Hello, writers. There was some discussion last week in the comments about description, and a couple people said they had trouble with it. I can relate. I have trouble with it too. One reason I have trouble with it is that I’ve hardly ever read any. When I’m reading and I come to a description, I skip.
That’s why Lord of the Rings is new to me no matter how many times I reread it. I’ve never read half of it.
Charles Dickens’s Bleak House opens with several pages of description of bad weather in London. It’s brilliantly done, and you could get away with it in those days. Today’s readers are likely to page ahead to find the characters, or to put the book down and reach for something that opens with more of a bang.
Nowadays, description is much better done in motion or in character. Describe the scene as your character moves through it, or as it touches your character, physically or emotionally, or as it impedes or helps your character. In other words, make sure the description is doing more than one job.
Here’s the opening of my new book, Starting From Seneca Falls, coming out from Random House on June 23rd. I opened with a description, of sorts.
The cell was five feet by nine feet and stifling hot. It contained a bucket, a pile of dirty straw, and Bridie. And it smelled of the bucket.
Up near the ceiling was a small, barred window. Bridie jumped up, managed to grab the bars, and walked herself up the wall. She had to turn her head sideways to peer out.
Through the small slit she could see the fields and the woods. And just a corner of the graveyard…. she looked away quickly. She could see the other poorhouse children out in the cabbage field, weeding. A couple of the best-trusted boys were using hoes, but the rest of the children were down on their knees, pulling up weeds with work-roughened hands.
You see how this works. I needed to establish an unfamiliar setting; few American readers today know anything about poorhouses. At the same time, I needed a character for the reader to root for and I needed her in there fast. So within this description we learn a lot about the main character.
- She’s locked up.
- She’s poor.
- She’s a child.
- She’s nimble.
- For some reason, the cemetery is a painful sight to her.
And we learn about the world of the story:
- It has poorhouses, which contain cells.
- It lacks modern sanitary arrangements.
- Boys have a higher status than girls.
- Children are expected to do manual labor.
The heat and the smell of the bucket bring the reader into the scene: Engage at least three senses and this will happen automatically.
So, the story opens with a description, but the description is working hard to serve the story. Most (not all, she said most!) readers aren’t going to wait around for the story to start or restart after the description is over. The description, if it’s there at all, has to move the story forward and/or tell us more about the character.
Tonight’s challenge:
There’s a swamp. Of course there’s a swamp. And in some way, it’s different from swamps you and I have seen. It’s an unusual swamp.
Move two characters through it. Describe the swamp only as it touches the characters physically, emotionally, or through one of their senses, or as it helps or hinders them in reaching their goal.
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