How descriptive are you?

[StillStunned]

I just finished reading "Heart of Darkness" for the first time since I was 19, which I skimmed it one morning because it was required reading at uni. I didn't retain much. This time round - the audiobook narrated by Kenneth Branagh - I had plenty of opportunity to absorb it in all its detail.

One thing that struck me (besides the heavy-handed themes of life and death, civilisation versus savagery, exploitation versus enlightenment, sight versus speech, blah blah) was that I didn't get much of a sense of oppressive darkness, of being in the middle of the Congo, despite the amount of descriptive detail. I've never ventured into deepest Africa, but from spending time in other parts of the tropics I'd imagine suffocating, stifling heat, a thick air that's like being covered by a thick blanket, so that every sound surprises you for not being muffled. A sense of isolation from the difficulty of breathing, even though there's an abundance of life within reach of your fingertips. I get very little of that from Conrad's descriptions.

So this got me thinking: do you prefer to describe your settings in detail, or do you sketch the outlines and hope the reader picks up on the mood you're building and fills in the rest? How do you feel it impacts your stories, and do you think they'd work better or worse if you went the other way? Have you had any feedback from readers one way or the other? Have you ever deliberately tried to go against your natural preference?

Have you ever read a story (here or elsewhere) that captured your imagination in only a few lines, and was that because of the detail or because of the mood? Have you ever read a story that seemed to want to do the one or the other, but fell short?

Do you have any particular tricks that you use for making your descriptions vivid? For making your moods more real? Any words or phrases you find yourself using again and again? Any objects you tend to describe in more detail than others?

Feel free to share your experiences, but please keep it civil. Let's not get into an argument about whether one is inherently better or worse, or about laziness and self-indulgence or whatever. What works for you might not work for someone else, and vice versa.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do you have any particular tricks that you use for making your descriptions vivid? For making your moods more real? Any words or phrases you find yourself using again and again? Any objects you tend to describe in more detail than others?

People have described my style as very visual, cinematic. There's often a description of the surroundings, the weather (often a mood setter in its own right), noises or silence. Not great long exhaustive scene settings, more often just a sentence, a phrase. What I call grace notes: some tiny detail, otherwise inconsequential, that zings like a splash of colour in a painting.

This is one of my favourite sketches:

I saw how the back of her hand was lightly freckled, the veins like a river on a map, and ever so slightly blue. Her skin was quite pale. A long scar ran along the side of her little finger, and I imagined some childhood accident, a young girl running inside to find mother, when only a father would do. I saw a tiny pulse on a vein near her wrist, and counted her heartbeats. Her pulse was quite quick, and I lost count at twenty-two.

 

[JeffIntrigued]

Making uses of as many of the five senses as you can always helps. Using language that is both descriptive AND emotive at the same time is also a nice angle. Having the perspective character give some sense of how a space makes them feel (or memories it evokes) is another tactic.

I realize now I've focused on describing places/settings above, but there is clearly some cross-over with how one would describe a character's appearance (or vibe).

 

[MrPixel]

I have received some compliments about "painting a picture". I'd assess my style as in the middle, enough narrative to convey the ambiance, "...the aroma of bacon..." in setting-up a breakfast scene, and "...leaning against the fridge..." to convey the mood.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

There are many famous books that are known mostly for their social impact at the time, the philosophy and ideas they carried, whilst the writing isn't really that well done. I could name a few myself. It's been a long time since I read Heart of Darkness but I have no problem trusting your impression.

How do I wield my descriptions? Well, I tend to describe in detail important characters or scenes only, where something is about to happen and the description adds to the whole experience. Most other things I describe lightly with a sentence or two, giving just a general idea of how something looks like. I think too much description can swiftly bore the reader.
But even when I describe something in detail, it's often done in smaller doses.

