Now and then I see questions and comments about descriptions, how to write them, and what to include and when.
Since work is really slow today, I decided I should put together a beginner’s guide with some general tips and advice that work for me.
What I’m writing below is based on personal experiences and opinions. These aren’t rules and you don’t need to follow them. There are exceptions to everything, and there are special cases where going against what I suggest may be the right thing to do.
First things first
Before talking about how to describe things, I’d like to comment a little on how we perceive things. How do we see the things we see?
I’m sure you’ve all heard the expression “first impressions last”. You generally hear it said about people as an encouragement to present yourself well when meeting others, but there’s more to it than that.
Your first impression of something is formed very quickly, and once it’s formed it takes both time and effort to change it. This is why it’s so important to get the first impression right. If your reader gets their first impression of something wrong and they are forced to change it later, it will break their immersion and throw them out of the story — which is bad.
How long do you have to establish a first impression?
In real life, you form your first impression of someone within a few seconds of meeting that person. I haven’t seen any numbers for how this translates to text, but I have a feeling that you’ll have about one paragraph — two, if they’re short.
Go with your gut feeling, but don’t ramble on too long.
What to start with
Begin with the most important feature of what you’re describing. Usually this is something that stands out and which you would notice right away if you looked at it.
For example, if a house is on fire, mention that right away. Don’t wait until the hero runs inside to save the trapped children.
When describing people, I like to start with the things that I notice first when I see someone in real life: gender, skin/hair colour, size, age. I think these are fairly common for most people, but they’re probably not a solid rule. Go with what works for you and stick with it. If you for example pay attention to the colour of someone’s eyes, make sure to include that. If you do it naturally in real life, it’ll add authenticity if you do it in your writing as well.
You don’t necessarily have to start with the visual appearance of a person though. If they’re doing something interesting, or eye-catching, start with that. If a person comes running at you, screaming at the top of their lungs waving a burning monkey over their head, you do not stop to think about the cut of their shirt, or how well polished their shoes are.
Basically, start with what’s most important at the moment and then work your way towards less and less important details.
What to include
You should, of course, include as much relevant information as you deem necessary, but that’s kind of like saying “just do it right” and then leaving it at that — not very helpful.
When it comes to descriptions, your reader is likely to fill out any blank spaces on their own. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t leave any blank spaces, but that you should know what blank spaces you’re leaving — and then don’t fill them in later.
One way of determining whether something is a blank space is to picture yourself as an invisible observer of the scenes and events you are describing — sort of like the camera in a movie.
If you see something in the scene and don’t describe it, then that thing will be a white space and the reader will fill that in themselves. If you don’t see something — even though you know it’s there — and don’t mention that it’s there, then that’s not a blank space for the reader to fill in and you can add to it later.
Let’s say you’re describing a small woman wearing a very large backpack. You describe the woman as short and blonde. She wears a white t-shirt and blue jeans. She carries a very large green backpack on her back — the kind you use to go camping.
As an observer of the woman, we’d also see a number of other things of her that aren’t included in the description and we’d fill them out on our own. For example, we don’t know if she’s wearing boots or sneakers, or if she’s barefoot. We don’t know if she’s wearing a wrist watch or ear rings or any other jewellery. We don’t know if she has any scars and we don’t know if there are any holes on the knees of her jeans.
These are all blank spaces and by now you will have filled them out and have an opinion about what shoes she wears and whatnot. This means you can’t later describe these things, as you don’t know how the reader will have pictured them.
What isn’t a blank space however is what’s in the backpack. It’s closed, and from where we’re standing we can’t see what’s in it. As the writer of the story we do know what’s in it, but for a casual observer it just looks like a big backpack, for hiking or something like that.
The backpack could contain hiking gear, or a big tent or a parachute. It could contain food, or explosives or gold. However, what the backpack really contains are her big leathery wings. She can’t hide them any other way, so she has them tucked away in the backpack to hide the fact that she’s a demon.
Then again, you could have told anyway, because she’s got big red horns sticking out of her brow and her eyes are smoking black holes.
See what I did there?
While reading, you were happily accepting that the little backpacking woman might be a demon hiding her wings, but then I added the horns and the hollow eyes and then you thought I was just being silly — right?
That’s because if you’d seen the woman in front of you, you’d have noticed right away that she had strange eyes and horns. Now, that wasn’t mentioned, so you assumed she wouldn’t have it (because why would you not mention something like that?) and you built your image of the woman on what you expect a regular short blond woman to be like (chances are she’s kind of pretty, but that’s a different topic of discussion).
Final comments
There’s more to descriptions than the above, but I think it’s a good starting point if you’re uncertain about how to make good descriptions. I’ll sum things up a bit:
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
If there's something you disagree with, please let me know. Different points of view are good.
