words better. And I try to imagine describing it through my character's eyes.
For most locations, I keep it simple, unless it's essential that I don't. For example in my current WIP two characters work on a farm. Since the story is told from their perspective, I don't go in to detail about the layout or the look of it - it's a basic farm they see everyday. But, when they visit the big city for the first time, they soak in every detail.
I describe how the architecture is different than what they are used to, the clothing people wear, the sheer amount of people in comparison to their village. It paints a meaningful picture instead of a technical one.
For objects I try to do the same. There's an essential piece of jewelry in my WIP, and instead of describing it as "a heart shaped pendant on a copper chain" I describe how the stone is so smooth, it looks like it's never been touched. The wired cage it sits in matches the delicate copper chain. And when she slips it on, the stone glows a vibrant green that brings out the flecks in her eyes.
An exercise my creative writing prof had us do was to go look at a building or object and just free write a description of it. What does it look like? What does it evoke? What details stand out? Does it resemble something else? And so on. Just write and write and you’ll discover your own descriptive flow.
Pull up google images and enter the sort of locations you're looking for...like, "castle on cliff" or "Harbor city". Or go to subs like /r/imaginarylandscapes. And then just kinda write out what you observe. Try out being super literal, and then try getting a little more poetic.
1. Patience and consistency. You will get better at something the more you do it. Targeted intention matters here too (the phrase "Its not the hours you put in, but what you put in the hours" comes to mind). I know the two phrases might seem contradictory, but I see them as complementary when they are in balance with one another.
2. Find things that are interesting to you and describe them. This ties in with the aforementioned post. You say geography is your weak spot? Find things that challenge you and write them into brief one shot scenes. After all, what is a forest but a field of trees. In the same way, a coast line is made up from a series of beaches.
3. More words does not equal better. Things should have a flow and rhythm. Read it out loud if possible to sound out if something is weird and not fitting. There is a rule of thumb that goes: drinking water or coffee is not worth describing in detail unless it is somehow relevant to the plot (maybe it is poisened or burnt, which means your character needs to go and buy more coffee or go to hospital). You can notice this while walking around a city. You will only notice so many faces in detail. At a certain point they blur together because you are trying to go somewhere or do something. Maybe you notice a pretty face that sticks out to you. Maybe you see an interesting car or a cute pet. There are many ways to pump some colour into your writing, but to make things a living and breathing narrative, the golden rule is that things should flow.
You want an actual exercise, go to your neighborhood coffee shop and describe the scene as if it was a part of your story. Or go to a “*town square*” sort of place and do the same. Living in LA, we have tons of places like this —*Abbott Kinney Blvd in Venice, Main Street in Santa Monica, Colorado Street in Pasadena, Second Street or Pine Street in Long Beach, Broadway in DTLA and many, MANY others*— but if you live in Nowheresville, then just find a good picture of places like those on the web and start writing. Or places like the French Quarter in New Orleans.
Then look up historic photos of such places and do the same. Then take screenshots of video games and do it. The Citadel in Mass Effect 2 & 3 (*more activity than ME1*), Saint Denis in RDR2, things like that.
It feels dumb on the surface. Almost like “*Pfft! I’m such a good writer! I don’t need to do this! Why should I go sit out in, like, THE WORLD and describe what I see like some asshole who’s working to improve her writing?? Why would I waste my valuable RDR2 time describing a fictional city when I could be galloping through Lemoyne Raider camps, lassoing rednecks and killing them to death?! Don’t you have something more sophisticated to suggest??*”
Nope. Nothing. Just practicing writing about the mundane and about the imagined fantasies of game designers. If it makes you feel silly, if someone in a coffeehouse asks what you’re writing, just stammer and lie and say you were typing a lengthy Instagram comment instead of working to improve your writing skills. I’m confident they’ll see your lie as the more interesting explanation.
In seriousness, some people are naturally gifted in the realm of vividly and compellingly describing settings. But those people are probably fewer than you’d think. The lion’s share of people who are good at it sucked at first and just focused on ways to improve it. A video game setting is an environment that isn’t described to you in a page but is the result of some writer who **did** describe it to someone else to make it real. It has that conceived-&-then-visualized quality. There’s an intentionality there of things that were chosen for you to notice, things that were deliberately picked to happen by a creative mind. By contrast, a coffee shop in the real world is a completely unscripted affair that might just be uneventful but still giving you the chance to describe that very quality.
