Description: set forth in words a portraiture of a person, object or event.
That’s it in a nutshell. Some authors manage just that: short, pithy and telling descriptions. Others wax lyrical and include the minutiae of what they’re describing, otherwise known as an infodump.
How much description should you put in? Only enough to give your reader an image of what you want.
Renowned Australian author, Sara Douglass, suggests using the reader’s imagination. That is, presenting a bare idea and let the reader fill in the rest.
Writers like science fiction writer David Weber, political thriller writer Tom Clancy and western writer J.T. Edson give the reader everything they could possibly want to know, and then some. In some cases, pages and pages of how something works. I recall skipping over a lot of description in one of Tom Clancy’s book – and missing the vital clue, which was why a nuclear weapon didn’t work. Is that my fault, or Mr Clancy’s? As a reader, it certainly ain’t mine, but some readers love technical details. It gives the story a richness imaginations might not envision.
Of course, if those writers get it wrong, fans can be unmerciful.
Paucity of description can lead to trouble as well.
Trees blocked her way. Not much to work with there, even if you do subscribe to Sara Douglass’s model.
Trees, towering and monstrous, with interlocking branches, barred her escape into the forest. Now you have an idea of the sinister nature of the trees and, rather than simply ‘blocked’, you have an element of panic and danger.
The trees stretched towards the cerulean blue and cloudless sky as if to seal the forest from everything in nature, even the wind; virtual wardens against intruders, both benign and malevolent, protecting the flora and fauna within its secretive embrace. Gigantic parachute-shaped canopies of hand-sized, algae-green leaves with poison-filled thorns that killed within minutes, resisted the sun’s pure golden light and plunged the forest into an eternal night. The lower branches, iron hard and rust-brown, wrapped around neighbouring branches that protruded from house-thick trunks and weaved an impenetrable wall of wood. No human had stepped into the virgin, primeval forest; its mysteries remained forever unsolved. Many tried; none succeeded for modern tools had yet to evolve far enough to cut the timber in any meaningful way and poisons had no effect. Current thinking was that the trees had a curse, or a blessing on them. The forest resisted all attempts to map its contents. Even the great explorer… depending on your infodump favourite, you can insert lots of stuff, but by the time you read this, the female character has been caught, tried and sentenced to death.
In real life, the character would look at the forest and squeak: “oh, shit; no escape there.” Of course, this description could be used elsewhere, like from the battlements of a nearby castle and the character would already know nothing got into the forest.
The same can be said of describing people. Short and sweet is the best, I think. The leathery, road-map face topped with wire-brush hair gives age and experience to a character. The hour-glass/Rubenesque figure creates a lush, sensual character. A body of fat rolls, drooping over a groaning bar stool indicates obesity. Eyes of smoke/mud/grass/storm clouds/coffee/aged brandy/sapphire, hair of mahogany/wheat/night/snow/dark ale, cascading/frizzing/curling/waving/beehived/pixie-ish… I could go on, but you get the idea.
Or… don’t describe them at all. Short stories are best for this. You may have noticed, in a number of shorts I’ve posted, there are no physical descriptions at all. I did that for a few of reasons: physical descriptions weren’t important to the story, the reader creates their own character from the surrounding text, and short stories are sometimes too limited for the description.
It’s all in the words and the impressions you want to impart, see? Give the reader only as much as they need to know, and let their imaginations take off.
3 comments:
Lol, I really had to force myself to read through the third example. :)
I stick with the second version often, and sometimes the first. It works to say, the elderly lady sat at her mahoganny desk (in opposite to the young woman at the glass table), because while I like to use my imagination, I also like to get some directions as to what image to build. And I sometimes use speech tags other than said - though never something like 'asked inquiringly'. But overall it's a good advise.
I prefer the second version myself, though I'd probably toss in a little more.
And you're right: an author has to give the reader something to build on.
I think the current emphasis on using only 'said' rather than other instructions has gone overboard. Readers are intelligent enough to want their page broken up, not constantly peppered with 'he said' or 'she said'. There's still room for other tags.
I think you could run into problems either way - if a writer describes something briefly they run the risk of easy cliche. If she describes it in depth, then she runs the risk of boring readers (as you noted with Clancy :D ).
I think if you can catch a vivid image in just a few words, that would probably be best. One of the things I do is to write out the first thing that comes to mind. And then I scratch it out and write out a list until I can find a description that is unusual but catches exactly what I'm talking about.
Great post - and advice! Thanks!
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