For example: In Young Mage CH 02. I describe Elven lands through the eyes of my MC, trying to let the reader feel his awe. The description is important at that moment because I want to emphasize how different the elven world is. But even there, I only give a general idea, putting emphasis on colors and shapes rather than a detailed layout. I just want the reader to feel wonder. Throughout the chapter, I slowly add to the description, only a couple of sentences each time, building upon the previous description.
I believe my readers appreciate this particular style of exposition as I never hit them with more than one paragraph of description before dialogue, some action scene, or some plot point happens.

Personally, I hate long expositions and descriptions and I don't consider them to be good writing, although I am always ready to hear some counter-arguments.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Have you ever read a story (here or elsewhere) that captured your imagination in only a few lines, and was that because of the detail or because of the mood?

Yes. I love it when I come across a descriptive passage that paints a vivid picture in my mind's eye with only a few deft strokes. I can think of two good examples off the top of my head, both from erotic horror stories. I found both so evocative and so effective in setting the mood that I stopped while reading to make a note of them, then called them out in the comment that I posted on the story.

• From "Across the Reef and into the Sea" by Maonaigh, a Lovecraftian horror story:

"Although the day had been moderately fine when they had left Newburyport, leaden cloud had moved in from the east and a fine drizzle had started, slanting on a stiff breeze against the windscreen, the wipers on which were now clacking madly. On either side of the bus Lomax could see great stretches of marshland, the only vegetation being massed reeds and rushes, pallid in colour, with the occasional bare, stunted tree. Richie's cab window was still partly open and Lomax kept getting rank whiffs of salty water and rotting plant-life, as if the whole area was stagnating."

• The opening paragraph from "The Countesses of Tannensdal" by StillStunned:

"Tannensdal, seen from the train, was as I had expected. Gloomy forests covered brooding mountains along the valley's vast length. Mist ventured out from the safety of crevasses and gorges to send probing fingers oozing up the slopes. Small hamlets stood isolated from each other by dark woodland and steep cliffs and, most likely, centuries of mutual dislike and distrust."

I know I've come across many other excellent examples, but I don't recall the specific stories.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

The amount of detail depends on the story. I have a traditional romance I wrote that takes place in a small town. The town is almost a character in the story,so it gets a lot of detail. The roadhouse the main characters meet in, the art deco town square, the diner, my hope is the reader feels like they're there. For other stories, the setting is just a backdrop for the 'action' so it doesn't get as much detail.

 

[Britva415]

this got me thinking: do you prefer to describe your settings in detail, or do you sketch the outlines and hope the reader picks up on the mood you're building and fills in the rest? How do you feel it impacts your stories, and do you think they'd work better or worse if you went the other way?

It all depends on the story. If I’m trying to build a mood, “not building the mood” isn’t going to satisfy my goals.

Will it serve the story? It depends. Why should we build a mood? When shouldn’t we? Some stories build a mood and it doesn’t serve the story because the story is about something unrelated to, or directly contrary to, that mood. Some stories miss an opportunity to build a mood which would enhance the set and setting in a way which would serve the story.

Either way, I wouldn’t count on readers to fill in any more than I myself did. We can still “show not tell,” but stuff which we don’t even show can’t be expected to pop up on a reader’s radar.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

It depends on the story. For instance, a lot of what I write has bondage themes in it. So if I'm writing a story with a character that has been imprisoned for a while, I may describe the setting in excruciating detail to reflect the amount of time the character has had to become acquainted with their environment. (Also, possibly, if I happen to find that kind of setting to be a turn on anyway. )

In Review Day, which has heavy straitjacket bondage themes, I had the character be brought out of a padded cell and into an office. So I attempted to give a robust description to the office, not only for the sake of describing the office itself, but also to highlight the stark contrast between the two rooms as experienced by the character. So the more detailed description had a sort of dual purpose in this case.

In other cases, I may give some description just to give the settings a bit of color, but won't spend too much time on that if it's not crucial to the story. I don't really like superfluous detail and don't want to belabor anything, though I can see where this is subjective and can respect different approaches.

