Here, from the Description section of my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. is the introduction to the section and the first chapter, “Make it experiential to characterize”
Without description, a novel would be no different than a printout of a radio commercial. We’re all familiar with the primary purpose of description:
But when you write for effect, description doesn’t stop there. As you’ll see, description is capable of this:
The reader of a novel wants the narrative to create a very specific effect: he wants to be taken away from the real world he sits in. He wants to feel and see and do things he would never do. Readers want to experience the world of the novel.
That’s your task: to create an experience. It is not to tell a story. It is to cause a specific reaction in your reader’s mind. A suspension of disbelief, a connection to the life of a character. Characters are the key to and core of creating an experience for the reader.
This relates to the old saw, “show, don’t tell.” Telling is the mere delivery of information. A newspaper does that. A novel should be delivering a character’s experience. (Note: I’ll italicize telling and showing whenever I’m referring to that craft aspect of creating a narrative.)
Description is a key element of every novel, every scene. Scenes need to be set (described) so the reader has a context within which to experience what the character experiences. It’s needed to show action, of course. In a novel, descriptions shouldn’t be simple photographs of what the character sees. Oh, they can be and often are, but snapshots don’t create an experience. They are telling, they are information, they are not emotion, they are not experience.
The best description happens from within the character’s point of view, colored by the character’s emotions, needs, beliefs, and desires.
It characterizes.
Describe from the inside, not the outside Here’s description from a writer’s sample where characterization could have happened but didn’t. The writer describes Jimmy and his girlfriend this way:
Jimmy was high-school skinny, that lean, still-growing time when muscles are tight everywhere and the sinews are loose and respond quickly. He wasn’t tall, only five seven, but she was only five three and they appeared to be the perfect couple.
I liked “high-school skinny,” but these lines are clearly the author getting some exposition out of the way—we’re taken out of the boy’s head and made to feel distant from the scene. The phrase “they appeared to be the perfect couple” is clearly from another point of view entirely, since the boy can’t see what they look like together. Not to mention a first-degree case of telling.
I know it’s tough to describe a character when you’re in his point of view, and you don’t want to resort to the tired old idea of looking in a mirror, but there are ways to do it. For example:
Jimmy worried Kathy would think he was too skinny, which his mother said was just because he was still growing, all sinewy with long lean muscles. But he wasn’t so worried about being only five foot seven—Kathy was maybe five three, tops, and he thought they made a perfect couple.
As you can see, this gives a picture of them but characterizes him as well, and it comes from inside the character, not from outside, from the author. The reader not only doesn’t leave the character’s head, she is drawn more deeply into it.
Experiential description of place
When you “see” a place through a character’s point of view, you can do two things at once: set the scene to give the reader the context in which things are happening, and show a character’s personality. Here’s an example: a mailroom in a large corporation seen as a simple snapshot, the approach many writers take to description.
In a gray room with fluorescent lights, a rack of pigeonholes for sorting mail sat along one wall. Next to them stood a wheeled delivery cart, a desk with a computer on it, and a worn swivel chair.
Now let’s describe that same setting in a way that characterizes a middle-aged man who works in the mailroom.
Jeff switched on the mailroom lights. The fluorescents glared at him the way they had for fifteen years, and the gray walls radiated depression. The rack of pigeonholes for sorting mail along one wall stared at him, each empty hole like his life. The delivery cart stood ready to cause the daily pain in his hip when he trudged through the offices, delivering mail to people who didn’t see him, like he was furniture.
On his desk the computer waited to be turned on—no, they said “booted up,” didn’t they—its programs lurking, waiting to trip him up again when he tried to send out a shipment. He sat in his beat-up swivel chair, and a small sense of comfort came with the way the worn cushions conformed to his body and it squeaked when he tilted back.
Just as the snapshot approach did, this experiential description gave you a picture of the room and what was in it, so it served the purpose of setting the scene. But it also defined Jeff’s character. The same room seen through another character’s point of view has the same physical characteristics, but can be a very different place. Here’s the room described through the point of view of Jinny, a twenty-something new employee.
