The novel, short story, poem and other forms in fiction and non-fiction have a very potent component in common. They must paint, through the skilled knowledge of language, clear images in the reader’s mind. Whereas a mediocre film can be brought to vibrant life through the talent and skill of its actors, director, cinematographer and editor — and even elicit emotion through a beautiful soundtrack — writing relies solely on the skill of the writer to captivate the reader, to create for them worlds that never were and characters who’ve never lived.
For the writer, description is an indispensable tool, one that justifies the effort and time it can take to master. Description can control pace and mood and tension; provide the panoramic images that form both the background and foreground for the action; obscure clues, suggest motivations, illuminate emotion and state of mind in both character and reader.
For many writers, the many functions of description are often overlooked or perhaps never learned. Description, other than in parody or the gothically-inclined purple prose, should never overwhelm the story or character. It should never be particularly noticeable, calling attention to itself for its own sake, but rather it should provide information invisibly: through character perspective, and within the observations of character. The five pages of itemization of rooms or the characters’ wardrobes can be stricken, and the cherished details of wild, stormy nights in general done away with.
In each and every scene, the reader needs to be oriented to the where and when, why, how and what of the character’s view. In other words, description flows from the point of view chosen for the story — it is what the reader sees through the narrative character, be that a first person point of view, third person close view, third person limited view or omniscient narrator. That point of view can provide a visualization of what is seen — and smelled and heard, tasted and touched — and it can also provide hints as to the mood or mental state of the point of view: happy, sad, angry, suspicious, nervous or terrified.
One of the more useful writing exercises is practising the expression of an emotion through description. In the exercise, the writer chooses a landscape (farm, city street, underwater scientific laboratory) and describes it with an emotional overtone of an observing character, without mentioning the observer or their emotional state. This exercise encourages the writer to choose words for layers of meaning to create mood or tone to any description. A very brief example: instead of a dark sky, to gain a feeling of melancholy, the writer might choose: a somber sky.
So, how can we use description to its fullest advantage, without boring the reader, slowing the action or changing the focus of the scene?
The focus of the scene — every scene — is the primary goal, and every scene in a story must be there for a specific and designed reason. When a character enters a room, or rides up to a castle, or lands on a strange planet, there must be a reason behind it, one that it is pertinent to the story and to the development of the character. The reason gives the character their specific mental and emotional state. That state can then be used to imbue the way the scene is described. Likewise, the reason and emotional state of mind affects pace and tone of the scene. Slower, more leisurely observation slows pace and calms tone. Quick, sharp noting of details speeds pace and suggests impatience or anger or nervousness.
Using Description for Mood and Emotion and Characterisation
Level of observation can reveal character as well as providing visual and plot detail. The detective picking up clues from a quick glance around the suspect’s apartment is a well-known device in mystery and crime novels. A character trained in observation will notice more than one untrained, or a character in an emotional state might not pay attention to detail but glean a broad impression through color and shape.
Descriptive passages have been vilified for stopping pace, killing tension and boring the pants off the reader, and for authorial intrusion. There is no argument that an overload of non-relevant description and a lack of connection to character can certainly do that. When writing description, the writer must discipline themselves to keep within the character’s perspective and to break up the character’s observations with impressions, reactions, opinions of what they are seeing, interaction with other characters or their own action. Think about being in the character’s shoes — what your senses take in and how that affects you, how new information changes preconceived ideas and so on.
As an example of layering a simple piece of description:
Trent walked in the room, ignoring the sickly-sweet odor of decomposition that wafted out. Drab furnishings and gloomy light showed little detail. A bed, some chests and a small closet were old and worn, muted by a coating of dust.
On the bureau against the wall, a battered suitcase and a photo frame, broken and patched with tape, were the only personal effects.
“This all the stuff he came with?” Trent raised his voice, glancing back at the landlady.
She held the bottom of her apron over her face. “All I saw.”
This is a simple description of a room the character enters. It contains little sensory information and only the bare bones of a visualization for the reader. When we add thought and characterization:
Mrs Carmichael unlocked the door and pushed it open. Trent came to a halt at the threshold as a smell of decomposition was carried on the wash of hot air exiting the room. He heard Mrs Carmichael’s wheezing gag but ignored it. Typical of the hotels and motels in the area, the room held a double bed, a couple of bedside tables, a bureau opposite the window and a narrow closet. The carpet was some indeterminable neutral color, the pile worn down in places. Thin light entered reluctantly through the grimy window.