Interestingly, I don't tend to describe the characters themselves to any great degree unless they are non-human or otherwise exotic or unworldly. Maybe my tendency here is to leave things more to the imagination.

 

[AlexBailey]

It depends on the story. For instance, a lot of what I write has bondage themes in it. So if I'm writing a story with a character that has been imprisoned for a while, I may describe the setting in excruciating detail to reflect the amount of time the character has had to become acquainted with their environment. (Also, possibly, if I happen to find that kind of setting to be a turn on anyway. )

In Review Day, which has heavy straitjacket bondage themes, I had the character be brought out of a padded cell and into an office. So I attempted to give a robust description to the office, not only for the sake of describing the office itself, but also to highlight the stark contrast between the two rooms as experienced by the character. So the more detailed description had a sort of dual purpose in this case.

In other cases, I may give some description just to give the settings a bit of color, but won't spend too much time on that if it's not crucial to the story. I don't really like superfluous detail and don't want to belabor anything, though I can see where this is subjective and can respect different approaches.

Interestingly, I don't tend to describe the characters themselves to any great degree unless they are non-human or otherwise exotic or unworldly. Maybe my tendency here is to leave things more to the imagination.

I just checked out Review Day.

I get the kink. (Thanks for that!) The stark scenery really works for the mood and situation. On the first read I ‘saw’ a bit of the office but the rest of the place felt mostly undefined. Without going back to read again I can’t really describe anything but a vague clinical setting.

My head filled in the scenery blanks from the sets of a few shows I’ve recently seen, including Severance and The Silo.

 

[TheOtherTeacher]

I only describe what is needed for the story.

I rarely even describe people, except with opinions like "beautiful" or "short and cute" or "tall and muscular".

If I just say a woman is beautiful, all my readers imagine a beautiful woman. For some she's a redhead. Others, brunette. For some she's skinny. For others she's curvy.

If I described the woman as I view her, I know many wouldn't agree with my view of beautiful.

For locations I generally give more details if I know the setting. But I've never been to the USA. If I set a story there, I'll avoid details to avoid mistakes.

I write porn. I'm not writing great literature. I don't need to spend two paragraphs describing a tree. It's a tree, and people are getting busy behind it.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

I just checked out Review Day.

I get the kink. (Thanks for that!) The stark scenery really works for the mood and situation. On the first read I ‘saw’ a bit of the office but the rest of the place felt mostly undefined. Without going back to read again I can’t really describe anything but a vague clinical setting.

My head filled in the scenery blanks from the sets of a few shows I’ve recently seen, including Severance and The Silo.

Thanks, that is excellent feedback. It's possible I could have used describing it more. Probably by the time I got to the rest of it, my mind was already elsewhere.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think description is very important, but it's really hard to come up with any universal rules about how to do it. It depends on the story. It depends on the mood you are trying to capture.

I agree with the comment above about appealing to the senses. But you don't have to appeal to all of them at any one point. A vivid, artful sentence that captures how something smells might be all you need to describe a scene.

There are two things I try to do in descriptive scenes to avoid making the description too flat. One is to try to describe a setting in terms of its impact on the character. Another is to try to use a variety of active verbs and not to rely too much on "to be" verbs, i.e., "the mountain was tall, the trees were green."

Here's an example from one of my stories where two people are hiking to a lake. I am an avid hiker and lover of the wilderness, so when I write stories in a wilderness setting I try to capture the best I can the way I experience the wilderness as I hike through it. "Write what you know" and all that:

It was downhill all the way to the lake, so we made faster time, although the steep trail was tough on the legs. The accumulated weight of my body and my pack pounded my knees on every step down the mountain path.

The twisty trail ducked through a thick stand of firs. The scent of their pitch hit my nostrils. Sara continued walking ahead of me, setting a brisk pace. I sensed her eagerness to get to our destination.