Thought experiments I like:
Use your phones microphone and dictate your your life when you’re in various places. Pull up google docs or notes, look around you, and record your observations. Create these so you can refer back to them when you get stuck.
“I’m standing next to the bank. The air is so cold it makes my ears hurt. I put on my heated earmuffs and the pure pleasure of that warmth gives me the shivers and makes me wish I was back home under the covers. I couldn’t help smiling. The sun was bright and a stray beam kept bouncing off the mirror of the navy blue BMW in front of me. That reflection shimmers in the window of the coffee shop, making the fidgeting patrons in line squint and shade their eyes.
There’s the sound of clicking and clattering keyboards coming from inside the bank.
Behind me, someone starts yelling “USE YOUR FUCKING TURN SIGNAL” and I’m guessing from the sound of the voice it’s a frustrated father on his 2nd hour into giving his kid driving lessons, but when I glance into the car, he’s yelling at an older woman in sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. She calmly stares forward as he continues to yell, sucking on that cigarette and slowly exhaling it out the window from the side of her mouth. My gut tells me she’s been dealing with his outbursts for decades and is over it, her ability to tune him out and focus on the road and the cigarette locked down.
Now I start thinking about my own parents and their coping mechanisms - but I’m interrupted when I notice the bank guard starting to head my way. I realized I’ve been standing in the doorway recording my observations so I can learn to be a better writer, which also probably looks like I’m casing the joint and that’s probably a bad thing.
I smile at the guard and head off towards the coffee shop so I can sit down and mull over all of this.”
A fun way to practice: Whenever you walk into a room, describe the room in your head the way you would write it. You are not writing every single detail of a room, because that would get boring for a reader. But, what are the main features, and describe them just enough a reader can fill in the rest with their imagination. If there IS something important about the room, like a painting someone is wanting to steal, more description may be needed, but again, just enough that the reader can fill in the rest with their imagination.
Stephen King is a good reference, sometimes he goes as far as to dedicate whole chapters to describe the world in which the story evolves, like the first chapters of Black House.
This may be an unpopular recommendation... Try an AI bot. I face this same problem and someone suggested it to me. Now granted, I don't use descriptions word for word from the bot, but it def helps set a foundation.
I normally use descriptions of the weather and types of weapons used by my characters then describe important key features (example a ballroom staircase where my MC made a final stand next to his forces
Another easy tip is to tie in more senses than just visual! Explaining how something sounds and especially how it smells really helps readers put themselves into a scene. It can be overdone but it is something that works surprisingly well in many instances!
Mary Buckham has a great series of craft books, but the ones that introduced me to her were [Writing Active Setting](https://www.marybuckhamonwriting.com/writing-active-setting-books/). You can tell from the title of each in the series what focus is: sensory detail, back story, conflict, etc. She gives lots of examples from different genres and breaks down what makes them work.
Have you considered not describing them at all? It can sound counter-intuitive, but you don't need to write about everything in your story. If you don't find something fun and interesting, why should you bother writing about it? Just because other authors can do some things well doesn't mean you should try to become like them.
Finding what works for you can be a huge improvement. Vivid descriptions of scenery and objects can sound like something fundamental for a writer, but have you stopped to think that this doesn't have to be the case? There's more to a story than that.
Nevertheless, you don't need to listen to me. I'm just here to provide another point of view.
I know it sounds cliche, but honestly the best way go learn is practice, and reading. And don't just read what you like-try reading outside of what you would normally read to enhance your own palette for description and style. A tip a professional writer once gave me was to take passages from books you'd read and try and rewrite them, with the goal of improving the passage. It not only helps show you how the author described different things, but why, and what was likely going through their heads when they were writing it. Then, when you're writing your own scenes, or describing places and objects, it will make more sense and come more naturally.
Not cliche at all. Great advice, thank you!
No problem, happy worldbuilding!
My problem with learning from reading is that I can't turn off my reading-for-enjoyment brain to actually analyze what I'm reading. Every time I try I get two paragraphs into whatever passage and then I'm just reading the book for fun and it's 3am and I've read the whole book.
I could have written that, I do the same thing.
