Description - advice and exercises

Gray Rose · Oct 19, 2007

My problem is that my writing tends to be very minimalistic. I am forever looking for the few chiseled sentences to capture how something looks/feels, but this too often leads to bare-bones kind of writing. I'd like to improve my descriptive skills...

How do you guys go about figuring out your descriptions, e.g. of physical locations? Any exercises you could recommend?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Shadow_Ferret · Oct 19, 2007

Sometimes I describe things. That's the easiest way to explain it.

I go out in public and just pick something at random to describe in such a way that someone else would understand what it was I was looking at, be it cars, people, buildings, or some other object.

aadams73 · Oct 19, 2007

As long as you're taking care to describe all the senses, I wouldn't worry about your writing being minimalistic. I hate endless description and blah blah blah about what characters are wearing and so forth. What I do is keep my descriptions to just a couple of interesting sentences.

Garpy · Oct 19, 2007

okay, this is a very subjective area. I personally quickly tire of over descriptive writers. Every time I hit a purple passage and I know the writer wants to flex his muscles, I start scanning ahead for the next bout of dialog.

Now...I suspect this is a sign of the times. People generally have less time to read books than they use to, so they just want you to get on with the chapter already, before their next train/bus/subway/tube stop arrives.

Depending on your genre/market...if it's thriller/crime, keep it lean and mean. Historical/fantasy you can take a bit more time.

But generally, the biggest mistake I find with aspiring novelists, is overdoing it on the descriptive stuff.

Gray Rose · Oct 19, 2007

Thanks guys!

Garpy, my genre is fantasy, but I am very much a fan of the lean and mean thriller. I have a lot of dialogue going on, and quite a lot of action (either through dialogue or otherwise). While I emphatically do not want to become verbose, my betas and critiquers told me that I could be a bit more generous with my descriptions in order to ground my readers more in the scenes.

So I guess I am not looking for an affirmation of my minimalism, but rather for some advice and exercises for making this minimalism more effective.

CaroGirl · Oct 19, 2007

Just use your imagination and make the experience of the scene as sensual as it needs to be in the context of the story. Visual is great, but don't forget that places are also noisy and smelly. Things have texture and taste. Put yourself in your characters' place and feel what they would feel. Okay, write it.

Just Me 2021 · Oct 19, 2007

I try to weave description into the action. I throw in a detail into dialog, a specific something into the action line, that sort of thing. I often use things around me. Like naming a specific brand or a specific feature or setting detail while advancing the plot. For ideas, I just brainstorm through possible details using the five senses until one fits right.

Garpy · Oct 19, 2007

A very good exercise is really digesting as much of your fave author as you can. Deconstruct what they do in a scene - see how much of the environment gets described.

One thing I have noticed is that readers fill in the blanks...big time. If I say, 'he woke up in a dark dank dungeon'....I don't need to write too much detail about dripping damp stone walls, flickering oil lamps and chains shackled to the walls, the distant scream of a prisoner on a rack, nor the sound of jangling chains and the pitter patter of scuttling rats etc etc. The reader went and put all of that and more in his head when he read those three words 'dark dank dungeon'. So, what the reader wants is not you the writer rehashing what he's already seeing, what he wants is for you the writer to get on and tell him what happens next.

But, like I say, it's all very subjective and varies very much from genre to genre, market to market.

Gray Rose · Oct 19, 2007

OK, this is very helpful - thank you; but it is also kind of generic. Maybe you could give me some examples of what you consider a good description out of your own works?

Two examples out of mine.

I am not too unhappy with this, though it is not that good:

When I came to, I was sitting. My hands gripped the chair’s handles tightly, as if I was afraid that the very land was shaken and unsteady like a tooth in an ancient mouth. My eyes stared at the floor by my booted feet. It was not made of wood but of stone, and I could see a gullet running precisely underneath my seat. A blood gullet. Thankfully, there was no blood in it.

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Bad, bad, bad:
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“What are you doing?” My brother is only six. Short, but so serious.

Garpy - my favorite author writes in another language. My favorite author in my genre is Bujold, but her descriptions are way too verbose for me.

Shadow_Ferret · Oct 19, 2007

Garpy said:
One thing I have noticed is that readers fill in the blanks...big time. If I say, 'he woke up in a dark dank dungeon'....I don't need to write too much detail about dripping damp stone walls, flickering oil lamps and chains shackled to the walls, the distant scream of a prisoner on a rack, nor the sound of jangling chains and the pitter patter of scuttling rats etc etc. The reader went and put all of that and more in his head when he read those three words 'dark dank dungeon'. So, what the reader wants is not you the writer rehashing what he's already seeing, what he wants is for you the writer to get on and tell him what happens next.

