+Theme LV.+—Write a descriptive paragraph, using one of the following subjects:—
1. A mountain view. 2. An omnibus. 3. A fort. 4. A lighthouse. 5. A Dutch windmill. 6. A bend in the river. 7. A peculiar structure. 8. The picture on this page.
(Underscore the sentence that pictures the details most essential to the description. Consider the unity of your paragraph. Section 81.)
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+128. Selection and Subordination of Minor Details.+—In many descriptions the minor details are wholly omitted, and in all descriptions many that might have been included have been omitted. A proper number of such details adds interest and clearness to the images; too many but serve to render the whole obscure. If properly selected and effectively presented, minor details add much to the beauty or usefulness of a description, but if strung together in short sentences, the effect may be both tiresome and confusing. A mere catalogue of facts is not a good description. They must be arranged so that those which are the more important shall have the greater prominence, while those of less importance shall be properly subordinated.
Often minor details may be stated in a word or phrase inserted in the sentence which gives the general view. Notice the italicized portion of the following: "Opposite the church, and partly screened by the scraggly evergreens of a broad, unkempt lawn, there is a large, octagonal, brick house, with a conservatory on the left." This arrangement adds to the general view and gives a better result than would be obtained by describing the lawn in a separate sentence. Often a single adjective adds some element to a description more effectively than can be done with a whole sentence. Notice how much is added by the use of scraggly and unkempt.
EXERCISES
Make a careful study of the following selections with reference to the way in which the minor details are presented. Can any of them be improved by re-arranging them?
1. At night, as I look from my windows over Kassim Pasha, I never tire of that dull, soft coloring, green and brown, in which the brown of roofs and walls is hardly more than a shading of the green of the trees. There is the lonely curve of the hollow, with its small, square, flat houses of wood; and above, a sharp line of blue-black cypresses on the spine of the hill; then the long desert plain, with its sandy road, shutting in the horizon. Mists thicken over the valley, and wipe out its colors before the lights begin to glimmer out of it. Below, under my windows, are the cypresses of the Little Field of the Dead, vast, motionless, different every night. Last night each stood clear, tall, apart; to-night they huddle together in the mist, and seem to shudder. The sunset was brief, and the water has grown dull, like slate. Stamboul fades to a level mass of smoky purple, out of which a few minarets rise black against a gray sky with bands of orange fire. Last night, after a golden sunset, a fog of rusty iron came down, and hung poised over the jagged level of the hill. The whole mass of Stamboul was like black smoke; the water dim gray, a little flushed, and then like pure light, lucid, transparent, every ship and every boat sharply outlined in black on its surface; the boats seemed to crawl like flies on a lighted pane.
—Arthur Symons: Constantinople: An Impression ("Harper's").