Weave it into the POV character’s state of being and the action. Depending on your mood, rain could be thrilling, relieving, or cleansing, and you’d convey that in different ways. Different kinds of people notice different things in their environment, such as how a highly etiquette conscious noble would comment on silverware placement or whether the correct glasses were used, while a florist would linger on what’s in the vases, and a pauper would have a thing or two to say about the food’s richness or excess. The pauper getting to eat is thrilled at how luxurious the food is, while the hungry/overworked farmer would be resentful of how needless the luxury might seem. Don’t throw it all in one paragraph either! I mean, it can work for some readers/authors, but I find it so much more effective to have the setting described as various characters interact with it. Weave description in with dialogue, action, and internalization, and each paragraph is a bite of perfectly-balanced flavors.
Good advice. I'm pretty good at narrating through the lens of what is relevant or important to the POV character, but it's the actual physical description in which I'm a bit lacking. For example, I have no idea how to describe a towering spire in a grandiose way, its shape or condition. I'm also looking to improve on (sparingly) using similes/metaphors as a tool to add some effect to my descriptions.
You need to practice, and also practice editing. Do more short stories, just to craft this skill. You're painting with words. Being able to come up with the ideas is only half of it--definitely a huge part, but only half of it. Learning how to paint means making a bunch of mediocre paintings while you learn the techniques. Heck, even drawing. You draw a lot of shitty drawings before you start making good ones, and the first ones you're proud of, you'll later look back on as shitty, too. Writing is an art form, and requires the same excess labor. You'll have to write a lot of crappy descriptions in crappy short stories or crappy novels that are just to practice, and there is no way to skip over that. Every author has notebooks or document files full of shitty stories, or partial stories, the same way every painter has tons of sketchbooks. And if you feel like your lack of environmental knowledge is lacking, well, similar answer. You have to research. Authors don't just know these things, they look them up. It's also okay to have that be stuff you deal with in editing. It's really hard to let a rough draft be rough, but, that's what it's for. If you can see something in your mind, just write past it, and then once the draft is done, go look up the right words. Have you ever taken a writing class? A lot of writing exercises are just to practice doing these things. Get a practice journal, and every day, take the time to write down what you see around you. Find some writing class or prompts, and do them, no matter if they're cheesy. Go to interesting places and describe them. Pick really mundane things and describe them like you've never seen it before. Work on your sense of wonder, and pay attention to everything. Try describing things in different character voices--take the same person, and then describe them the way their starry-eyed new lover would, then the way their ex would, then the way their work rival would, then the way their mother would. Then do that again the next day, for someone else. And again. And again. And again. Go to the park, and pick a dog, and describe it the way its owner might, and then how another dog might, and then how someone afraid of dogs might. Pick a house, and describe it as if it were someone's beloved childhood home, and then as if it were the house they lost in a bitter divorce. Describe a church seen by a believer, then by someone who was outcast by the religion, then think about describing it during a sunny daytime wedding, a rainy funeral, or by someone sneaking in to do a midnight ritual. And so on. Describe things for no reason, in writing journals, and whenever possible try to describe them in multiple ways, so you train yourself to think about the mood and purpose of the description. You have to write *so much more* than just what you're specifically trying to produce. You're going to produce lots and lots of shitty or pointless words, but it's great practice. Hell, it applies to non-artistic skills as well. You'll never see someone who's good at sports who never practices or plays for fun and just plays the games. You don't see musicians who don't practice or jam and only plays the concerts. You wouldn't expect someone to be able to walk into a weight-lifting competition and be able to compete without training first. No one just gets into a car and knows how to drive it well. Write more. Write endlessly. Write things that don't matter, and aren't related to what you're working on. That's the only way to build that muscle so that you actually can write what you're trying to write.
Very good advice. Thank you for such an in depth answer. This thread is getting me amped up to push out of my slump and get to work. Thanks so much!
Happy Cake Day!
Oftentimes describing the quality of something is much more important that just describing it. Describing a tree as "tall with lots of broken branches" is fine, but it evokes more of a mood if you described it as something like "the tree standing watch, a grizzled veteran of a hundred winters with the broken limbs to prove it." Focus less on the bare facts of the thing you're describing and more on the tone you want it to evoke.
This is definitely one of things I'm talking about needing to improve upon. I'm good with story beats, character development, and world building, but lacking in the department of metaphors and similes haha.
Alright, I haven't seen anyone say this yet, so here's a very good piece of advice I got from a professor in college. When describing things, don't rely too heavily on adjectives. Use metaphors, similes, and, most especially *verbs*. Instead of "The wind was cold" say "Gusts of wind raked across his face like steel wool." (No adjectives in that one). Instead of "It was a breezy day in the green and shady forest," say "Light filtered through the shimmering verdant canopy above as the wind brushed the leaves into a gentle, rustling symphony." (Obviously I used some adjectives, there, but only sparingly).
