Hello, writers. I’m rereading Terry Pratchett. Specifically, I’m rereading the Moist von Lipwig books, and xaxnar is right; it was a spoon that Moist dropped in Going Postal to detect Vetinari’s death trap. It’s in Making Money that he repeats the experiment with a pencil.
Rereading Terry Pratchett is relaxing. Because he’s just so good. And it’s important to read writers who are better than you could ever be.
Last night I was stopped by this sentence:
Raindrops hit the windows of Mrs. Cake’s boardinghouse, specifically the one in the rear room occupied by Mavolio Bent, at the rate of twenty-seven a second, plus or minus fifteen percent.
This is character-based description. Mavolio Bent thinks in numbers and percentages. At this point in the book we’re becoming aware that this is not just an interest but an anchor; his emotional stability depends on being able to define everything numerically.
The line reminded me of this couplet from a Bill Withers song:
I hear the crystal raindrops fall
On the window down the hall
While there’s less character in those lines, there’s still a strong sense of setting, and a suggestion that this is also an SRO building --one that, unlike Mrs. Cake’s, lacks windows in the bedrooms.
There’s also an observer of the raindrops in both examples. The description is not just of a scene but of a character’s perception of a scene; the character’s mood (people who hear crystal raindrops are probably happy), preoccupations, or quirks.
In the book I’m finishing up right now, there’s just one line of unobserved description:
Sir Wolfgang was dressed in a long black coat, red velvet pantaloons and a waistcoat embroidered with golden lions.
My editor asked me to change it. It doesn’t reflect character or move the scene forward. I thought of various ways to do this, but the sentence was serving another purpose as well— it was slowing the scene at a moment when I wanted the scene slowed. So in the end I left it in.
In general, though, it’s better not to have too many descriptions like the Sir Wolfgang one. And if you do, you should try not to let them go on for longer than a sentence.
Tonight’s challenge:
Write a one-sentence description of rain hitting a windowpane, as observed by one of the following:
- someone in hiding
- someone in love
- someone who had planned to spend the day playing baseball
- someone searching the room for the missing Jewel of Togwogmagog
- a person who is terrified of rain
- a person who just recently calked the window
- the point-of-view character in your current work-in-progress
Now write another one-sentence description of rain hitting a windowpane, as observed by a different character on the list.
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