Brandiwynš¶ v.2026, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
La Bene Vita
The (Tentative*) Topic Rotation Self Sundays: Personal blogging days about family, leisure, work, and health. May be boring.
Music Mondays: Commentary, articles, and links highlighting music, theory, and ed topics.
Writing Wednesdays: Discussion on the art and business of writing. "Invalid Item" Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.
Friday Reviews**: Every Friday, I will review a minimum of one short story on WDC.
* I reserve the right to change the topic of the day at any time, at least until I acquire a million followers and gain official "influencer" status, at which point I shall be more consistent in order to meet the expectations of my adoring public.
** I can only commit to one review per week. If you would like your short story to be in my reviewing queue, please send me a WDC review request. Checkout my public reviews toget a sense of what to expect.
One possibly issue among asking AI to quantify your verbs for flavor is that it is also trained on the internet, which is the worst of all possible bullies. Whimsy isn't necessarily a good thing to it. AI can be introduced to brain rot by reading twitter but they haven't figured out how to fix it afterward.
I saw a post on Twitter the other day (originally from a few years back) that said, "I'd much rather be 'too sensitive' than whatever the fuck has happened to half of humanity." Sadly, I think of that quote often these days...
Poor Christopher Paolini has been the target of many a critic since the publication of the first book in The Inheritance Cycle series. We'll cut him some slack because he was a teenager when he published, but let's face it: the work deserved the critique. I don't remember the particulars, but I recall a lot of comparisons to gemstones. It's been awhile since I read the series, so rather than read it again for the purposes of this discussion, I found this handy list of Paolini similes and metaphors.
How much description is the right amount?
If your narrative description is so distracting that it pulls your reader out of the story, it's too much.
Gosh, that makes it sound so easy! Unfortunately, swinging in the other direction can be just as detrimental. If you don't include enough description, your reader may get confused or be unable to visualize the scene enough to be immersed in the story.
Like a diabetic trying to balance her blood sugar, we must find a way to navigate the narrow, harrowing path along the the knife-edged divide between purple prose
prose that is too elaborate or ornate.
and ambiguity. Unfortunately, they don't make a continuous glucose monitor (those white thingies stuck to the backs of the arms of diabetics) for narrative description. (For those not familiar with diabetes: that means your narrative description can't be measured in real time.)
So what do we do?
It can be difficult to assess where the balance lies in your own writing. As a writer, you visualize the events of your story in your head. It's already in there, so it's not always intuitive to write it out in words. But you have to remember to let the reader inside your head, too. I find reviews helpful for judging how close to the balance point my descriptions lie. An outside pair of eyes, glittering softly like multi-faceted jewels in the morning sun, is worth its weight in sparkle.
Weigh in: How do you find balance between too much and too little description?
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, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.