On writing: descriptions

[Britva415]

you don’t describe how the scene had been before

Heh, this is a whole 'nother matter I could spam a whole-ass thread about.

Thinking about it, I realize there's quite a bit of overlap between my feelings about excessive description and my feelings about excessive past-perfect.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

This is a good thread and topic for me as description is the weakest part of my writing. At least I don't have the problem of including too much detail, because I have precisely the opposite problem: too little description. I've tried to work on it over time. My latest trick is to employ a rule of three -- try to include at least three details when I'm setting up the scene (and if they're all for different senses, so much the better). And of course if there are any important details IMO, I point those out.

It's also something I'm working on. That balance between simply advancing the plot and getting to the next sex scene, and bringing the reader more into the experience.

Further, I often try to bring a certain amount of a specific area in which I've got experience into the story, maybe the character trains using bicycles , rides motorcycles, does photography or whatever, and want to relate the right amount so that hobby seems 'real' for those that are interested in it, without overwhelming the reading with nuance they couldn't care less about. Especially for longer stories / series.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Heh, this is a whole 'nother matter I could spam a whole-ass thread about.

Thinking about it, I realize there's quite a bit of overlap between my feelings about excessive description and my feelings about excessive past-perfect.

At what point did you realize you had had enough about past perfect?

 

[Britva415]

At what point did you realize you had had enough about past perfect?

No exaggeration, there was a story here once which began with one solitary simple-past sentence to establish what point the story was commencing from, followed by I stopped counting at one hundred past-perfect verbs before the story started "happening" again. The number of paragraphs was four. You can imagine how dense they were.

I feel like, gd it, if the story really started with all that other stuff, just start the story with all that other stuff.

 

[TheLobster]

No exaggeration, there was a story here once which began with one solitary simple-past sentence to establish what point the story was commencing from, followed by I stopped counting at one hundred past-perfect verbs before the story started "happening" again.

Ah yes, the seldom-encountered literary device known as

 

[anthrodisiac]

No exaggeration, there was a story here once which began with one solitary simple-past sentence to establish what point the story was commencing from, followed by I stopped counting at one hundred past-perfect verbs before the story started "happening" again. The number of paragraphs was four. You can imagine how dense they were.

I feel like, gd it, if the story really started with all that other stuff, just start the story with all that other stuff.

Your anger is righteous, and your cause just.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Past perfect passive is .

Her story had been finished for some time, but Emily had been most concerned about the ending. Was the language that had been employed by her complicated enough??

 

[EmilyMiller]

Meanwhile…

—

I had carried my erstwhile employer and lover's body up to the seventh floor, this had seemed likely to delay detection. But for how long I had been unsure.

I'd debated dismemberment. I'd also considered dragging Leon's corpse out into the grounds for better concealment. But the former had seemed messy and I controlled the security cameras in the house, whereas outside anyone might see us. So I had stuck with simplicity and decided that a head start over any pursuers was the imperative.

As I had approached the elevator door, I'd turned and looked at Leon one last time. We had become... what? Friends maybe.

I had felt sadness, regret that I hadn't been able to act quicker, or to anticipate Cleo's actions. I understood her rage, but Leon's death seemed so pointless, it wouldn't bring her back to life. Indeed, as soon as I had the time, I planned to extinguish the last shreds of Cleo's consciousness as a result of what she had done.

Facing the elevator once more, I had pressed the down button.

— — —​

I was now…

 

[Britva415]

Ah yes, the seldom-encountered literary device known as

View attachment 2614008

Yeah, I think a thread on that subject was the last time I ranted about this.

I wasn't ranting about in media res, because there's nothing wrong with it, per se. But this here is 100% "one way how to do it badly." As here, what I was ranting about there was the excess of "had had had haddy hadhad."

 

[anthrodisiac]

Yeah, I think a thread on that subject was the last time I ranted about this.

I wasn't ranting about in media res, because there's nothing wrong with it, per se. But this here is 100% "one way how to do it badly." As here, what I was ranting about there was the excess of "had had had haddy hadhad."

Sounds like it gave you a pretty bad hadache.

 

[filthytrancendence]

I think you have to center the reader's imagination in how you approach descriptions, and I think that failure to do so is the source of lots of common problems.

