Describing one’s environment and keeping it interesting and varied is a constant struggle for writers. Set pieces like weather or surroundings are a great way to affect the mood of a scene but can quickly turn sour if not done right. Bulwer-Lytton infamously wrote the line “It was a dark and stormy night” which has since become synonymous for poor writing.
Though he was a prolific Victorian author, and though he coined well-remembered phrases such as “the pen is mightier than the sword” and “the almighty dollar”, Bulwer-Lytton’s legacy has been cemented in a tongue and check contest for writing terrible sentences. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is ultimately where he falls in the modern zeitgeist.
A writer can avoid his pitfalls by using personified descriptors.
Spice up your boring sentences by using these descriptors to convey a better mood and to create more memorable lines.
This technique is not without its dangers, however. One can quickly enter purple prose by personifying everything or by overusing it. “The blackened and mean storm was like an urgent pregnant mother angry from discontent and heavy with the life-giving substance of water that is itself unhappy because it was dirty like a street urchin”© is of course no better than “It was a dark and stormy night.” When you use this technique remember that being clear is always job number one.
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