On the use of descriptive prose for non-human entities

[W_L]

I was reading my comments for my recent horror story A Queer Encounter, and I noticed @Talo Segura brought up an interesting point as a reader.

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I found it a little difficult to follow. Why? Because as one editor once said to me: "I'm trying to find the word to tell you that there is such a thing as using too many descriptive phrases or too much description."

This was a good, if sad, story, yet buried in an abundance of flowery prose, the kind of narrative that draws one too many comparatives. It was as if he had dropped a line into still water and felt it hit something with a different density than fish.

 

I don't disagree with the critique that the story is very descriptive, more than my other horror stories in the past. However, I've noted this is by design for the subgenre I am writing in. In my reply: I pointed out the subgenre is supposed to be written this way:

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When writing Eldritch and ancient horror beings, it's very hard not to use descriptive language. Take a look at the classic H.P. Lovecraft stories, like "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and "The Call of Cthulhu". GA doesn't split the subgenres or add tags for this variant of horror, but folks familiar with the subgenre know this is normal. 

As I understand from fellow Lovecraftian genre authors, Eldritch-beings aren't human and as such their perspectives aren't in-line with human concepts. Metaphors, descriptions, and visual comparison are commonly used to elaborate approximate concepts and meanings for them (It's also considered a human approximation of the cosmic horror intelligence we can barely scratch. It makes the reader confused and feel scared due to the unknown).

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However, this does open up the question for the voice of non-human entities. How should we evaluate non-human perspectives if we attempt to write them in our stories as an alien construct? 

It's a big can of worms that I can answer only with my perspective, and feel like other authors should weigh in.

It maybe niche creatures like Eldritch, common alien lifeforms, mythical monsters, or, even in a human perspective, psychologically divergent in real life for modern fiction. 

Edited November 2, 2025 by W_L

[Mike Carss]

I'm a big believer in being true to oneself in all ways of life, and that includes creative endeavours. When it comes to any form of art, you're never going to please everyone. It's best to please yourself first (I know, phrasing 😅) because the best art is created when you're passionate about it.

In the case of "A Queer Encounter", you state that the writing style is by design.  While any creative should appreciate constructive criticism, it's up to you whether to accept it or not. Are the examples provided by Talo clunky to read? Yeah, kinda, but not because of the description itself. I think there's too many glue words, which in my opinion, make it difficult to parse.

For example, your original phrase:
It was as if he had dropped a line into still water and felt it hit something with a different density than fish.

A simplified alternative:
It was as though a line in still water met resistance different from any fish.

Talo also mentioned flowery prose. Some readers will enjoy that, others not. Again, you can't please everyone. If it pleases you, then really, that's all that matters. 😊

[Ron]

I have also been subjected to that barb of using flowery language. In a story I wrote for a 2014 anthology (David) told in first person, a forty-year-old man's telling the story from his point of view. The language he uses in the telling of his story is a bit flowery, I suppose, and it is different from his action and dialogue. That could have been me... Perhaps I was channeling myself because I do happen to think in a bit of a flowery manner although I don't behave like a person from a bygone era nor do I speak that way in real life. 

So, I do think that writing one's story is best done in a way that is pleasing to oneself. With the hope that others will like the story too.

[Krista]

Flowery prose can give some seasoning/flavor to the scene you wish to depict. Some people will like it, some people will be distracted by it. I personally think it becomes a problem when the subject is lost in it. It shouldn't ever overwhelm the writing and the point be lost because you wished to add weight and words to that section of writing with a lot of prose. It is the same with large portions of retrospection. If you live too long in that, then readers may forget what part of the plot was pushing the writing and they have to go back, or rethink or settle back onto it. People will tire from that, it becomes a "commercial" from the "show." Neither retrospection or prose should do that. 

Don't let things you 'like' become too much of a distraction. It should feel like a tiny break, not a continued series of speedbumps that you hit every other paragraph. Sometimes simple is best, especially if you're writing anything with action in it. Or anything that is important and will remain important throughout the story. Don't cover up that information, because if it is bogged down and lost, then you've lost your readers.  With action prose gets in the way.

I always think on the example of an army about to charge the battlefield, and then the general becoming distracted by a lone red rose. The thundering of hooves are coming at him, but he describes the rose, the dew drops on the outer petals, the way the older to open petals have lost their deep red, curling to brown along their edges.. etc. 

