On writing: descriptions

[MrHereWriting]

Some people have a feel for description, when and how much to put in, others develop it over time, but that doesn't stop them from putting in too much because they can't help themselves. Others have a checklist and they try to write to that checklist and it actually sounds like bullet points put into a paragraph.

No matter your rules and methods, the bottom line is, does it feel like it's supposed to be there? I'm not talking about importance either. Does it feel like too much, or too little? Do you find yourself rushing through it? Is it getting in the way of your enjoyment? Is it turning into a story of its own?

If you didn't write it, would you still want to read it?

 

[Britva415]

Chekov hides his firearms somewhere in the middle

If it's hidden among a bunch of stuff that isn't guns and none of it ever "goes off" except the one hidden gun, then it isn't Chekhov or anyone employing his advice.

 

[Britva415]

you can never have too much atmosphere

Maybe you can't, but it's a matter of taste, so this can't be a rule.

 

[Britva415]

I'm not anti-description, though I do feel that a little goes a longer way than excessively much does.

I'm not anti-atmosphere, but excessively much description cannot succeed at creating a feeling of atmosphere if the reader rolls their eyes and skips over it.

I'm not a Chekhov fetishist, but his advice does have the effect of at least making one thoughtful about how much is excessive. Mindfully disregarding the Chekhov's Gun concept yields way better results than not thinking about it at all.

 

[HordHolm]

Something I'd add to the overall here: remember that readers have a pretty good idea of what an e.g. table is. So, unless there's something unusual about the table, then just say there's a table and leave it at that. This morning, deep in the weeds of my WIP, I had a minor character walk across a sand dune, and at no point did I describe any of the setting beyond 'sand dune'. From this I would expect my readers to not only understand what a sand dune is, but also what it's made of, what it is generally like to walk acroos a sand dune, how the sand moves, etc. I also expect the reader to have a vision of what kind of scrubby vegetation is likely to be there, and that it is next to the sea. Adding to the extrapolation I would hope my readers make would be that the weather is decent (as other characters are cooking over an open fire), and from the fact that the sun is shining in the late afternoon, that it isn't winter.

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies.
The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.
“They look like white elephants,” she said.

Hills, not dunes, but with atmosphere. Written by someone.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I have had dozens of readers comment that this scene, as written, made them feel not only immersed in the story from the beginning, but invested in whoever this character was:

She noticed him immediately. She had been taught.

His appearance made her pause in her stroll back to the mall. She remained approximately three feet inside the hallway that led to the restrooms near the food court at Shoreline Mall. She could watch him, but he would have a difficult time seeing her. She had been taught.

Other patrons of the mall lingered at tables in the food court or stood in lines at one of the food vendors’ counters. If anyone else had noticed the man wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying the duffel bag they hadn’t reacted as she had. She had been taught.

She continued watching from the hallway as the man stopped just inside the doors leading to the west parking lot of the mall. He wasn’t leaving as she had hoped. He was positioning himself between the people in the food court and their quickest exit. This could all be staged. Some sort of drill or test of security response to an active shooter, but her instincts told her otherwise. Her right hand reached inside her purse as the man slowly lowered the duffel bag to the tile floor, squatted with his back to the food court, and began to unzip it. She kept the man in her peripheral vision as she glanced over to the food court and looked up, taking in the whole environment. She had been taught.

Through the glass half-wall that provided a barrier for the Mezzanine level of the mall, she could see more than a dozen shoppers strolling across her field of vision, most distracted by their cell phones or focused on their next purchasing objective. She returned her attention to the man and saw him just rising after retrieving several items from the bag. While she had hoped that the intentions of the man were not as she had suspected, she saw that he had donned a balaclava over his face before standing. This, coupled with the sight of the automatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine and the pump-action shotgun dispelled any doubts. She used her left hand to lower her sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. She then removed her right hand from her purse and held it at her side. Patience. She had been taught.

This was real. It took only seconds, but her instincts were verified as the half-wall barrier to the Mezzanine level exploded into thousands of pea-sized particles of tempered glass when the gunshot round struck it. As glass particles rained down on startled customers in the food court, several people on the Mezzanine level screamed in pain and fell to the floor, struck either by shotgun pellets or flying glass. When the man lowered the shotgun, leaving it dangling from the strap over his shoulder, and prepared to fire the automatic rifle into the stunned crowd in the food court, she reacted. She had been taught.