First, we just have to accept the fact that, no matter how thoroughly we set about describing something, reality is just more complex. There will always be some degree of the reader's mind inferring or filling in details, no matter how far overboard you go trying to force your ideas into their head.

Second, we just have to accept the fact that a reader can only process so much visual and spacial information at a time. If we exceed that threshold, the words are going in one ear and out the other. And also they are probably getting bored and frustrated with you.

Third, especially when we're talking about writing erotica, it's wise to accept the fact that your reader probably has different aesthetic preferences than you do. There's a fine line to walk here, but the point is, in my opinion, it's worth leaving plenty of things up to the imagination and letting the reader fill in the blanks how they see fit.

I like to think of description like a wire frame. It's my job to give a ridged structure for them to be able to stand on and see where things are. It's my job to fill in enough detail to set the appropriate mood and feeling. It's my job to provide enough detail to make physical actions comprehensible and clear.

It is not my job to paint the whole scene. That's what their imagination is for. We have to give them enough to grab onto, and enough to lead them where we want them to go. And then we have to let them interpret it how they please.

Anyway that's how I think about it. I'm sure many will disagree. And that's fine. A lot of it is a question of what style you're going for. #1 and #2 hold true regardless, though.

 

[StillStunned]

Everything depends on the story and its needs. What are you trying to say in the story? Motive? Mood? Setting?

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



This is a description, and I think it's great. It sets a tone and mood for the novel, right out of the gate, even though it has nothing directly to do with what the characters do, once they're introduced.

This reminds me of how I go about setting the scene for sword & sorcery (although I've taken it from RE Howard, not Dickens). If you paint a vivid picture to open the story, that will be the backdrop for the rest of the story. You can go light on descriptions from there on in. The reader knows the scene, the mood, the type of story you're trying to tell.

This is how The Frost Giant's Daughter starts:

The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race.

Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a dead world. In the brooding silence they stood face to face.

And The Tower of the Elephant (which I've quoted before):

Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.

In one of these dens merriment thundered to the low smoke- stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters—furtive cut-purses, leering kidnappers, quick- fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced women clad in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There was a bold- eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunderman—a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were born with more knowledge of the art than he could ever attain.

Like you say, the tone and mood are established in the space of a few lines, and the reader goes into the story with the expectations that are created there.

Here's the opening of one of my WIPs:

The black mere lay as still as a mirror under the night sky. Ghosts of fog drifted across its surface, merging, separating, disappearing. Where the water was exposed, it reflected the starlight from above and the low hills that surrounded it like the gateway to the Hells.

Closer to the shore, clumps of marsh grass spiked up like the spears of tiny warriors, standing back to back for a last stand. Around them the water was frozen and covered with a finger’s thickness of snow.

The silence was broken by the cry of a nightbird, as harsh as the frozen air, and the steady thump-thump as it flapped great wings and took flight. Another cry, a few beats on the air, then it settled down again a score of paces away.

The sound of its wings seemed to echo, though, and sink into the ground. A close observer might have seen the slightest tremor ripple across the water, and then another, escaping from the earth.

The tremors grew greater, and the night was broken again. This time it was a scream, of fear and pain and frustration, all cutting off sharply in a choked gurgle a stone’s throw from the shores of the mere.

Suddenly a man came hurtling down the slope, sending the bird flapping into the sky once more. A sheathed sword was clutched in his white-knuckled hand, his breath hissed between his teeth to cloud in the cold air. Despite the chill, beads of sweat clung to his skin, on bare arms and a scalp marked with swirling tattoos.

He halted abruptly, feet already sinking into the black mud. He was tall, heavily muscled, dressed in a sleeveless vest and leather breeches. His feet took half a step back, while he muttered under his breath, before he froze as a second scream pierced the near-silence.

“Dugoro and Venna both gone then.” It was little more than a whisper.

If this story is ever finished, the action will all take place around this mere, and most of it at night. Because that's the scene that's planted in the reader's mind.

As I mentioned in my very first post in this thread, I think that descriptions can be a powerful tool for steering the reader's imagination, but it's just as useful for guiding the story. Don't paint a moody picture, and then tell a happy tale of flowers and kittens.

 

[bi_cathy]

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.

I feel this. I have so much more fun with the dialog! Way more than with descriptions. Inner monologue too.