I am not offended by good flowery prose. I like it. But like I said, it needs to be done in its place. Too much of something can detract or become a distraction. 

Edited November 4, 2025 by Krista

[Gary L]

On 11/4/2025 at 3:04 AM, Krista said:

Flowery prose can give some seasoning/flavor to the scene you wish to depict. Some people will like it, some people will be distracted by it. I personally think it becomes a problem when the subject is lost in it. It shouldn't ever overwhelm the writing and the point be lost because you wished to add weight and words to that section of writing with a lot of prose. It is the same with large portions of retrospection. If you live too long in that, then readers may forget what part of the plot was pushing the writing and they have to go back, or rethink or settle back onto it. People will tire from that, it becomes a "commercial" from the "show." Neither retrospection or prose should do that. 

Don't let things you 'like' become too much of a distraction. It should feel like a tiny break, not a continued series of speedbumps that you hit every other paragraph. Sometimes simple is best, especially if you're writing anything with action in it. Or anything that is important and will remain important throughout the story. Don't cover up that information, because if it is bogged down and lost, then you've lost your readers.  With action prose gets in the way.

I always think on the example of an army about to charge the battlefield, and then the general becoming distracted by a lone red rose. The thundering of hooves are coming at him, but he describes the rose, the dew drops on the outer petals, the way the older to open petals have lost their deep red, curling to brown along their edges.. etc. 

I am not offended by good flowery prose. I like it. But like I said, it needs to be done in its place. Too much of something can detract or become a distraction. 

I loved this analysis by @Krista. I am reminded of the comment of my supervisor in Oxford on my chapter draft, which had taken three months to write, "Well, after page 19 it becomes okay." IE throw 19 pages in the bin!  I was furious but gradually realised he was corect.  I loved those 19 pages, I had discovered new evidence about sources etc. But it was utterly irelevant to the objectives of the thesis.  My error on a grand scale, but it applies to any type of writing. Clarity of direction is everything. 

Finally, if we look at music - I'm listening to a sensory overwhelming Wagner opera as I write. I'm in paradise. Others might well loath it and prefer a piano sonata. De gustibus.....

A great conversation, thank you all.

[Jason Rimbaud]

An old high school teacher told me once, flowery prose should be kept within dialogue, let the characters show their flare and keep the narrative prose simple. 
I don’t use flowery prose, I’m not educated enough, I just swear a lot and describe undies,.

I do know I don’t enjoy reading it unless it’s subtle and on the edges. But I think that’s because people who write in flowery prose seldom swear and donot discuss undies.  

[Gary L]

19 minutes ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

An old high school teacher told me once, flowery prose should be kept within dialogue, let the characters show their flare and keep the narrative prose simple. 
I don’t use flowery prose, I’m not educated enough, I just swear a lot and describe undies,.

I do know I don’t enjoy reading it unless it’s subtle and on the edges. But I think that’s because people who write in flowery prose seldom swear and donot discuss undies.  

Love you! 😍 

[Inkognito]

On 11/2/2025 at 9:43 AM, W_L said:

I was reading my comments for my recent horror story A Queer Encounter, and I noticed @Talo Segura brought up an interesting point as a reader.

I don't disagree with the critique that the story is very descriptive, more than my other horror stories in the past. However, I've noted this is by design for the subgenre I am writing in. In my reply: I pointed out the subgenre is supposed to be written this way:

As I understand from fellow Lovecraftian genre authors, Eldritch-beings aren't human and as such their perspectives aren't in-line with human concepts. Metaphors, descriptions, and visual comparison are commonly used to elaborate approximate concepts and meanings for them (It's also considered a human approximation of the cosmic horror intelligence we can barely scratch. It makes the reader confused and feel scared due to the unknown).

--------------

However, this does open up the question for the voice of non-human entities. How should we evaluate non-human perspectives if we attempt to write them in our stories as an alien construct? 

It's a big can of worms that I can answer only with my perspective, and feel like other authors should weigh in.

It maybe niche creatures like Eldritch, common alien lifeforms, mythical monsters, or, even in a human perspective, psychologically divergent in real life for modern fiction. 

I don’t write in the cosmic horror genre, so I won’t pretend to be an authority on eldritch prose or alien consciousness. But I do think authors should write non-human character voices in whatever way best fits how they want to portray them.

Writing, like any form of communication, is filtered through individual perspective, making misinterpretation not only possible but inevitable. Some readers will misunderstand, feel confused, or just not like what they’ve read.