A few more twists and turns on the trail later, the trees parted and there it was: Baskin Lake, sparkling like a sapphire in the stark mountain setting. I'd forgotten just how beautiful it was. The rock cliffs that framed it loomed improbably high and steep above us. Patches of snow fields clung here and there to the steep shoulders of the surrounding peaks. Off to the right, a waterfall borne of snowmelt cascaded a hundred feet over a vertical pitch of rock. Stunted, twisted trees held on to the forbidding mountain slopes where they could.

In this passage I used "was" a few times, but I also made a deliberate attempt to describe the way the elements of the setting interacted with one another and with the character through the use of active verbs: "pounded," "ducked," "hit," "parted," "loomed," "clung," "cascaded," etc. I think if a writer focuses deliberately on using active verbs it makes the writing more exciting and interesting, AND more successfully descriptive. Active verbs put you as the reader into a scene rather than making you feel like you are looking at a painting on a wall.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

As I sit here, in my office, surrounded by computer monitors, movie props, the dark walls hemming me in, framed by a window that opens out onto a bucolic winter scene, with fresh snow, birds fighting each other for the scraps under the half-full bird feeder, my mind wanders back to the hundreds of thousands of words I've written over the last three months.

How descriptive am I? My dark blue coffee mug sits on my desk, the aroma of freshly ground, freshly brewed mocha filling the air, and a gentle waft of steam rises from the murky brown liquid. Taking a sip, I sat back, relishing the feel of the leather on my back, the softness of its well-worn areas embracing me. This is my natural habitat, and where I do my best writing and my best thinking.

As I stare at the browser on my large monitor, the words begin to form in my mind. My long fingers - which end in neatly trimmed nails, one knuckle bandaged as a result of a disagreement with a cat food can - begin to rapidly type out an answer to StillStunned's question. It briefly goes through my mind that I have no business responding in a thread like this, when so many better writers have already answered his question, but I'm compelled by my desire to stop refreshing my Valentine's Day story to see if someone has left a comment, and this seems like the best use of my time.

The staccato burst of wit and prose flow from my fingers through the keyboard into my computer, and then across the interwebs to my colleagues here in the author's hangout.

"I describe a lot of shit, lol"

Pure genius, I think to myself, taking a congratulatory sip of coffee. Another job well done.

 

[APilgrimSquare]

Not even of fraction of how descriptive I wish my writing was. Rule number 1 is “show, don’t tell” and I trample all over it when I’m tapping my ideas out on scrivener. Part of it comes down to patience: when I have ideas, I want to let them out. I can write 10k words a day if I get into a good flow, but it’s all “this happened, then he said, then that happened, she did, that happened.” Even my descriptions feel like asides, little FYI tidbits to give the reader a picture to work with.

I guess that’s just life as a pantser… and what editing/rewriting is for!

 

[MillieDynamite]

I'm as descriptive as a cold, waterfall, tumbling and churning down a cliff from the lake atop a snow covered mountain in the late spring.

 

[Cagivagurl]

The devil is in the detail.
How much is too much???
I think it's part of the writers style, their ability to paint images with words.
I like to read stories crafted with magical descriptions of places and people.
I need to feel the emotions is it dark, oppressive and sombre, bright, warm sparkling waters glistening. The gentle flow of a mountain creek...
Even erotica needs that.
How did the characters feel? Scared? full of anticipation, aroused, numb...
Without those depictions, how do we unravel how they feel???

Just my thoughts.
Cagivagurl

 

[XerXesXu]

The trick with description is to match the detail to the character giving the description. The MMC dresses for a date, he describes how carefully he presents himself and why. When he meets his date, she recounts her impression of the MMC. Compare and contrast. Out of such detail the personalities of the characters are revealed. Similarly with scene setting. Different characters will notice different details, what is important or worthy of comment to them, this 'rounds out' their characters, reveals compatabilities /incompatabilities, foreshadows how their relationship will develop.