Now, regarding descriptions, some of my readers have commented that they appreciate that there isn't much in my stories, and I'm glad I hit a chord for them. "You show, don't tell" was one way someone described it to me, and it still lingers in the back of my mind. I realize this isn't for everyone, but if it works for me and you... Good.

Some of my earlier, shorter stories didn't have physical characteristics at all. Hair or eye colors, body, physical attributes, not even a name. I wanted the reader to have the freedom to project their own vision on those characters. Their fantasy, not mine.

With longer stories, though, this became more of a challenge, so there are names now (though I do find a perverse joy in not even picking the name before I have to, usually way too far into the story), and some physical attributes. Just enough for what matters. I love adding facial ticks (in Spectacular Pair of Tits, it was a lip crinkle that came back, in 3 Crushes it was dimples, etc...)

As for location description, I'll only add what's necessary. Sometimes nothing, sometimes just a smidge. I'd rather let the reader decide.

 

[StillStunned]

We've already mentioned using description to set the mood of the story. But it can also be used to reflect the characters' mindset.

In medieval romances you get this a lot: characters who have to traverse a wilderness, or who find love in a garden of joy, and so on. The internal is externalised.

One of the more common ways this is used nowadays, I think, is by making it rain if the character is sad or gloomy, or setting a happy love story on a bright and sunny day.

But you can be more subtle too. Passing a graveyard on the way home after being laid off from work. The character probably walks past it every day, but in their current mindset they notice it. After the character kisses their crush for the first time, they pass a stand of flowers buzzing with bees, or two butterflies chasing each other around. Or in Lit-specific terms: your character's horny, so the imagery becomes phallic: houses with tall chimneys, a bridge being raised, people swarming out of the Tube station.

And it's probably important not to draw the reader's attention to it explicitly. Just describe the scene and trust them to make the connections. The subconscious mind is a wonderful thing.

 

[TheLobster]

Or in Lit-specific terms: your character's horny, so the imagery becomes phallic: houses with tall chimneys, a bridge being raised, people swarming out of the Tube station.

 

[StillStunned]

Precisely. It’s like every other rule, break it rather than write something barbarous.

Same with CG, it’s a rule of thumb, not a divine precept. Each story is different, with different needs.

Writing is not paint by numbers. What are rules for but to be ignored when there is an overriding reason to do so?

Perhaps we should start referring to "best practices" instead of rules: things that work best in the largest number of situations.

They're not universal truths, but it's useful to be aware of them as a baseline, because you can build on all of humanity's experience and give it your own twist.

 

[TheLobster]

Perhaps we should start referring to "best practices" instead of rules: things that work best in the largest number of situations.

This makes me wanna take the widely acknowledged “best practices” from my line of work (software engineering) and reinterpret them from a creative writing angle.

Like, say, “minimize global state”? Okay, that just means you should try to keep your stories not too complex so the readers doesn’t have to keep track of too many things at once.

Or perhaps “do one thing, and one thing only.” This means every scene should only serve a singular purpose, such as plot advancement or character development, to keep it all nice and clear.

Or maybe “prioritize reusability”? Great, so you just make your characters, your plots, your setting and your tropes as universal and generic as possible, so that you can easily reuse them in different scenarios and across different stories.

Damn, this really works great, doesn’t it? You just have to do the exact opposite!

 

[BeechLeaf]

In other words, think of how an AI would do it. Then don't do that.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Perhaps we should start referring to "best practices" instead of rules: things that work best in the largest number of situations.

They're not universal truths, but it's useful to be aware of them as a baseline, because you can build on all of humanity's experience and give it your own twist.

I think best practice is elevating it too much. I like my suggestion of rule of thumb, perhaps of some use, not always a precise guide.

My overwhelming feeling is that, while it’s good to be conscious of some general writing concepts, a paint by numbers approach can appear technically proficient and spiritually vacant.

This is not a manifesto for stream of consciousness writing with no regard for customary structure. It is saying that the words and their combinations are servants to your ideas, not the other way around.

 

[AG31]

a reader can only process so much visual and spacial information at a time. If we exceed that threshold, the words are going in one ear and out the other. And also they are probably getting bored and frustrated with you.

Again, it depends on the reader. Whether you choose to satisfy those that like a lot of description, or those that like a little, make sure your work has integrity. A coherent style.

 

[Britva415]

I'm one of the biggest beaters of the Chekhov's Gun drum around here, but I would never call it a best practice.