Bracing her left shoulder against the wall at the opening of the hallway to the food court, she took aim from twenty feet away and fired three perfectly grouped shots below his body armor, into the man’s groin area. She heard the bullet casings clinking on the tile floor after each shot but ignored them as she watched the shooter fall immediately to his knees, dropping the assault rifle to the floor. As he bent over in agonizing pain, the strap of the shotgun slid down his arm, but he ignored it. She strolled quickly over to the man and kicked the automatic rifle out of his reach. She had been taught.

Keeping her back to the food court and the security camera that she knew was there, she pulled on the strap of the shotgun until the man’s arm moved enough for her to extract it completely. She slid it out of his reach as well before finally gazing into the man’s eyes. She knew that all he would be able to see in the reflection of her sunglasses would be his own eyes and the pool of blood that was spreading out beneath him. While the bullets from a P380 automatic were not as large as those from a nine-millimeter, three hollow points in the area where she had aimed would almost certainly hit the Femoral artery. Her aim had been true, and the results were evident. She had been taught.

His eyes were losing focus as the life drained out of his body. She stepped away from the spreading pool of blood, placed her pistol back into her purse, and walked quickly through the glass exit doors to the parking lot. Without hesitating at the sound of rapidly approaching sirens, she located her car, slid into the driver’s seat, backed out of her spot, and headed for the mall exit. She would be clear of the scene before anyone could get a description of her. She had been taught.

Details and descriptions are one of the things that inspire me to write - to research and provide information that draws the readers into the scenes. That's what I like to read and what my readers claim to enjoy. The acceptability is often tied to how the information is delivered throughout the story. I attempt to weave it in with characters describing each other rather than some narrative providing an simple info dump on how someone looks.

My sex scenes are typically my least descriptive, because I believe the average person has a clear enough understanding of what different sexual acts are to not need it explained to them. Their knowledge of the setting and characters is where descriptions hold more weight for me.

 

[HordHolm]

Hills, not dunes, but with atmosphere. Written by someone.

Yes, but you don't need to tell me what hills are, and the description of them being white is necessary because normally, when presented with the word 'hill', a reader would think 'green and grassy'. These hills are not green and grassy, so extra description is warranted. If the sand on my dunes wasn't a yellowy-white colour (the colour we usually think of when we say the word 'sand'), but was instead black, volcanic sand, an extra description would be a good thing and would set the scene in the reader's mind. But if the dunes were simply ordinary coloured, would 'John walked over the white sandy dunes lost in thought' add anything more than 'John walked over the dunes lost in thought'? Some would say yes, and I wouldn't want to suggest that simply adding a couple of words would be too much.

But if it became 'John walked over the white, sandy dunes as the blood orange sun sank low, lengthening the shadows of the turquoise marram grass, grains of sand kicking high from his every step and flying away in the breeze whipped in from the grey-green waves topped with sizzling foam as they kissed the shore, then rejected, retreated in defeat before mustering their next assault. He was lost in thought.' then some might say it's a touch over-cooked. Particularly if my point was his 'lost-in-thoughtness' rather than the scenery.

Also, the description you quoted was brief, not overblown. And I think that has its virtue.

Lastly, I think the OP's point was to not swamp action with description. As I said in my post, if there is a reason for a table to not be a common or garden table, then it's worth describing. But if it is just an average table in an average room, with nothing special about it, then the word 'table' should suffice - if it needs to even be mentioned at all. If e.g. John walks up to reception to collect his couriered delivery, do I need to be told that there is a reception desk? And if so, does it matter what colour it is?

I suppose from my POV part of this comes from my inherent frustration with 19th century authors who, by and large, never used ten words to describe something when they had the option to use 200 instead, leaving me internally fuming, 'get to the bloody point!'

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm not anti-atmosphere, but excessively much description cannot succeed at creating a feeling of atmosphere if the reader rolls their eyes and skips over it.

Beautifully put.

I'm not a Chekhov fetishist, but his advice does have the effect of at least making one thoughtful about how much is excessive. Mindfully disregarding the Chekhov's Gun concept yields way better results than not thinking about it at all.

One failing is putting something in and drawing enough attention to it that it *looks* like a Chekov's gun, and the clever audience wait for it to be used - only it never is.

