Description
Description is an odd thing in storytelling. It obviously only applies to books: a visual medium does the describing by simply placing the object or setting in the frame. It’s not really related to plot, but it also kind of is. What you decide to describe, when, and how much, has a great influence on the pacing and understanding of your plot.
That’s why this chapter will be very brief and mostly refer to other chapters.
What is description?
It’s any sentence in which nothing happens. It’s the opposite of Action.
ACTION: She played the piano.
DESCRIPTION: The black piano was covered in dust.
Because you’re describing things, with explanation or adjectives, these sentences are usually longer and slower. The paragraphs in which they appear are also longer and slow down the plot.
From this, we deduce the first rule.
Prefer using description only when you want to give the reader a break or slow down (on purpose).
Maybe you just had a huge action sequence that spanned two chapters. Exciting, fast-paced, lots of big events. Now the reader is excited, but overwhelmed. So next chapter should probably be much slower and allow them to catch their breath. Use next chapter for lots of description or information (which you couldn’t convey in a more exciting way).
Describe early
This was mentioned in the chapter on Opening and Closing Scenes.
Do not describe something (long) after introducing it. Describe something before it becomes relevant or becomes part of the mental image of your reader.
Otherwise, readers have to change their mental image halfway a chapter (or even a book!) Which is annoying and completely interrupts their flow.
It’s typical to …
- Describe the setting in the first few paragraphs of a scene
- Describe someone’s appearance right after you first meet them
- Describe someone’s way of speaking (or tone of voice) right before they say their first dialogue
- Describe an important detail before it gets used or becomes important.
You get the idea. Once you put something into the story—into the reader’s mind—they will create their own image of it, their own idea of the concept. If you don’t immediately alter it to be the correct image (needed for the story), it becomes harder and harder to do so as the story continues.
Prefer emotional over factual
When told to describe, many writers start telling the reader random details. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Make the world feel rich and full by telling them all sorts of stuff? Yeah, I thought so too, and struggled for a long time with stories that seemed to take random detours.
Before that, my very first stories had NO description at all. For years, I was at a loss as to why my stories seemed hollow and like they happened in a blank void.
Instead, “good” description can come in two flavors.
- Either you give factual information because it is essential to know.
- Or you give emotional information that accentuates the character and how they perceive the world.
Description for any other reason, to me, just slows down the story with unnecessary ideas.
FACTUAL: You write a story in which magical swords are a big deal. Their appearance determines their special power. For example, a curved blade can be thrown like a boomerang. In such case, whenever somebody has a sword, you want to tell exactly what it looks like.
FACTUAL: The next scene is going to take place inside a specific room, and characters are going to sit down or interact with it. In that case, you want to give the reader more facts about what’s in that room and what the objects look like. This prepares them for what is coming and sets the right mental image from the start.
EMOTIONAL: You write a story in a world with an interesting banking or money system. This is unrelated to the plot, but you think it’s a nice bit of worldbuilding and want to add it. What do you do? You pick a character who is poor, or perhaps the victim of this system when they were young, and have them describe it through an emotional lens.
EMOTIONAL: Somebody is walking through the city. Instead of describing all the houses they pass with random facts, do a general description and focus on one in particular. One house that evokes memories (from our viewpoint character). Maybe their friend used to live there, and they remember playing in a beautiful garden. Maybe the house makes them scared because it looks like a haunted house. Attach an emotional response to the description, and it will come alive and will not feel like work.
Whatever the case, describing facts for no clear reason is never a good idea in writing.
For a “challenge” to help write better (and perhaps more) description, visit the Description Deep Dive chapter from the Storytelling course.
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