Jinny burst through the mailroom door and was disappointed yet again to see Jeff already there. One of these days she’d beat him in and do the setup. He hadn’t even turned on the computer yet. She reached past him, slumped as usual in that crummy old swivel chair with the ratty cushion—why didn’t he requisition something decent?—and flicked on the computer. When break came and he went out for a smoke she’d surf her favorite blogs.
The gray walls under the soft fluorescent light soothed her headache. The racks of pigeonholes waited for her to fill their mouths with the mail that helped the company function. The delivery cart stood ready—maybe today she’d ask Jeff if she could be the one that wheeled it through the cubicles, saying hi, meeting people. Even though she’d only been here a month, the mailroom felt like an old friend.
Same pigeonholes, same everything picture-wise, but very different characterization—that’s experiential description.
Whenever we step into a room, we not only see what’s in it, we react to it in ways that characterize us. Have your characters do the same, and color their perceptions with the result.
Experiential description of action
Experiential description means that the exact same action, as experienced by two different characters, is a very different experience for each character and, thus, for the reader. First, the objective camera technique.
Morticia leaned forward and her nostrils flared. She sank her fangs into Frank’s neck. Blood rushed into her mouth and dribbled down his neck. He moaned and writhed, but she pinned him to the wall and continued to drink his essence.
The thing is, characters aren’t cameras. They’re experiencing this action, not watching it happen. And their experience flavors the action with meaning. So here’s this action from Morticia’s point of view.
Morticia leaned forward. The scent of Frank’s blood, pulsing just below the skin of his neck, aroused her. Her fangs lengthened and she sank them into a vein. The sweetness of blood washed over her tongue and poured down her throat. His moan aroused her further, and when he writhed within her grip, power rushed through her and she pinned him to the wall, drinking in the smell of his fear and relishing the rich taste of his essence.
Do you think Frank’s experience of the very same action will feel the same as Morticia’s? Hardly.
Frank shrank back when Morticia leaned forward, panic pounding in his mind. She was…smelling him? Oh, God, she had fangs, and they grew as he watched. She struck and twin points of pain pierced his neck. Hot liquid trickled down his neck—his blood? A moan crawked out of his throat and he writhed, pushing with all his strength to escape. As if he were a child, she jammed him against the wall with terrible power.
Now, I’m not claiming that the above examples are great writing—hey, I just pulled them out of the air. But I do think that the technique illustrated is valid—no, vital—to creating an experience for your reader. Describe, yes, but flavor the scene with how the character feels it, experiences it. Even a color can have meaning. Which of these gives you experience versus information?
Sheila’s dress was blue. Sheila’s dress was the same sleazy blue Steve’s mother had worn whenever she went out to get drunk.
I came across an elegant use of this technique in The Silver Swan, by Benjamin Black. A woman watches a man who could simply be described as lean and lanky, but the author helps us perceive him through her eyes in a way that characterizes both of them.
What a lovely loose way he had of walking, leaning down a little way to one side and then the other at each long, loping stride he took, his shoulders dipping in rhythm with his steps and his head sliding backwards and forwards gently on its tall stalk of neck, like the head of some marvelous, exotic wading bird.
Enough shown?
There are no rules. I feel obliged to point out that, while I think fiction that utilizes experiential description in key passages is stronger and more engaging, it isn’t the only way to deliver a fascinating story.
The reason I feel obligated to point this out is that as I was polishing this manuscript, I picked up Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. Published in 1988, it’s King doing his thing with the classic fairy tale—the good prince and the bad prince, the evil magician, dragons. . .
And Stephen tells the tale. His voice is the storyteller’s voice, and once in a while he speaks directly to you. He’s not rendering the experience of the characters, and I’m distant from the story, much more of an observer than a participant.
Because of King’s voice, and the fun of the tale, I’m having a great time. The distance from the story doesn’t matter, it’s fun because I have a gifted storyteller’s voice whispering in my ear. Just sayin’.
However, that is not to say that the same story, and the same characters, couldn’t have been more powerful illustrations of how to be a person if they’d been written in a different way. That’s the beauty of being a writer— you have an amazing amount of control over exactly what the reading experience will be: the reader’s emotional involvement, her intellectual involvement, her takeaway.
It’s your bus to drive, your road to take, just make the trip as good as you can.
For what it’s worth
Ray
© 2010 Ray Rhamey Tweet