But, like I say, it's all very subjective and varies very much from genre to genre, market to market.

I guess that's where we differ. I enjoy reading about the "how" of the dark dank dungeon. If I read minimalism I just think its a lazy writer and put the book away. I enjoy concrete imagery.

As long as it is important to the story, mind you. If the character is just walking through the dungeon, then fine. But if he's in there chained to it, unable to see into the dark resesses, then I like to know about the rats skittering out of reach, their red eyes gleeming hungrilly.

ya know?

DeleyanLee · Oct 19, 2007

Remember that description is a work of Character, not a work of narrative. Through description you show what's important to the POV character, their mood (ie: how they're seeing things), etc. You can very clearly define a character by how they see the world around them.

Works wonderful for me to think of it that way because I would go 100,000 words without a single word of it, outside of plot-mandatory notes.

ACEnders · Oct 19, 2007

I think this is really good, but there are a few things I thought you could do to tighten it up again. The discription is really good, and I could see exactly the things you are trying to describe. But since you are concerned about going overboard with the words...this is just my opinion.

When I came to, I was sitting. My hands gripped the chair’s handles tightly, as if I was afraid ~~that~~ the ~~very~~ land was shaken and unsteady like a tooth in an ancient mouth. ~~My eyes~~ I stared at the stone floor by my booted feet. ~~It was not made of wood but of stone,~~ and I ~~could see~~ saw a gullet running ~~precisely~~ directly under~~neath~~ my seat. A blood gullet. Thankfully, there was no blood in it.

Gray Rose · Oct 19, 2007

Thanks so much Ace!! Yes, this is from the first draft, unedited/unrevised.

FennelGiraffe · Oct 19, 2007

Choose which details to describe by making sure they mean something. Remember Chekhov's Gun: If there's a gun on the mantel in the first act, it better be fired before the end of the third act.

Build in a theme by frequently mentioning related details. Say you wanted to use birds. In various scenes you could mention caged birds and toy birds and paintings of birds and hats with feathers on them and the sound of birds singing and a statue streaked with pigeon poop and the shadow of an eagle circling high overhead. You could use bird metaphors like a twittering laugh or a feather-light touch. (I have a hunch this is best done in revision, though. Once you notice you have several related details, you can retrofit others to the same theme.)

Look through your POV char's eyes (and ears and nose and ...). Describe what s/he would notice -- in the order s/he would notice it. Don't describe what s/he wouldn't notice. Some over-simplified examples: A slob won't notice either clutter or the absence of clutter, but a neatnik will; A librarian (or a reader!) might notice books or the absence of books before noticing anything else; An artist will notice colors and shapes; A chef or a gourmet, even if s/he isn't in a position to taste anything just then, may be very aware of scents; A person in the grip of strong emotion is unlikely to notice much of anything not directly connected with whatever s/he is upset about.

GerriB · Oct 19, 2007

I like to link description to action and to character reaction. Here's an example from a WiP

******
Jule stepped through the doorway and paused, unsettled. Something was off in the room, and she wasn't sure what. The plain wood panel walls had been stained, but she couldn't identify the precise shade. Oak? No, the color wasn't dark enough. Pine? Maybe, but the shade wasn't either light or dark pine, but somewhere in between.

The way the light played off the walls from the windows in the upper right part of the room didn't help her, either. The wind through foliage played tricks with the shadows fluttering across the wood, making it so she couldn't pinpoint how big the room really was. Was it claustrophobic or too big?
******

For describing a character, I do the same sort of thing.

******
Jule stepped out of line, giving her former mentor, now boss, a happy smile. "Hey, Rik!" If anyone reminded her of a Bantam rooster, like the ones her grandmother raised, it was Rik. He was short with a round torso and a bit of a pot belly perched on skinny little legs, and he was topped with a shock of wild black and gray hair. But he radiated an intense, focused energy that drove people to do their best for him. She wished she could have just a bit of that ability.
******

Basically, people notice what they are trained to notice. Most people, you stick them in a living room and they'll see couch, chairs, endtables, lamp, and tv. They'll barely register the pictures on the wall, much less be able to tell you who is in what picture or which picture is hanging where.

In my examples, Jule is a forensic archeologist who is constantly looking at things to observe them. But she doesn't always draw the correct conclusions from her observation. That makes her an unknowingly unreliable narrator, but that's ok. It's her story, after all.

Good luck!

Wolvel · Oct 19, 2007

Like the others have said. Too much description can kill a story. Now if the area is key to a scene then by all means describe it.

