image by nztramping.com

I recently participated in a mini-challenge over at Booktalk, the blog for DC Jacobson & Associates literary agency. They posted a recent blog on “Describing with Verbs” and ended the post with the following challenge:

Here’s a challenge for the commenters: can you make the following character more interesting by using verbs? The old, tanned, stooped fisherman sat on the splintered dock beside his frayed, malodorous nets.

Here’s my shot at it:

“Moses stood, shirtless, surveying the sunset on the water beneath the dock – tiny floating bits of star over the water’s green depths. Grunting, he stooped to the dock, the wrinkles on his forehead escalating like tiny hills of burlap. The ancient dock grunted back. Age, reliability…it was a bond they shared. As the dock aged, its color faded to bone grey in the bleaching rays of the sun. Yet Moses had the deep cocoa tan of decades of life and labor beneath that bursting glowing orb. Baked leather skin on the backs of his thighs protected him from the dock’s splintering edges as he swung his legs over, toes inches above the water. He picked up a heap of nets that needed mending. Bits of discarded bait, seaweed and stray scales clung to the strands like strangers on a subway. Helen told him that he was beginning smell more and more like his nets, but he knew she wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d worked these waters for nearly 60 years and it had put a roof over their heads and more than just fish on the table. Sweat. Salt. Fishfunk. It was clean living and a freedom that no other existence could match. Of that, he was certain.”

There are several diverse and effective responses posted on the blog itself.  I didn’t do any editing on mine, but if I had, it would probably be a little shorter…but not much! Perhaps I got a little verbose, but I smelled Moses as I was writing.  I wanted everybody else to smell him too.  Did I succeed?

I think many of the entries succeeded, but of course that is a relative term.  Perspective and subjectivity are such a vital role in the path a story takes…both for the writer and the reader! But honestly, for me at least, that is what makes it fun – finding a way to connect with a reader over a topic…even if it is a nasty one like fishfunk!

In reading it, what worked for you about my description?  What seemed wrong or awkward? Did I make any bad assumptions about you as a reader as I wrote it?