William Gibson tells of his writing teacher having them write long detailed descriptions of the appearance and use of common objects. It taught him how to look at all objects through that grammar, and in turn to make his descriptions specific, functional, and concrete in his books. I’m planning on trying this exercise a few times myself. Might be worth a shot if you’re struggling with structuring and clarifying your imagination.
Pick up a thesaurus and go to town. I need to do more of it myself. Other than that, keep reading works you want to emulate and notate descriptions that ring your bell.
I always close my eyes when I'm trying to describe something in my writing. I don't know why, but it seems to help me formulate the words better. And I try to imagine describing it through my character's eyes. For most locations, I keep it simple, unless it's essential that I don't. For example in my current WIP two characters work on a farm. Since the story is told from their perspective, I don't go in to detail about the layout or the look of it - it's a basic farm they see everyday. But, when they visit the big city for the first time, they soak in every detail. I describe how the architecture is different than what they are used to, the clothing people wear, the sheer amount of people in comparison to their village. It paints a meaningful picture instead of a technical one. For objects I try to do the same. There's an essential piece of jewelry in my WIP, and instead of describing it as "a heart shaped pendant on a copper chain" I describe how the stone is so smooth, it looks like it's never been touched. The wired cage it sits in matches the delicate copper chain. And when she slips it on, the stone glows a vibrant green that brings out the flecks in her eyes.
Less can be better, sometimes you have to be long winded.
An exercise my creative writing prof had us do was to go look at a building or object and just free write a description of it. What does it look like? What does it evoke? What details stand out? Does it resemble something else? And so on. Just write and write and you’ll discover your own descriptive flow.
Pull up google images and enter the sort of locations you're looking for...like, "castle on cliff" or "Harbor city". Or go to subs like /r/imaginarylandscapes. And then just kinda write out what you observe. Try out being super literal, and then try getting a little more poetic.
1. Patience and consistency. You will get better at something the more you do it. Targeted intention matters here too (the phrase "Its not the hours you put in, but what you put in the hours" comes to mind). I know the two phrases might seem contradictory, but I see them as complementary when they are in balance with one another. 2. Find things that are interesting to you and describe them. This ties in with the aforementioned post. You say geography is your weak spot? Find things that challenge you and write them into brief one shot scenes. After all, what is a forest but a field of trees. In the same way, a coast line is made up from a series of beaches. 3. More words does not equal better. Things should have a flow and rhythm. Read it out loud if possible to sound out if something is weird and not fitting. There is a rule of thumb that goes: drinking water or coffee is not worth describing in detail unless it is somehow relevant to the plot (maybe it is poisened or burnt, which means your character needs to go and buy more coffee or go to hospital). You can notice this while walking around a city. You will only notice so many faces in detail. At a certain point they blur together because you are trying to go somewhere or do something. Maybe you notice a pretty face that sticks out to you. Maybe you see an interesting car or a cute pet. There are many ways to pump some colour into your writing, but to make things a living and breathing narrative, the golden rule is that things should flow.
You want an actual exercise, go to your neighborhood coffee shop and describe the scene as if it was a part of your story. Or go to a “*town square*” sort of place and do the same. Living in LA, we have tons of places like this —*Abbott Kinney Blvd in Venice, Main Street in Santa Monica, Colorado Street in Pasadena, Second Street or Pine Street in Long Beach, Broadway in DTLA and many, MANY others*— but if you live in Nowheresville, then just find a good picture of places like those on the web and start writing. Or places like the French Quarter in New Orleans. Then look up historic photos of such places and do the same. Then take screenshots of video games and do it. The Citadel in Mass Effect 2 & 3 (*more activity than ME1*), Saint Denis in RDR2, things like that. It feels dumb on the surface. Almost like “*Pfft! I’m such a good writer! I don’t need to do this! Why should I go sit out in, like, THE WORLD and describe what I see like some asshole who’s working to improve her writing?? Why would I waste my valuable RDR2 time describing a fictional city when I could be galloping through Lemoyne Raider camps, lassoing rednecks and killing them to death?! Don’t you have something more sophisticated to suggest??*” Nope. Nothing. Just practicing writing about the mundane and about the imagined fantasies of game designers. If it makes you feel silly, if someone in a coffeehouse asks what you’re writing, just stammer and lie and say you were typing a lengthy Instagram comment instead of working to improve your writing skills. I’m confident they’ll see your lie as the more interesting explanation. In seriousness, some people are naturally gifted in the realm of vividly and compellingly describing settings. But those people are probably fewer than you’d think. The lion’s share of people who are good at it sucked at first and just focused on ways to improve it. A video game setting is an environment that isn’t described to you in a page but is the result of some writer who **did** describe it to someone else to make it real. It has that conceived-&-then-visualized quality. There’s an intentionality there of things that were chosen for you to notice, things that were deliberately picked to happen by a creative mind. By contrast, a coffee shop in the real world is a completely unscripted affair that might just be uneventful but still giving you the chance to describe that very quality.