And some will simply be lost because they’ve wandered into a genre they're unfamiliar with, expecting a traditional narrative and finding something else entirely.

But that’s a them problem.

Not a you problem.

If the way you’re expressing those voices feels true to the genre or to what you want to convey, then keep doing it. There’s no single, universal “human point of view,” so there’s no single correct way to express a non-human one either.

And as someone who writes mostly comedy, I’ll add that I see a parallel in humor. Everyone likes to laugh, but not everyone laughs at the same thing. I know my work is funny, but I also know each story lands differently for every reader. That’s not failure; that’s the creative exchange between writer and audience.

[Jeff Burton]

Flowery prose sounds like something I’m about to have to google. Like @Jason Rimbaud I’m an idiot, bet you couldn’t tell by the way I write but it’s true. If I lied I could tell you I at least have a high school education, and definitely didn’t go to college, so yeah after I submit this I’m going to some googling.

Anyway where was I going with this…OH!

On 11/2/2025 at 8:43 AM, W_L said:

However, this does open up the question for the voice of non-human entities. How should we evaluate non-human perspectives if we attempt to write them in our stories as an alien construct? 

I have seriously been trying to work this one out. I sort of did it before in one of my stories where the character is existing in the void of his own mind without an identity attached to it.

It really does beg the question of how do we let the entity we are writing have an identity if it’s notion of an identity is beyond what we can comprehend?

I have a fanfic I really want to write and I’m doing all the really cool pre planning and fleshing out on this because it’s my first fic in a universe I have adored for a good chunk of my life and I so desperately want to do it justice, but the story starts with the prologue and the entity in question isn’t a person, it’s a thing.

It’s been described as not being sentient, but holds memories or echoes from everyone that’s been attached to it. It knows when things are right it knows when things are wrong. It can’t do anything about either because that’s not its job. But because of this it’s very special to the universe it belongs in.

That makes it a very special character in this story I want to write, but trying to wrap my head around the fact that it needs to convey what’s going on without the vocabulary necessary to do the job.  

It’s really doing my head in.

Since it’s not a he or a she and it has no identity I’ve been referring to this character as “it” because that’s what “it” is.

Okay so now the character has a specific identity, Well sort of.  Now we have to treat it as something that’s not alive (because it’s not, it’s a stone) but yet it’s somehow aware of its condition (is it though?) or at least the condition of the area around it and it’s not good, hasn’t been good for a long time.

So I’m basically trying to write a prologue that isn’t as descriptive as what I’m guessing “flowery prose” is because the “descriptive” itself doesn’t exist in what the stone knows.

Trying to convey loss to something that doesn’t inherently have emotions is another thing.

If you read this far I already forgot what my point is except that I guess I too need help in figuring this out because it’s a rather silly complicated nightmare to be in.

 

 

[Jason Rimbaud]

2 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

Like @Jason Rimbaud I’m an idiot,

When did I say I was an idiot? All I said was I was uneducated. I never *clutches my pearls* did @Krista put you up to hurt me so? 

 

 

[Krista]

4 hours ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

When did I say I was an idiot? All I said was I was uneducated. I never *clutches my pearls* did @Krista put you up to hurt me so? 

 

 

Is this a conspiracy theory that I can get behind? Yes, yes it is. 

[Jeff Burton]

11 hours ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

When did I say I was an idiot? All I said was I was uneducated. I never *clutches my pearls* did @Krista put you up to hurt me so? 

 

 

Oh no I meant to say not educated like you did but add that I’m an idiot 😂. I meant to add my own flair but as one does when using a mobile device my thumbs got lost in what the next sentence was and skipped over it.

[Jason Rimbaud]

22 minutes ago, Jeff Burton said:

Oh no I meant to say not educated like you did but add that I’m an idiot 😂. I meant to add my own flair but as one does when using a mobile device my thumbs got lost in what the next sentence was and skipped over it.

So, you know, your thumbs have no control over what you type. They don't have a mind of their own, they are not out to make you look bad. It's just thumbs.

I would like to know why you got your thumbs a mobile device in the first place. isn't that a bit expensive for a pair of appendages? Isn't that just asking for trouble since your thumbs seem to have poor directional skills?

That would be like me getting a phone for my down there part and  then get angry when it looked up porn. 

Let's forget that you accessorize your thumbs with a mobile device. I want to know if Krista put your thumbs up to hurting me? 