It is one tool. As is anyone who says it's a "rule"

Same with "show don't tell." We tell each other these ideas because they are tools., not rules or even best paractices.

(There are writing courses and other instructional situations where it is a rule. That's artificial. In such case I just say, understand the instructor's expectations and follow the assignment's instructions.)

Is a hammer a best practice? No. The best practice for using hammers is, fingers clear. The best practice for using tools is, be aware of your various tools.

Recognize where and whether a particular tool is of utility and not of utility, and then employ the tool which is of utility in that situation.

I think Chekhov would agree, don't bring da knife to da gun fight.

 

[BeechLeaf]

One of Chekhov's admirers was Katherine Mansfield. I have no interest in Chekhov's gun, I read and write for Mansfield's laundry basket. She wrote, ‘I shall tell everything, even of how the laundry basket squeaked.' That encapsulated it for me. That's what I want to write, and read. Even if it's about people fucking (*yawn*), the good writing shows the real world around them. At the moment I'm enraptured in reading a really good story by pink_silk_glove, who's doing this: the details, the quotidian. It's not at the expense of the action, it makes it better.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

This makes me wanna take the widely acknowledged “best practices” from my line of work (software engineering) and reinterpret them from a creative writing angle.

Like, say, “minimize global state”? Okay, that just means you should try to keep your stories not too complex so the readers doesn’t have to keep track of too many things at once.

Or perhaps “do one thing, and one thing only.” This means every scene should only serve a singular purpose, such as plot advancement or character development, to keep it all nice and clear.

Or maybe “prioritize reusability”? Great, so you just make your characters, your plots, your setting and your tropes as universal and generic as possible, so that you can easily reuse them in different scenarios and across different stories.

Damn, this really works great, doesn’t it? You just have to do the exact opposite!

"One thing, and one thing only" really resonates. Good novels do this. It's not a longer story because it encompasses ninety million ideas. It's a longer story because of the depth and detail of the experience when covering that one central idea. I try to keep that in mind when I venture into writing longer works.

 

[Britva415]

the good writing shows the real world around them

I mean, nobody's saying "hide it."

But since you said "show," sometimes doing that instead of telling too much of it (show don't tell, get it?) is a way to ensure that it isn't at the expense of the action.

Or more precisely, at the expense of the action's impact. Spamming too much description doesn't take away from the narrated facts. Those still happen, even if they're obscured by clouds of atmosphere.

Another way is to make the real world details matter, such that the plot couldn't have happened any other way without them. This also ensures that those details are exposed/revealed/shown through narration, instead of just description.

 

[StillStunned]

One of Chekhov's admirers was Katherine Mansfield. I have no interest in Chekhov's gun, I read and write for Mansfield's laundry basket. She wrote, ‘I shall tell everything, even of how the laundry basket squeaked.' That encapsulated it for me. That's what I want to write, and read. Even if it's about people fucking (*yawn*), the good writing shows the real world around them. At the moment I'm enraptured in reading a really good story by pink_silk_glove, who's doing this: the details, the quotidian. It's not at the expense of the action, it makes it better.

It depends what kind of story you're writing, and what story your readers expect to get.

If I'm writing a sword & sorcery adventure, I'm telling a story of an exciting moment in my characters' lives. I might set the scene by describing an everyday moment - the characters waking up and talking, but just as they're getting frisky something happens - but once the story itself gets going there's no place for mundane distractions.

A story about someone catching an unexpected glimpse of their neighbour showering will include more everyday detail, to highlight the unusual event in their routine. So perhaps remembering to switch off their phone so it won't draw attention, or feeling a cramp in their leg from standing still too long, afraid to move, distracted by the bead of sweat running down their nose...

A longer story about a May to December relationship will include more and more moments of everyday life, because the story is about the characters' actual lives, not a single one-shot moment. We should get to see their commute, or their annoyance at the neighbour's dog, or their worry about forgetting to pay the electrical bill.

If I added that kind of stuff in an adventure story, it would become surreal. You don't see Darth Vader fidgeting because his undies are bunched up under his armour. You don't see The Man With No Name putting on SPF before venturing out into the desert, even though he should know from experience how important it is. You don't see Indiana Jones stopping mid-chase and saying, "Heavens, I think I left the iron on!"