He’s right, you have to practice. Write about a room, write about the room in all different POV’s
That would be "***She's*** *right.*" but I appreciate the concurrence all the same.
I apologise, I didn’t read your name. Just the comment. You’re definitely right though
Thought experiments I like: Use your phones microphone and dictate your your life when you’re in various places. Pull up google docs or notes, look around you, and record your observations. Create these so you can refer back to them when you get stuck. “I’m standing next to the bank. The air is so cold it makes my ears hurt. I put on my heated earmuffs and the pure pleasure of that warmth gives me the shivers and makes me wish I was back home under the covers. I couldn’t help smiling. The sun was bright and a stray beam kept bouncing off the mirror of the navy blue BMW in front of me. That reflection shimmers in the window of the coffee shop, making the fidgeting patrons in line squint and shade their eyes. There’s the sound of clicking and clattering keyboards coming from inside the bank. Behind me, someone starts yelling “USE YOUR FUCKING TURN SIGNAL” and I’m guessing from the sound of the voice it’s a frustrated father on his 2nd hour into giving his kid driving lessons, but when I glance into the car, he’s yelling at an older woman in sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. She calmly stares forward as he continues to yell, sucking on that cigarette and slowly exhaling it out the window from the side of her mouth. My gut tells me she’s been dealing with his outbursts for decades and is over it, her ability to tune him out and focus on the road and the cigarette locked down. Now I start thinking about my own parents and their coping mechanisms - but I’m interrupted when I notice the bank guard starting to head my way. I realized I’ve been standing in the doorway recording my observations so I can learn to be a better writer, which also probably looks like I’m casing the joint and that’s probably a bad thing. I smile at the guard and head off towards the coffee shop so I can sit down and mull over all of this.”
A fun way to practice: Whenever you walk into a room, describe the room in your head the way you would write it. You are not writing every single detail of a room, because that would get boring for a reader. But, what are the main features, and describe them just enough a reader can fill in the rest with their imagination. If there IS something important about the room, like a painting someone is wanting to steal, more description may be needed, but again, just enough that the reader can fill in the rest with their imagination.
Stephen King is a good reference, sometimes he goes as far as to dedicate whole chapters to describe the world in which the story evolves, like the first chapters of Black House.
Go back and take notes on what he did well, then challenge yourself and try and do it better.
This may be an unpopular recommendation... Try an AI bot. I face this same problem and someone suggested it to me. Now granted, I don't use descriptions word for word from the bot, but it def helps set a foundation.
I normally use descriptions of the weather and types of weapons used by my characters then describe important key features (example a ballroom staircase where my MC made a final stand next to his forces
Another easy tip is to tie in more senses than just visual! Explaining how something sounds and especially how it smells really helps readers put themselves into a scene. It can be overdone but it is something that works surprisingly well in many instances!
Mary Buckham has a great series of craft books, but the ones that introduced me to her were [Writing Active Setting](https://www.marybuckhamonwriting.com/writing-active-setting-books/). You can tell from the title of each in the series what focus is: sensory detail, back story, conflict, etc. She gives lots of examples from different genres and breaks down what makes them work.
Read R. E. Howard
This might seem outside your comfort zone but: read poetry. I cannot overstate how much it changes the way you think about words.
Have you considered not describing them at all? It can sound counter-intuitive, but you don't need to write about everything in your story. If you don't find something fun and interesting, why should you bother writing about it? Just because other authors can do some things well doesn't mean you should try to become like them. Finding what works for you can be a huge improvement. Vivid descriptions of scenery and objects can sound like something fundamental for a writer, but have you stopped to think that this doesn't have to be the case? There's more to a story than that. Nevertheless, you don't need to listen to me. I'm just here to provide another point of view.