It's been my experience that when an individual ignores direct questions, it's usually in an effort to not incriminate themselves, or in this case, @KristaAnd since you don't want to implicate her in this dastardly plot to hurt my feelings, there is only one reason that would be the case. You are terrified of her like any sane person would be. Which proves that you aren't an idiot like you declared me to be.  

And just to keep this comment on topic so I can't be accused of hijacking this thread, why do you have to call your entity "it". Why can't you call it the orb, or the rosetta stone, or Maximilian the decrepitude , or Blue Rose, the stone could be shaped like a rose that gives off an azure glow that never uses contractions and always leaves dangling participles. 

I am not afraid of her, which does make me an idiot as you professed. I like undies!

J 

 

[Jeff Burton]

1 hour ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

So, you know, your thumbs have no control over what you type. They don't have a mind of their own, they are not out to make you look bad. It's just thumbs.

I would like to know why you got your thumbs a mobile device in the first place. isn't that a bit expensive for a pair of appendages? Isn't that just asking for trouble since your thumbs seem to have poor directional skills?

That would be like me getting a phone for my down there part and  then get angry when it looked up porn. 

Let's forget that you accessorize your thumbs with a mobile device. I want to know if Krista put your thumbs up to hurting me? 

It's been my experience that when an individual ignores direct questions, it's usually in an effort to not incriminate themselves, or in this case, @KristaAnd since you don't want to implicate her in this dastardly plot to hurt my feelings, there is only one reason that would be the case. You are terrified of her like any sane person would be. Which proves that you aren't an idiot like you declared me to be.  

And just to keep this comment on topic so I can't be accused of hijacking this thread, why do you have to call your entity "it". Why can't you call it the orb, or the rosetta stone, or Maximilian the decrepitude , or Blue Rose, the stone could be shaped like a rose that gives off an azure glow that never uses contractions and always leaves dangling participles. 

I am not afraid of her, which does make me an idiot as you professed. I like undies!

J 

 

Let’s just say I have a proper phobia of @Krista sometimes and I take the t-Rex approach. If I don’t move she can’t see me.

[W_L]

14 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

Let’s just say I have a proper phobia of @Krista sometimes and I take the t-Rex approach. If I don’t move she can’t see me.

You know a real T-Rex had a lot of nerve endings in their snouts, so they can detect prey via air pressure changes.

Moral of the story: Hold your breath and stay still around Krista if you're trying to avoid detection  

[Krista]

[ReaderPaul]

As a reader, I make a distinct separation between flowery description, flowery prose, and descriptive language necessary for the reader to understand the area or circumstances necessary for clarity of the elements of the story.  For example, J R R Tolkien used a lot of descriptive language in setting up the background for the novels in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. When Peter Jackson directed the movies, he was able to SHOW much of what J R R had to describe in print.

To me, the novels of David Eddings are very flowery in most of the language.  Tolkien used descriptive language, but it seems to me to be easier to follow.

If an author choose to be flowery or descriptive or plain -- fine with me.  If I don't like it, I will stop reading.  Simple as that.  So far, I have liked what I have read from @W_L, @Jason Rimbaud, @Krista, @Inkognito, @Gary L, @mcarss, @Jeff Burton, and @Ron.  I have a lot of their reading to catch up on, but if I live long enough, and my life simplifies quite a bit, I will probably read everything or nearly everything these have wrote.  

Good discussion, people.

 

[Gary L]

38 minutes ago, ReaderPaul said:

As a reader, I make a distinct separation between flowery description, flowery prose, and descriptive language necessary for the reader to understand the area or circumstances necessary for clarity of the elements of the story.  For example, J R R Tolkien used a lot of descriptive language in setting up the background for the novels in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. When Peter Jackson directed the movies, he was able to SHOW much of what J R R had to describe in print.

To me, the novels of David Eddings are very flowery in most of the language.  Tolkien used descriptive language, but it seems to me to be easier to follow.

If an author choose to be flowery or descriptive or plain -- fine with me.  If I don't like it, I will stop reading.  Simple as that.  So far, I have liked what I have read from @W_L, @Jason Rimbaud, @Krista, @Inkognito, @Gary L, @mcarss, @Jeff Burton, and @Ron.  I have a lot of their reading to catch up on, but if I live long enough, and my life simplifies quite a bit, I will probably read everything or nearly everything these have wrote.  

Good discussion, people.

 

Thank you!