Key phrase, less is more.

swvaughn · Oct 19, 2007

Shadow_Ferret said:
I guess that's where we differ. I enjoy reading about the "how" of the dark dank dungeon. If I read minimalism I just think its a lazy writer and put the book away. I enjoy concrete imagery.

As long as it is important to the story, mind you. If the character is just walking through the dungeon, then fine. But if he's in there chained to it, unable to see into the dark resesses, then I like to know about the rats skittering out of reach, their red eyes gleeming hungrilly.

ya know?

I have a thing for dungeons. They've managed to work their way into two of my novels so far...

And the POV character is chained in them, and does have the time to notice a lot of unpleasant things. They have all ... the time ... in the world.

*maniacal laughter*

Devil Ledbetter · Oct 19, 2007

swvaughn said:
I have a thing for dungeons. They've managed to work their way into two of my novels so far...

And the POV character is chained in them, and does have the time to notice a lot of unpleasant things. They have all ... the time ... in the world.

*maniacal laughter*

And time to do really unpleasant things to himself, that only a truly sick and twisted author could dream up.

preyer · Oct 19, 2007

i think you'll find as many people who write write description a bit differently. some are better than others. seeing as how you probably won't break any new ground, i suggest emulating your favourite authors like me.

i struggle over description and stab at it until i hope the reader gets it enough not to be disappointed. i tend to go for moods, and the way that i personally feel you bring that out is with details. i'm not a minimalist, though. nothing against those who are, it's just not me so much. i can't just say 'a cluttered desk' as that's empty description to me. 'dark, dank dungeon' would also fail to impress me when, imo, that's piling on missed opportunities.

i also don't agree with using every single sense in every single new scene. i don't like white rooms, nor do i like absolutely no character description at all. i don't need to know every freckle, but i like some kind of general outline, the more alluded to the better, but *something*. those are hardly rules, lol.

tell ya what, gray, you tell me something you've described and i'll describe it my way (give me a bit to go on, though). when i'm done, post yours and we'll look at the differences, good and bad. i think that's about as specific as you can get, eh? lol.

Penguin Queen · Oct 19, 2007

I wuold say the trick is for one thing, as Just Me 2021 has said, to mix the discription in with the rest of the action and not just clunk in two decriptive paragraphs. View somethhing through the eyes of a character and not write about what it (landscape/building/rats in dungeon etc.) looks like, but how it affects them, what they think abiut it (sorry about typos, caught index fibger in stupid front door), what it reminds them of maybe, whether they like it etc. This can serve as quite a useful tool for saying stuff about the character.

The other thing I think is important is detail and directness. And avoid adjectives.
Not, The building was high but The building towered over us like a mountain / woolly rhinoceros / the head of a hungry giant. Or, The way the building loomed over us took me back for a moment to that valley in the mountains where I kissed my frist dragon. For just that instant, I was distracted. That was when they attacked.

Soccer Mom · Oct 19, 2007

Something that helps me is to sit down and write out a thorough description of a place where a scene occurs. The more pivotal the scene or the more the characters will move through it, the more time I'll devote to it.

Most of the exhaustive descriptions and diagrams won't ever make it into the story, but it helps me visualize the characters in a concrete place, not just a white room. Then I can sprinkle in enough description to ground the readers in the scene so that they can hopefully see it with me.

Shweta · Oct 19, 2007

This post is [+Clarion].

So I figured I should toss in some things I learned from Clarion.

The one that's stuck with me most is. Here's the question to ask yourself: "Where is the light coming from?"

By the time that's answered, you've got a hell of a sense of the scene, and the characters' placement in it.

Another one (this from Karen Joy Fowler I think) is the notion of the telling detail. The difference here is between:
Kathy had black hair and green eyes
And:
Kathy was sixteen years old and six feet tall

The second lets you infer a lot about Kathy, physically and psychologically. Which sensory details let you get into characters' heads and infer more about them?

Just Me 2021 said:
I try to weave description into the action. I throw in a detail into dialog, a specific something into the action line, that sort of thing.

This one's come up repeatedly, and it's a great one; I have only one thing to add. I've noticed that how you do this can affect the pacing, and thus the emotional impact, of the conversation.

It's not just interspersing bits of description into the dialogue, it's using that to lead the reader's mind around the scene in a particular order, at a particular pace.

Garpy said:
One thing I have noticed is that readers fill in the blanks...big time. If I say, 'he woke up in a dark dank dungeon'....I don't need to write too much detail about dripping damp stone walls, flickering oil lamps and chains shackled to the walls, the distant scream of a prisoner on a rack, nor the sound of jangling chains and the pitter patter of scuttling rats etc etc. The reader went and put all of that and more in his head when he read those three words 'dark dank dungeon'.

