Our current project for the Writing page is "Ask the Author." If you are an unpublished writer with a question about craft, send it in and Gaelen will answer it here.
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Ask the Author: Descriptive Writing
Hi, my name is Sarah and I am 20 years old. My question is in regards to descriptive writing. When I describe something in a story it's about 2 sentences long. Maybe I don't have the patience or devotion enough to my writing to get there. When it comes to dialogue, I can go on for ever and ever. But when someone is talking they have the hand motions, the facial expressions, and so on. I have just never been able to grasp that part of my writing, and without descriptions you have no setting, and without a setting, your story’s gonna be pretty boring. So, my question is, how do you write a descriptive piece that just makes you feel like your there in the story, like you can use all of your senses and make it seem real? Thank you.
Dear Sarah,
I’m a big believer in interdisciplinary learning. This is especially true when it comes to descriptive writing. Writers can learn so much from the other arts that can help us with our storytelling. Studying music, for example, can help sensitize us to the subtle rhythms of language. Studying drawing can help us learn to become sharper visual observers so that we pick up on details and elements like line, texture, and shading, and fine gradations in color and light, all of which really comes in handy when we need to imagine exactly what our characters and settings look like. The better you can do this, the more real your story will feel.
For me, learning about how actors and directors go about "blocking" a scene was what helped me to understand that I need to portray what my characters are doing in my scenes, not just the content of what they’re saying. Having them DO something with their hands, the poses of their bodies, or even fidgeting with their clothes makes it easier for readers to picture what’s going on.
A person’s smallest actions can give nonverbal cues, body language insight, into who that person is deep inside. Actions really do speak louder than words. “I’m a sensitive guy,” as he kicks his dog. LOL. Small gestures can add up to a big expression of emotion. Intelligent blocking can give even a “talking heads” dialogue scene a feeling like there’s something significant and interesting going on, so it aids in pacing, too.
Once you figure out what your characters can be doing in your scene, then it’s just a matter of intertwining that action with the conversation.
But a key part of what brings a scene to life, as you’ve pointed out, is the setting or scenery in which the conversation or piece of action takes place. The first act of a novel can take longer to write because each new setting needs to be described for the first time it appears. Later chapters can use that same setting but by then, you’ve already established what it looks like so you can just throw in a simple detail or reminder to refresh the reader’s memory about that place.
Setting can also reflect the mood of the scene taking place there. Say for example two lovers are meeting in a beautiful park for the first time. The emotion is playful and flirtatious, and that is reflected in the details the writer would select as happening in that part at that time, like sunny weather and an ice-cream vendor or a guy playing Frisbee with his dog. Later, for example, one half of the now broken-up couple could take a walk in the same park, but by reflecting different details, it gives a totally different meaning. Maybe this day it’s raining with puddles in the path and some poor squirrel huddled on a tree branch getting soaked. Ok all this is a really lame example, but you see what I mean.
So, one way you can do it is to figure out the basic location of where you want your scene to take place. Then you sit down with a notebook and just start jotting down images of stuff that might be in a place like that. There is a simple exercise or a chart that I fill out before I write a scene just to make sure I have the setting vivid and clear in my imagination. I brainstorm on each point below and try to come up with something fresh. Partly I got this list from Robert J. Ray’s book, The Weekend Novelist (highly recommended!!) and part of it I made up on my own from bits of knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. It is one of the most valuable tools I use in my writing:
Time/place
Lighting effects
Smells
Sounds
Textures, temperature, motions
Images
Historical objects/details to ground this scene in my time period
(For historical writers: this could be anything from the sound of hoofbeats on the cobblestones outside to a liveried footman checking on the aristocrats to the smell of the flickering tallow candles on the mantel. Whatever. Just something you wouldn't see in our day and time to remind the reader where/when they are in this scene.)
Actions - Large
Actions - Small
Characters - relationships (Who's there and how do they feel about each other)
Who wants what from whom and why can't they have it?
Climax of scene
Exit line
Once you know “what’s there” in a scene, then you can start moving stuff around and messing with stuff, using the objects in interesting ways. This can be fun. For example, leading up to the climax scene in my 12th book, Her Secret Fantasy, I had no idea how I was going to get hero Derek out of the pit bull’s cage where the villain Edward’s henchmen were holding him inside the stable. So I took a hard look at the setting and thought, well, what’s there? What would logically be there that I could work with? Ok, first there’s lanterns, since I know it’s night time. Gee, oil lanterns, with all that hay there in the stable. Looks pretty flammable, huh? They’d also have a pitchfork for throwing the hay around. Plus the henchmen guarding Derek are whiling away the long night by playing cards, and one of them’s got some liquor. That’s flammable, too. See where I’m going with this? The next thing, I knew, Derek had goaded one of the henchmen over into his striking distance by appealing to his gambler’s spirit and in a flash was holding one the guy by the throat through the bars of his cage. Another tried to make him let the guy go by jabbing at him with the pitchfork. Within a page or two, the whole stable was on fire—the henchmen had fled, but Derek was still stuck in the cage.
Unforeseen consequences. Knowing the little details of your setting can supply you with a surprising plot twist and help to keep your readers on the edge of their seats.
By the way, I have heard that details in motion are easier for the human brain to visualize than static images. Let’s test that. What’s easier/quicker to imagine—a motionless statue of a horse, or an angry horse rearing up on its hind legs? The second one is more vivid for me.
FYI, I really don’t write my scenes in the first draft anywhere near the same way that they appear in the published book. In the first draft, I separate the elements and do them out of order, meaning, I write the dialogue first--that’s usually the spine of the scene for me. Second, I’ll just start typing in the notes I made in my notebook from the list of imagery and details above. I don’t put everything where it needs to go until later, when it’s time to revise. The blocking, aka “dialogue tags” usually come last for me as I’m smoothing out the dialogue.
As a reader, I have noticed that it’s usually a good idea to put a short description of where and when we are right on the first page of the scene so the reader can immediately know what to imagine. You don’t want the reader imagining your characters sitting in a drawing room at tea time if they’re actually holding on for dear life to the deck of a sinking frigate (which sounds like a much more fun place to start a book if you ask me!) I think we have been beaten over the head so much with the “rule” about not starting a book with a big, long description that sometimes we go too far in the opposite direction and don’t cue the reader in to where the heck this scene is taking place until five or ten pages into the book. It’s very annoying. It results in “talking head” scenes that might as well be taking place out in the depths of space. I personally get very annoyed when I open a romance and can’t tell for the life of me if it’s a medieval or a Victorian. To me that says that the writer has not created a full, rich story world.
So, work on your descriptive writing. It makes for a much richer reading experience. Of course you don’t want to go overboard and yammer on for pages of description. That will put modern readers to sleep. But I encourage you to revel in your world-building. It’s part of what allows the reader to feel like they’re really there in the story world, truly taking part in the adventure. Go for it!
GF