An example is the musical of American Psycho, which is brilliant, perhaps especially if you're of a certain age. (Me: Oh, god, I think I went out with him. Girlfriend: I think I slept with most of them...) It plays a lot of 80s music, though the songs they sing are original. Including the first half of 'In the Air Tonight'.

Which meant we spent the next hour expecting something dramatic to happen, and it to be punctuated with ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, DUM, DUM!

Which never happened. Honestly, the only flaw in a great piece of theatre, but some other people said the same thing on the way out.

 

[Belegon]

I like being descriptive about rooms or settings... i'm far less into being overly descriptive about the physicals of characters. Almost as a rule, if you get a detailed physical description of a character from me, it's self-serving. I've written the charater from the memory of an actual person and I'm indulging myself with the memory of that person... who is almost always someone I found very attractive.

 

[StillStunned]

I have had dozens of readers comment that this scene, as written, made them feel not only immersed in the story from the beginning, but invested in whoever this character was:

Please try not to get carried away with the excerpts. The mods have been tolerant, but I get the sense they prefer us to self-police the length of the snippets we post here.

 

[AG31]

Another important trick, I find, is to provide key information early on. I suspect that readers form a picture in their mind within the first few sentences, or even words.

This thread made me think about how Mick Herron begins many (all??) of his Sough House books with a rapt description of the physical building that the Slow Horses inhabit, or sometimes the neighborhood that the house inhabits. He makes these things almost characters in the story.

Here's the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens's Bleak House:

I came to the thread to create the post above. On the way I bumped into the Bleak House quote. I wouldn't be surprised if Herron got his idea from this very opening of Bleak House.

 

[Britva415]

Another important trick, I find, is to provide key information early on

Like - what is the MC’s gd gender, even.

I’m not talking about a story where the author has deliberately planned the story around the rea dnot knowing this. That is a thing which can be done, and for decent reasons too.

But that is not what too many authors are doing, when they just assume that the reader is going to know, and so they don’t remember to actually indicate it.

Paragraphs and paragraphs later, some sentence just offhandedly happens to finally reveal it. It’s unplanned and accidental. It can make the reader feel a whiplash, if they had previously guessed wrong. Or it can make them feel relief - “damn, we FINALLY know we’re on the same page as the author.”

It happens more commonly in first-person than in third-person, but it can happen there too. I’ve seen it.

It’s a peeve of mine.

 

[Britva415]

I have had dozens of readers comment that this scene, as written, made them feel not only immersed in the story from the beginning, but invested in whoever this character was:

She noticed him immediately. She had been taught.

His appearance made her pause in her stroll back to the mall. She remained approximately three feet inside the hallway that led to the restrooms near the food court at Shoreline Mall. She could watch him, but he would have a difficult time seeing her. She had been taught.

Other patrons of the mall lingered at tables in the food court or stood in lines at one of the food vendors’ counters. If anyone else had noticed the man wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying the duffel bag they hadn’t reacted as she had. She had been taught.

She continued watching from the hallway as the man stopped just inside the doors leading to the west parking lot of the mall. He wasn’t leaving as she had hoped. He was positioning himself between the people in the food court and their quickest exit. This could all be staged. Some sort of drill or test of security response to an active shooter, but her instincts told her otherwise. Her right hand reached inside her purse as the man slowly lowered the duffel bag to the tile floor, squatted with his back to the food court, and began to unzip it. She kept the man in her peripheral vision as she glanced over to the food court and looked up, taking in the whole environment. She had been taught.

Through the glass half-wall that provided a barrier for the Mezzanine level of the mall, she could see more than a dozen shoppers strolling across her field of vision, most distracted by their cell phones or focused on their next purchasing objective. She returned her attention to the man and saw him just rising after retrieving several items from the bag. While she had hoped that the intentions of the man were not as she had suspected, she saw that he had donned a balaclava over his face before standing. This, coupled with the sight of the automatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine and the pump-action shotgun dispelled any doubts. She used her left hand to lower her sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. She then removed her right hand from her purse and held it at her side. Patience. She had been taught.

This was real. It took only seconds, but her instincts were verified as the half-wall barrier to the Mezzanine level exploded into thousands of pea-sized particles of tempered glass when the gunshot round struck it. As glass particles rained down on startled customers in the food court, several people on the Mezzanine level screamed in pain and fell to the floor, struck either by shotgun pellets or flying glass. When the man lowered the shotgun, leaving it dangling from the strap over his shoulder, and prepared to fire the automatic rifle into the stunned crowd in the food court, she reacted. She had been taught.

