The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. But, armed with an arsenal of story-writing skills, words can paint incredible pictures, and in less than a thousand words! This month’s Get Creative feature on how to paint pictures with words will help you do exactly that.

With Children’s Art Week running until 19th July, you might also want to dive into our collection of brilliant books to help you unlock your inner artist.

In the meantime, read on to discover our top tips and activities to spark vibrantly visual writing about landscapes.

THE BIG PICTURE – TIPS FOR PAINTING LANDSCAPES WITH WORDS 
The key to painting a picture with words is to use your senses. You need to think about …
What a place looks like - for example, colours and shapes.
What a place feels like - for example, claustrophobic, spacious, windy, humid.
What a place smells likes - for example, car fumes in a town, fragrant flowers in a meadow.
What a place sounds like - for example, peaceful, shouty, chirpy, thunderous.

A great way to add painting power to your writing is to use similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia.

A simile describes something by comparing it to something else using the words “as” or “like”. 
Example: the clouds looked like a fluffy mass of candy floss, floating beyond reach.
Or: the clouds were as fluffy as a mass of candy floss, floating beyond reach.

A metaphor is a word or phrase used to describe something as if it were something else.
Example: the clouds were a fluffy mass of candy floss, floating beyond reach.

Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like what it describes - words like whoop, fizz, plop, snap and rustle. 
Examples: crunchy leaves; squidgy soil; crashing waves; booming thunder.

Now use these tips to make your writing as dazzling as a painted masterpiece!

PAINTING LANDSCAPES WITH WORDS
This exercise is about giving your reader a sense of setting and place. It’s like taking a snapshot of a location from a distance. A painting sketched from faraway.

You might include some detail, but this is broad-stroke painting. For example, in this landscape activity, you wouldn’t describe the nitty gritty detail of, for example, a tiny ant crawling through rainforest undergrowth, or a crab crawling over a pebble on a beach, or the particularities of a petal.

Rather, you’ll give your readers a bigger, broader sense of place – what it looks like, the general lay of the land, the shape of the landscape. Are there any distinctive smells? What colours stand out?

So, using the tips outlined above, write a few sentences of dazzling descriptive writing set in the following landscapes. We’ve given an example to get you going.

Rainforest island 
Surrounded by crashing waves, the island’s forested mountains jutted into the sky like an emerald sky palace. A cluster of squawking parrots zipped across the jagged heights, choregraphed like dancers wearing dazzling red and green costumes. At the shoreline, volcanic sand glistened in the glare of the sun – sparkling diamonds in the grey-black grit. Here, the tang of salty air tussled with the sweet, spicy perfume of ginger lilies drifting from forests framing the beach.

Now it’s over to you to paint a broad-stroke picture (with words!) of the following landscapes:
Summer beach 
Spring meadow 
Autumn woodland
Winter mountains
Rainy city
Coral reef kingdom
Planet Doom-froth

Stay tuned for our next Get Creative feature on how to paint portraits with words – our top tips for dazzling, detailed descriptive writing.

For more creative inspiration and activities, check out the rest of our Get Creative series.

Joanne Owen is a writer and publishing professional with over twenty years’ experience of the book industry, and the author of a how-to children’s guide to creative writing, You Can Write Awesome Stories. Alongside writing and reviewing books, she hosts writing workshops and is an Editorial Expert for LoveReading.