So this is kind of like the telling detail above, but I have got to disagree with you some. From "Dark dank dungeon" the reader can probably create a stereotypical dungeon with ease. But we want to do better than generic set props, right?

I've been in two real dungeons and something a bit like one, and they are very different from one another.

And this is something else Clarion instructors told us: figure out what's unique and interesting about your setting, not just "it's a dungeon" or "it's an airport", and give a couple details that let the reader know that. Not, as you said, exhaustive detail -- unless that's what's needed from the character's point of view. But at least a couple things.

DeleyanLee said:
Remember that description is a work of Character, not a work of narrative. Through description you show what's important to the POV character, their mood (ie: how they're seeing things), etc. You can very clearly define a character by how they see the world around them.

FennelGiraffe said:
Look through your POV char's eyes (and ears and nose and ...). Describe what s/he would notice -- in the order s/he would notice it. Don't describe what s/he wouldn't notice.

Absolutely yay.

FennelGiraffe said:
Choose which details to describe by making sure they mean something. Remember Chekhov's Gun: If there's a gun on the mantel in the first act, it better be fired before the end of the third act.

Build in a theme by frequently mentioning related details. Say you wanted to use birds. In various scenes you could mention caged birds and toy birds and paintings of birds and hats with feathers on them and the sound of birds singing and a statue streaked with pigeon poop and the shadow of an eagle circling high overhead. You could use bird metaphors like a twittering laugh or a feather-light touch. (I have a hunch this is best done in revision, though. Once you notice you have several related details, you can retrofit others to the same theme.)

I think possibly all of this is best done in revision. That way you don't force themes, and you can let your subconscious do what it will, and pick out what works and make it coherent in a second draft. This will help the story function at a number of different levels.

Gray Rose · Oct 19, 2007

Thanks everybody for your absolutely wonderful advice!

GerriB said:
Basically, people notice what they are trained to notice. Most people, you stick them in a living room and they'll see couch, chairs, endtables, lamp, and tv. They'll barely register the pictures on the wall, much less be able to tell you who is in what picture or which picture is hanging where.

Good luck!

Thanks!! This is so true.

preyer said:
tell ya what, gray, you tell me something you've described and i'll describe it my way (give me a bit to go on, though). when i'm done, post yours and we'll look at the differences, good and bad. i think that's about as specific as you can get, eh? lol.

That would be great, thanks for the offer! Ok, I am currently struggling with the following scene. The heroine had just relocated (by somewhat traumatic magical means) to an entrance of some kind of an inn or hostel. She is looking inside. She has a couple of moments to take in the scene before her brother arrives.
The inn' is supposed to be a high-class establishment,but war had just started and so it is full of soldiers, but probably more officer-types than simple infantrymen. There are probably chairs & tables around which people sit, and a stair leading upstairs (not sure if the heroine sees it) . It is around 1AM. Culture is early Modern (think 17th century).
Is this enough to go on?

Soccer Mom said:
Something that helps me is to sit down and write out a thorough description of a place where a scene occurs. The more pivotal the scene or the more the characters will move through it, the more time I'll devote to it.

This is great!! Thank you. I actually did this once, for one place, and it worked out really well. Need to remember to do it again.

Shweta said:
The one that's stuck with me most is. Here's the question to ask yourself: "Where is the light coming from?"

Great advice. Again, this is something I sometimes do and sometimes don't. Need to pay more attention!

John61480 · Oct 19, 2007

Garpy said:
But generally, the biggest mistake I find with aspiring novelists, is overdoing it on the descriptive stuff.

When I saw your dungeon description, I liked it a lot. It was much more effective than dark dank dungeon. In a narrative, with a strong voice, it could look like this:

---something happening, something immediate and then . . . He woke up to dripping damp stone walls; flickering oil lamps and chains shackled to the walls, the distant scream of a prisoner on a rack, the sound of chains jangling and the pitter patter of scuttling rats--and onward to the rest of the story.

That would have left me breathless as the story unfolded, and it would have satisfied any of my questions as to "what kind of dungeon is this?" It may not have been short, but it spared dropping this stuff throughout two pages of story. I liked it anyway.

lfraser · Oct 19, 2007

Shweta said:
The one that's stuck with me most is. Here's the question to ask yourself: "Where is the light coming from?"

Thats something I always notice in books, and if the writer gets it right it sets the mood for the whole scene.

I often incorporate the colour of light in descriptive scenes, because it changes throughout the day. My partner is a photographer, and over years of looking at his pictures I've learned the way light works. That's been very helpful to me.

Description - advice and exercises

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