Description Deep Dive

Previous chapter was all about dialogue. This one will be about the other thing you can do with your writing: description.

I picked dialogue first because I believe it is more important to practice and get right. As stated, scripts (for film/tv/theatre) are almost entirely dialogue, and even novels are trending in that direction as well. It’s something very natural to humans, which means it’s easy to write bad dialogue that runs your scene.

Now that you’ve practiced that, we move to a challenge about description. Whilst dialogue has always come naturally to me, I’ve struggled heavily with description. When I was a kid, I remember a big writing website (from the Netherlands) where you could send in questions about writing, and I asked: “my stories never have any description, how on earth do I do that?!”

Since then, I’ve found a type of challenge that helps practice this.

What is description?

Simply put, it’s everything except dialogue. You, the narrator of the story, describe the events taking place, describe the surroundings and what things look like, describe the smells and the feelings.

For some, there’s another distinction between “action” and “description”.

I get where they’re coming from. It does feel different. I never struggled so much with writing action scenes or simple events happening within the plot, while I struggled with describing the landscape around the characters (for example). One of them is “dynamic” (and vital to the plot and the story), the other is “static” (it just tells you what things are, what they look like, etcetera).

In the end, however, both of these are the same thing. It’s your job to put a clear image of the situation in the head of your reader. It’s your job to succinctly describe the most interesting or useful parts of the story, be it action or be it the details of an important location in your fantasy world.

The short rules

For more details, you can read the course on Prose and maybe the one oneWorldbuilding.

Below is a short, practical summary for this challenge.

Rule 1: description slows down. Even short action-packed sentences are slower than leaving out the sentences entirely. In general, however, description is used at slow moments in the plot. They are often longer sentences and paragraphs, devoted to painting a picture. Every plot needs slow moments to “catch your breath”, and they usually come after one or more fast and action-packed chapters.

You do not want to spend a few paragraphs describing some object while in the middle of a fast fight scene. It’s important to learn the timing of description: when to use it to its full effect, and when to shut up.

Rule 2: don’t just describe facts, describe emotion. As always, description needs a purpose, a reason. Many writers will simply list a bunch of facts about an object or location. Yes, you’ve immersed the reader a bit more, given them more tools to paint a mental picture. But why are you telling these facts? Why does it matter that the couch is brown, the windows stained, and the house vaguely smells like lemon tea?

Use description to point out only details that matter to the character telling the story. They pick up on certain details because they are interested in them, based on their character. You describe details about what the house looks like because it reminds the character of their childhood home. You describe that couch because it plays a role later in the story.

Instead of listing facts, find a few details that matter and describe them with emotion.

A character that walks into a room and notices how much it feels like their childhood home (of which they have fond memories), is stronger than a character walking into that room and merely listing the colors and shapes of a few objects.

Now write

Here’s the interesting challenge.

Write a story in which you follow one (or multiple) locations, not people.

In other words, all chapters happen at the same location(s). Their interior, details, history, it’s all vital to the plot. It is absolutely forbidden to move to somewhere else or to follow a character around!

Of course, you still need a plot to happen. So people will visit the location, events will happen inside it (which might change it), etcetera. But because the locations are most important, you’ll have little dialogue and much more description.

This is probably the hardest challenge (or “narrative structure”) yet. It causes you to rethink everything you thought you knew about stories. But it’s certainly possible, if you get creative and try it.

You can do the same thing in other ways. Maybe one of these is easier for you to try.

• Write a story in which you follow objects. (The objects might change hands, play roles in important events, be broken or repaired. But in any case, lots of description going on!)
• Write a story focused on one property of people (jobs, clothes, hobbies, …) In other words, the reader needs to be able to follow the story merely by reading strong, emotional descriptions of such properties. (Try to get a big plot twist in there because somebody suddenly wears different clothes.)

Descriptions are very much something you can improve later. Even if a description is vital to the plot, you can often change a few details without needing to change anything else in your story.

Therefore, do not think too much about the descriptions while writing. You can always go back later and make them more emotional, more efficient, less fact-based.