Since work is really slow today, I decided I should put together a beginner’s guide with some general tips and advice that work for me.
What I’m writing below is based on personal experiences and opinions. These aren’t rules and you don’t need to follow them. There are exceptions to everything, and there are special cases where going against what I suggest may be the right thing to do.
First things first
Before talking about how to describe things, I’d like to comment a little on how we perceive things. How do we see the things we see?
I’m sure you’ve all heard the expression “first impressions last”. You generally hear it said about people as an encouragement to present yourself well when meeting others, but there’s more to it than that.
Your first impression of something is formed very quickly, and once it’s formed it takes both time and effort to change it. This is why it’s so important to get the first impression right. If your reader gets their first impression of something wrong and they are forced to change it later, it will break their immersion and throw them out of the story — which is bad.
How long do you have to establish a first impression?
In real life, you form your first impression of someone within a few seconds of meeting that person. I haven’t seen any numbers for how this translates to text, but I have a feeling that you’ll have about one paragraph — two, if they’re short.
Go with your gut feeling, but don’t ramble on too long.
What to start with
Begin with the most important feature of what you’re describing. Usually this is something that stands out and which you would notice right away if you looked at it.
For example, if a house is on fire, mention that right away. Don’t wait until the hero runs inside to save the trapped children.
When describing people, I like to start with the things that I notice first when I see someone in real life: gender, skin/hair colour, size, age. I think these are fairly common for most people, but they’re probably not a solid rule. Go with what works for you and stick with it. If you for example pay attention to the colour of someone’s eyes, make sure to include that. If you do it naturally in real life, it’ll add authenticity if you do it in your writing as well.
You don’t necessarily have to start with the visual appearance of a person though. If they’re doing something interesting, or eye-catching, start with that. If a person comes running at you, screaming at the top of their lungs waving a burning monkey over their head, you do not stop to think about the cut of their shirt, or how well polished their shoes are.
Basically, start with what’s most important at the moment and then work your way towards less and less important details.
What to include
You should, of course, include as much relevant information as you deem necessary, but that’s kind of like saying “just do it right” and then leaving it at that — not very helpful.
When it comes to descriptions, your reader is likely to fill out any blank spaces on their own. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t leave any blank spaces, but that you should know what blank spaces you’re leaving — and then don’t fill them in later.
One way of determining whether something is a blank space is to picture yourself as an invisible observer of the scenes and events you are describing — sort of like the camera in a movie.
If you see something in the scene and don’t describe it, then that thing will be a white space and the reader will fill that in themselves. If you don’t see something — even though you know it’s there — and don’t mention that it’s there, then that’s not a blank space for the reader to fill in and you can add to it later.
Let’s say you’re describing a small woman wearing a very large backpack. You describe the woman as short and blonde. She wears a white t-shirt and blue jeans. She carries a very large green backpack on her back — the kind you use to go camping.
As an observer of the woman, we’d also see a number of other things of her that aren’t included in the description and we’d fill them out on our own. For example, we don’t know if she’s wearing boots or sneakers, or if she’s barefoot. We don’t know if she’s wearing a wrist watch or ear rings or any other jewellery. We don’t know if she has any scars and we don’t know if there are any holes on the knees of her jeans.
These are all blank spaces and by now you will have filled them out and have an opinion about what shoes she wears and whatnot. This means you can’t later describe these things, as you don’t know how the reader will have pictured them.
What isn’t a blank space however is what’s in the backpack. It’s closed, and from where we’re standing we can’t see what’s in it. As the writer of the story we do know what’s in it, but for a casual observer it just looks like a big backpack, for hiking or something like that.
The backpack could contain hiking gear, or a big tent or a parachute. It could contain food, or explosives or gold. However, what the backpack really contains are her big leathery wings. She can’t hide them any other way, so she has them tucked away in the backpack to hide the fact that she’s a demon.
Then again, you could have told anyway, because she’s got big red horns sticking out of her brow and her eyes are smoking black holes.
See what I did there?
While reading, you were happily accepting that the little backpacking woman might be a demon hiding her wings, but then I added the horns and the hollow eyes and then you thought I was just being silly — right?
That’s because if you’d seen the woman in front of you, you’d have noticed right away that she had strange eyes and horns. Now, that wasn’t mentioned, so you assumed she wouldn’t have it (because why would you not mention something like that?) and you built your image of the woman on what you expect a regular short blond woman to be like (chances are she’s kind of pretty, but that’s a different topic of discussion).
Final comments
There’s more to descriptions than the above, but I think it’s a good starting point if you’re uncertain about how to make good descriptions. I’ll sum things up a bit:
- First impressions last.
- Start with the most important feature.
- Include only that which can be seen.
- Know your blank spaces and leave them blank.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
If there's something you disagree with, please let me know. Different points of view are good.