A battered suitcase sat atop the bureau. Next to it, a photo frame, broken and patched with tape, showed a faded picture of a man and child. It wasn’t much to show for a life lived.
“The suitcase and picture frame the only stuff he left here?”
Mrs Carmichael’s muddy-brown eyes stared unblinking above the apron held over her nose and mouth. “All I saw,” she said, the words muffled by the cloth, her tone clear and sour.
The above adds more sensory detail and some of the thoughts of the character, along with greater detail of his observations. The image is sharper, giving the reader a much closer look at the room and a greater sense of both characters. When we add more sensory information and character reactions:
Mrs Carmichael leaned over, her weighty bosom pushing against the worn apron as she unlocked the door. With a grunt, she straightened and pushed, the door swinging open slowly. A rush of warm air exited, carrying a sickly-sweet odor, ripe and gassy. Trent heard the landlady’s wheezing gag and ignored both noise and smell, stepping past and glancing around the nondescript interior. A sagging double bed, flanked by mismatched nightstands, a scarred and off-kilter bureau and a small closet comprised the room’s furnishings. Dust and age had rendered them ugly and forgettable.
Through the grimy window, light entered reluctantly, as if ashamed to reveal the sordid details of Rankin’s pathetic life. It gleamed on the broken and tape-together glass of a photo frame on the bureau, hiding the picture beneath. Trent took a step into the room and the angle of light changed, revealing the faded photo to be a man and a child.
“Did Rankin have anything else with him?”
Standing in the hall, the bottom of her apron scrunched over her nose and mouth, Mrs Carmichael shook her head. “Not that I saw.”
There is a great deal of information description can provide about characters through implication of observation. It can also provide a mood — an emotional overtone — to the scene, through the perspective of the character observing. In practical use, the level of description is determined by the importance of the scene and the information that needs to be given to the reader within the scene. That includes the flow from the previous scene and to the following scene, pace, rising or falling tension, insight into character.
In the same way that location can be described within action, so too are character descriptions more invisibly passed to the reader when given in small doses through action, rather than reading like an arrest report.
It’s pertinent to note here, that no matter how detailed a description a writer gives the reader of any character, that description will be transformed in the reader’s mind based on their personal associations with the words used. Five readers will see a woman with long, auburn hair, fair, freckled skin and large blue eyes quite differently. Description of characters is best left to a strong impression in terms of appearance, and reinforced by the way the perspective character observes their personalities, to make them unique and memorable to each reader.
Using Description for Flow, Pace and Tension
Flow, pace and tension are always affected by the levels and mood of the description. Depth and detail must be balanced in every scene, according to the purposes of the scene. Where high action — a fight, a chase, even a heated argument between characters — is required, the scene should be set clearly before the action commences, so the focus can remain on the characters’ actions during the scene.
This is often a problem in the writing and revision of the first draft, where details occur to the writer on the fly and are frequently not removed to a more appropriate location on the first editing pass. Teaching oneself to read for pace enables needed but inappropriately placed detail to be seen and moved to the right place.
Controlling pace through description requires more than abstention at critical moments. Sentence length and construction, within action and within the descriptions of what is occurring, also control flow and pace through rhythm. Long sentences with a slow rhythm might be used to slow pace down, for instance. Short fragments and truncated impressionistic sentences can be used to speed it up. In action specifically, a long sentence, in a fast rhythm, can emulate the flow of the action. Fight scenes are conveyed more powerfully and more accurately using rhythm in description of what is happening.
Whether the style is lush or spare, description must serve the purpose of giving the reader clarity, allowing them to absorb the backgrounds and see the scenes in their minds so they can focus on what is happening. Too little description results in confusion for a reader, where they must go back and re-read to try to picture how the scene is playing out. Too much description, giving information that is not relevant to the scene, characters or story, can slow pace and kill tension.
Within one’s own style, finding the right amount of description for each scene and moment is a matter of constant practice and thought, with an awareness of the power of this tool in storytelling, the way it can perform far more than one purpose and enhance the reader’s pleasure in reading.