Bracing her left shoulder against the wall at the opening of the hallway to the food court, she took aim from twenty feet away and fired three perfectly grouped shots below his body armor, into the man’s groin area. She heard the bullet casings clinking on the tile floor after each shot but ignored them as she watched the shooter fall immediately to his knees, dropping the assault rifle to the floor. As he bent over in agonizing pain, the strap of the shotgun slid down his arm, but he ignored it. She strolled quickly over to the man and kicked the automatic rifle out of his reach. She had been taught.

Keeping her back to the food court and the security camera that she knew was there, she pulled on the strap of the shotgun until the man’s arm moved enough for her to extract it completely. She slid it out of his reach as well before finally gazing into the man’s eyes. She knew that all he would be able to see in the reflection of her sunglasses would be his own eyes and the pool of blood that was spreading out beneath him. While the bullets from a P380 automatic were not as large as those from a nine-millimeter, three hollow points in the area where she had aimed would almost certainly hit the Femoral artery. Her aim had been true, and the results were evident. She had been taught.

His eyes were losing focus as the life drained out of his body. She stepped away from the spreading pool of blood, placed her pistol back into her purse, and walked quickly through the glass exit doors to the parking lot. Without hesitating at the sound of rapidly approaching sirens, she located her car, slid into the driver’s seat, backed out of her spot, and headed for the mall exit. She would be clear of the scene before anyone could get a description of her. She had been taught.

Details and descriptions are one of the things that inspire me to write - to research and provide information that draws the readers into the scenes. That's what I like to read and what my readers claim to enjoy. The acceptability is often tied to how the information is delivered throughout the story. I attempt to weave it in with characters describing each other rather than some narrative providing an simple info dump on how someone looks.

My sex scenes are typically my least descriptive, because I believe the average person has a clear enough understanding of what different sexual acts are to not need it explained to them. Their knowledge of the setting and characters is where descriptions hold more weight for me.

At least stuff is happening, in that example. “Mere” description, where stuff is being described but nothing is f’n happening, sucks royally when stretched out to that kind of length.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Details and descriptions are one of the things that inspire me to write - to research and provide information that draws the readers into the scenes. That's what I like to read and what my readers claim to enjoy. The acceptability is often tied to how the information is delivered throughout the story. I attempt to weave it in with characters describing each other rather than some narrative providing an simple info dump on how someone looks.

Agree

 

[EmilyMiller]

I think we have yet another example here of Mandalorian wisdom:

You can write it well…
Or you can write it badly…

Well written description that serves a purpose (ideally more than one) is not an info dump in any way shape or form.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

At least stuff is happening, in that example. “Mere” description, where stuff is being described but nothing is f’n happening, sucks royally when stretched out to that kind of length.

Weaving descriptive elements into the action just seems to make everything flow better, IMO.

"The images of the gallery quality prints on the walls, which seemed so sharp and vibrant moments ago, were becoming cloudy and blurred as all the blood in his body sought the warmth of her mouth on his cock. Even the lustrous shine of her hair seemed to fade as his typically perfect vision failed him."

 

[anthrodisiac]

Weaving descriptive elements into the action just seems to make everything flow better, IMO.

"The images of the gallery quality prints on the walls, which seemed so sharp and vibrant moments ago, were becoming cloudy and blurred as all the blood in his body sought the warmth of her mouth on his cock. Even the lustrous shine of her hair seemed to fade as his typically perfect vision failed him."

Depends on the type of action.

If you have a fight scene, chase scene, anything where the intensity relies on rampant tension, you don't want long, pretty paragraphs that have nice flow and paint a vivid picture of all the tiny little details. You want chaos. Fragmentation. Murder everything that isn't immediately relevant. Having nice, long, well constructed sentences with lots of fine detail absolutely kills the tension and takes the reader out of the brutal BOOM BOOM BOOM that keeps them on the edge of their seat. You don't want them languidly reading, you want them gripping the book so hard their fingernails dig into the cover.

But for something like a sex scene, the descriptive elements are nice touches if you're going for a slower vibe. Especially if you narrow down the descriptions to the immediate action, so the world outside the action fades away, and the character/reader is left focusing only on the here and now, right in front of them.

