[Gary Wassner]

I love an author who can evoke an image deftly and perfectly so that you smile to yourself after you read the sentence or paragraph.

I would enjoy it very much if some of you would post examples of someone else's writing wherein you were captivated by the author's descriptive ability. I am anxious to read what your examples might have or not have in common. I am going to quote below one which made me dog ear the page so I could read it again. I'll credit the author later:

"She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation."

[Dawnstorm]

Deep bristle of the long beach grass, insects' last desertion and the faintest incongruity, smell of salt, then swept to nothing by the incoming wind. It grew colder still, too cold to stand before the waves, growing waves rising rough and clean to smooth by their presence churned depths, sand runed by thrashing, by motion, by a cold green body, by disappearances large and small. When at last the storm broke, the beach lay innocent before it, docile and empty as the eyes of a sculpted child.

Closing paragraph from:

"The Company of Storms", Kathe Koja; Fantasy and Sience Fiction, June 1992. It's about Highschool kids catching a strange creature to sell (to a circus?). One of them refueses to drive back with the others, even though a storm is brewing, walking back home alone.

[Gary Wassner]

The second half of the final sentence does it for me. "...docile and empty like the eyes of a sculpted child."

It captures a haunting image, and right away my mind starts to picture it.

[Dawnstorm]

Yeah, that's one of the most powerful finishing phrases I've come across so far. I didn't need to memorize that, it stuck instantly. Wish I could come with something like that.

***

So, who's the author of your piece? Great use of geological metaphor; reinforces the concept of age very subtly.

[Gary Wassner]

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.

When I think back on books that I remember the most, it's usually because of the imagery that leaves an indellible mark on my memory; A character whose face I easily envision though I have never seen him, a place that exhudes magic and wonder though I have never been there, a sense of danger that gives me the chills though I am not myself endangered. All of these things are what endears a book to me forever, and they are the products of brilliant imagery.

[saintjon]

My copy of Fionovar isn't here so unfortunately I'm unable to post the quote I want to, but if you've read it it's the part where the climax of the eltor hunt.

[Gary Wassner]

Ah, SJ! You have to post the quote. I am anxious to read them all.

[saintjon]

Well maybe I could ask Agent to post it, he read fionovar fairly recently I think. I'll send him a PM.

[Evil Agent]

Okay, I found the scene. It's from Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree.

SLIGHT SPOILERS: Basically, a handful of Dalrei riders are hunting Eltor (some kind of Elk-like animal), and if they can't kill the specified number, with only one try each, the tribe will suffer some kind of deep shame. One young, eager rider makes a mistake and misses, which could cost them the hunt. But Levon, the tribe leader's son, pulls of an insane move; Revor's Kill.

Levon dismounts to stand right before the charging herd (AKA swift) of eltor:

The lead eltor was fifty yards away.
Then twenty.
Levon raised his arm and, without pausing, the whole thing one seamless motion, threw.
The blade hit the giant animal directly between the eyes; it broke stride, staggered, then fell at Levon's feet. Right at Levon's feet.
Dave saw the other animals instantly scythe out away from the fallen leader and form two smaller swifts, one angling east, one west, dividing in a cloud of dust precisely at the point where the fallen eltor lay.
Where Levon, his yellow hair blowing free, stood quietly stroking his horse's muzzle, having stolen in that moment, with an act of incandescent gallantry, great honour for his people from the teeth of shame. As a leader should.

[Gkarlives]

"Mark to jump: five minutes."

"How's that Knnn?"

"Still - it just cycled captain."

"I want better news. That's four and counting."

'Continuing to cycle. That's into our lag-time-" Meaning that in the lag of lightspeed information the knnn might be doing other things.

"Rot the Book." She shoved the jump cycle in.

-dropped

-seatfirst-

-topside down-

-rightside up

-back again in here and now, and the stomach still wanted to turn itself inside out-

There was that wretched halfway-there, while senses swam, fingers took an hour clenching on controls, instuments underwent a slow ripple of lights that took a subjective day arriving at nothing special at all-