You need only add sufficient description to do that.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If I just say a woman is beautiful, all my readers imagine a beautiful woman. For some she's a redhead. Others, brunette. For some she's skinny. For others she's curvy.

If I described the woman as I view her, I know many wouldn't agree with my view of beautiful.

See, I disagree with that. People make the argument, "leave it to the reader's imagination". Well, if it's just the guy pumping gas while the two main characters argue in the car, we can leave the gas jockey to the reader's imagination sure, but our main characters are from our imagination and writing is sharing our imagination with the reader. In an erotic story, what people look like is important and the characters who are important enough should be described quite fully.

If we let the reader fill in their own blanks why stop at something so important as physical description in erotica? Why not let them choose the setting plot and ending too? When does the reader become the writer himself? So many reader's complain, "you should have written it like this instead, bad score for you," and we tell them, " write your own story then. This is what I wrote." Well, leaving important things to the reader's imagination is not writing your own story.

Description is one of the main pillars of literature. I'm not a good enough writer to ignore it. I will do what I have to do to immerse the reader. If I'm a writer it's my job to give the reader the images in my head.

 

[Bazzle]

I like scene setting and hate dialogue

 

[oneagainst]

I write like it's a movie - which I guess it is in my head. So, there are sights and sounds and it's as important to describe the way the sunlight falls across a body as it is to describe the body itself. I want the reader to fall into the action, to be right there in the room.

Nothing beats it.

 

[shelleycat1]

I’m very much still learning. Some writers manage it, some describe it through dialogue, some drop to the ‘six foot one with a beer belly and attractive nasal hair’ level. I try to avoid that. Also I am trying to find the balance between show and tell.

One of my favourite books is Rebecca, by Daphne de Maurier:

(Paraphrased.) The unnamed female narrator describes flowers as types, their colours, and growing, but with an emotional impact of shocking and lush. They feel out of place as she walks down to the contrast of the beach where she finds a central part of the plot.

I look for such things now as I read favourite authors. Here, there are so many styles and when someone hits the descriptive spot they make me stop and think, even reread it to get their picture into my head.

In one of my stories, ‘The Cloned Wife,’ I use a real description of a two year old finding ants and other minibeasts as we walked round a park near our house. The amazement and delight that he could find such things and name them. Each time he found another there was a cry of “Look, another ant!” In the story the clone is so new too.

 

[Erozetta]

Depends on the story and the characters. But I've been known to put a ridiculous amount of detail into food elements for stories.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

Depends on the story and the characters. But I've been known to put a ridiculous amount of detail into food elements for stories.

This is a thing I picked up from George RR Martin. I go to great lengths on the meals in my stories. I skip the ‘grease running down his chin’ bit though.

 

[Erozetta]

This is a thing I picked up from George RR Martin. I go to great lengths on the meals in my stories. I skip the ‘grease running down his chin’ bit though.

I've not read any of his stuff yet.

My approach is along the scents, taste, and care that goes into making the meal.

The way the rosemary sizzles and releases its scent when it hits the browned butter before tossing the makeshift sauce with roasted carrots and parsnips, adding an earthy note to the sweet and nutty flavor, or the way each bite of the roast feels delicate and tastes rich with garlic and pepper, the slight crunch of a small seared piece that contrasts with the rare inner portion.

Sometimes I'll play into the way fresh cherries stain lips, or the way a Popsicle melts over the clavicle and trails along the skin, and how the taste is altered by the perfume the character is wearing.

The way the ruddy color of a spice rub can add an element of color to a meal, or the way sweet potatoes caramelize slightly when roasted, crisp outside and tenderly fluffy inside, the scent of slightly burnt sugar lingering during the meal.

There's just a lot you can do with food, and not all of it involves watching the MFC's boobs jiggle as she whips up some heavy cream with sugar and vanilla, though that can certainly be a thing, too.