 

[Britva415]

Weaving descriptive elements into the action just seems to make everything flow better, IMO.

"The images of the gallery quality prints on the walls, which seemed so sharp and vibrant moments ago, were becoming cloudy and blurred as all the blood in his body sought the warmth of her mouth on his cock. Even the lustrous shine of her hair seemed to fade as his typically perfect vision failed him."

Is that supposed to be an example of something that flows?

Eugh. It impedes flow.

Worse, it isn't even evocative of anything.

IMO.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Is that supposed to be an example of something that flows?

Eugh. It impedes flow.

Worse, it isn't even evocative of anything.

IMO.

I dunno if I'd go that far. The internal flow is decent, if perhaps somewhat flowery and could be tightened a bit, but whether it "impedes" the flow is context dependent on the rest of the section. My suspicion is that this is simply Bobby's style, so it probably flows well within the larger context.

 

[RemoteShadeofGreen]

I think it was a noir detective fiction writer who once said, "Set the scene and get to the dialog." That pretty well sums it up for a lot of what I write.

This is often my strategy these days. I write a lot in first person, and refuse to contrive ways to have a character describe themself in the first paragraphs.

And I like to let the reader use their imagination. So I’m extremely spare on descriptions of the MC, but a picture nonetheless develops through actions as they’re interacting with the environment/other people. I also tend to pack a lot into short stories- it’s all dialog and doing out in their world (ncluding sex, of course [during which there’s also a lot of dialog.]) I end up with fairly district characters with complete personalities, per my commenters.

 

[Britva415]

whether it "impedes" the flow is context dependent on the rest of the section

It's a matter of opinion. I stated mine, and mine is that flow was impeded. That one sentence told a very short story, but badly and with difficulty.

I couldn't even read that one sentence without having to stop and parse all the several various things it was trying to say. More context wouldn't help. If 90% of that sentence was context within which an eye-watering blowjob was happening, it could have been multiple sentences that told a story, instead of an excessively-descriptive single sentence.

I guess I'm saying two different things: Excessive description all by itself can impede flow, and, flow can also be unnecessarily impeded because of the structure, even if there's nothing wrong with the stuff being described.

I can't imagine enjoying more "context" written in similar fashion.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I couldn't even read that one sentence without having to stop and parse all the several various things it was trying to say. More context wouldn't help. If 90% of that sentence was context within which an eye-watering blowjob was happening, it could have been multiple sentences that told a story, instead of an excessively-descriptive single sentence.

Sure, it could've been. I probably would've written the way you describe, but, again, that's a stylistic choice.

Now, it would absolutely impede flow if this was the middle or end of the blowjob and the construction of the scene were stylistically different from that excerpt. But if it's the start, then we're going from higher awareness and complexity of structure/thought to (potentially) shorter, more urgent, primal constructions.

Or if the entire story is written this way, it fits into the flow of that style. People who are into this style wouldn't have any issues with this construction. I've met a lot of people who enjoy this style, and they wouldn't bat an eye at this.

Those are the kinds of context necessary to figure out whether it's truly impeding the flow of the scene writ large. My suspicion is that more or less the entire story is written in this style (based on the other excerpt provided), so it's not out of place or anything that someone who'd read everything leading up to it would take umbrage with. People who didn't like this style would've probably bounced well before this, so it's self-selecting for readers who appreciate the style.

 

[Britva415]

it would absolutely impede flow if

I don't get why you keep writing as if I'm factually wrong and didn't experience this. It did impede flow, for me. That was my experience.

I respect and appreciate your points, but not the way you frame and 'splain them. Especially after I already prominently framed my statements as my experience and my opinions after the first time I got "corrected." Hearing "nuh uh" again is infuriating.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I don't get why you keep writing as if I'm factually wrong and didn't experience this. It did impede flow, for me. That was my experience.

I respect and appreciate your points, but not the way you frame and 'splain them. Especially after I already prominently framed my statements as my experience and my opinions. Hearing "nuh uh" is infuriating.

I'm very sorry; I very much misread your posts as a factual statement that it impeded flow in general principles, not necessarily just for you. I'm used to discussing with people who make blanket statements about "this is always the case," who very rarely couch things as individual experience, but instead as hard rules. My apologies, my brain's not fully plugged in today, and reading back, it's incredibly obvious you were framing it from a personal experience perspective, and I'm really not sure how I missed that. Very much my bad.