Description and Imagery: How?

[FifthView]

"Head hopping" isn't a problem as long as the author has a solid grasp on voice. Read through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or The Princess Bride, and you'll see that some scenes change viewpoint character in the middle of a paragraph, or even for just one line. Once you have your characters' voices and perceptions dialed in and clearly different from each other, it's a wonderful technique. There's a lot of misunderstanding about omniscient third, though, and since it takes most authors literally years if not a lifetime to develop awareness of voice to the point where they can shift voice seamlessly, most new authors don't use omniscient, or they try it and botch it. Botching it is when you get "head-hopping." (I also think that many fledgling authors don't understand the difference between POV and voice, but that's another issue entirely.)

The term "head-hopping" does seem to be used negatively more often that neutrally, to describe the botched attempts—often, from a perspective that favors limited third, or to describe breaking POV in limited third.

I tend to use it neutrally to describe a particular type or approach to omniscient, to distinguish that type of omniscient from others, taking my cue from this episode of Writing Excuses: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/03/18/writing-excuses-7-12-writing-the-omniscient-viewpoint/

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, I don't get the negative feelings toward head hopping either. Did no one read Dune? Narnia?

Re: Voice, yeah, I remember that debate lol!

 

[Dren]

Yeah, I don't get the negative feelings toward head hopping either. Did no one read Dune? Narnia?

Re: Voice, yeah, I remember that debate lol!

I have nothing against it, it was just very strange because Ranger's Apprentice (the book series written by John Flanagan that used it) did it very... Shamelessly isn't the right word... But it was like, "Horace said this. He thought this that and the other. Will laughed. Will thought that Horace was blah blah blah. Halt thought this and remembered that." Like. It was in the same paragraphs that the POV would just hop around and it was like "Whoa, that's allowed?"

Learn something new every day.

 

[skip.knox]

weechlo, yep. That's omniscient. Used to be more common than in modern writing. I'm fine with any approach so long as it's done well. The main place where it will be a stumbling block is when submitting to agents. They are less likely to favor a book with omniscient POV, unless the writing has other distinct merits.

 

[Malik]

"Whoa, that's allowed?"

Absolutely allowed. Just really, really hard to do well. Again, it comes down to having a grasp on voice, and voice takes most authors years if not decades to dial in.

I write in omniscient, which means that voice is everything -- as it should be -- but in omniscient, I need each character, and my narrator, to have separate enough voices that the reader can tell who's speaking or thinking at any given time. This is one reason it takes so long for me to punch out a book. I have a blog post on voice vs. POV here.

Excerpt:

"Character voices are the hardest thing about fiction writing. It’s where you spend the most time fiddling. Voice is where you spend fifteen minutes taking out a comma, or two hours tweaking a phrase. Voice is where you really have to dig into your advanced writing techniques. Voice is hard because when it’s done right, the reader doesn’t notice it. Voice is thankless; invisible. Voice is a Japanese garden, grown and shaped one leaf and limb at a time over years until it looks effortless and natural; it’s mimicry of the real world through the lens of the ideal.

"Close third becomes a wad of wet cardboard when every character speaks with the same voice, and lack of distinct character voices is one of the first sure signs (outside of poor mechanics and spelling) that an author doesn’t have the chops, yet. If you’re writing close third, every scene that’s framed through a different character should have a feel distinct to that character. It should read differently. Different things should matter to the character. The reader should see things that the other characters in the scene don’t, and vice versa. It’s hard.

"What makes omniscient third even harder, though, is that you have to build an additional character who is also not you, and determine their voice, and then you need to use that voice to tell the story. That voice — the narrator — is a filter, a lens, for the voices of the other characters. The narrator is framed in omniscient third, and it becomes its own character on top of it. The narrator knows what the characters know. What he decides to tell you is part of his character voice, and this is where you get into storytelling. What you reveal through your narrator is what makes the story funny, or scary, or sad. Think of your omniscient third narrator as someone sitting in your living room with a drink in his hand, telling you a story. If he just tells you what he saw, it’s not nearly as good as if he had spoken with the people involved and knew what was going through their minds.

"Picture the storyteller on your sofa again. Now, think of how much better any story gets when the person telling it does good impressions. Those impressions are your voice shifts. That’s your 'head hopping.' It’s your character voices filtering through your narrator’s voice. That’s what you’re shooting for with omniscient third. And it’s really, really hard. It takes a long time."

"Reading a work with no distinct character voices is like listening to someone tell a long story while sucking at impressions."​

 

[Chessie2]

It's like acting out voices in your head.

Just wanted to add real quick that narrating in omniscient takes skill that you'll only learn by actually trying. Nothing irritates me more than when I hear: "Oh, but NEW writers shouldn't do it because they suck at it!"

Okay...last I checked, learning new skill takes actual practice. SO please don't let the naysayers say you're not good enough yet to do it. Otherwise how the heck will you learn?!?!?!?!?!!!!!

A final point: omniscient takes knowing what tone and voice that particular book needs. I've only written one of my romances in omniscient because most romance readers prefer 3rd so whatever. What's interesting is that title has gotten the best reviews and sells the best out of all my titles. It's in a niche though: ww2 romance. The entire time I wrote it, I thought of the old movies like Laura and other noir films (of which I've watched entirely too many). All this to say that I knew what kind of voice needed to go into that book. It was a sophisticated storyteller voice because the characters are high class. The heroine is very feminine and fussy while the hero is suave but a bit naive (he's much younger than her). So in a lot of his dialogue he sounds desperate to understand her, and I played on this when I zoomed away from his dialogue to narrate those scenes. Also, his ex girlfriend makes a huge appearance in the book and her voice was very sultry yet vindictive. The child (the heroine's daughter) has a few scenes and I got to narrate her as a bratty girl acting out because her daddy was dead and she wanted attention. Anyway, you must know your characters because you can cater to their voices when you zoom out and narrate. Either way, the author's voice remains strong while being distinctive between all the other voices (in your head ha).

Writing in omniscient is hella fun.

 

[Malik]

Just wanted to add real quick that narrating in omniscient takes skill that you'll only learn by actually trying. Nothing irritates me more than when I hear: "Oh, but NEW writers shouldn't do it because they suck at it!"

Okay...last I checked, learning new skill takes actual practice. SO please don't let the naysayers say you're not good enough yet to do it. Otherwise how the heck will you learn?!?!?!?!?!!!!!

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that new authors shouldn't attempt omniscient. I'm saying that new authors need to be aware of how much practice it takes to write 500 pages in omniscient voice without people screaming at you about "head hopping."

There's still this mindset among fledgling authors that writing a book constitutes enough writing to write a good book. It doesn't work that way. This whole endeavor -- not just writing in omniscient, but getting back to the OP's question about description and imagery -- takes a lifetime. Nobody likes to hear that, but it does. Craft comes with decades of tinkering, and exercises, and stalled projects, and books that never sold, and drafts that died on the vine. I believe that your first good book has a million words behind it; you only publish the last hundred thousand or so.

The more you write, even if you don't publish, the better you'll get, and the easier things like the OP's description and imagery -- along with dialogue, humor, tension, voice, subtext, and a thousand other things that make up a "good" book -- will come to you, because you'll be practiced at creating them. You won't get any better until you put your butt in a chair and start writing something. And you have to be ready to be terrible at it for a long time, because you will never know enough. You'll still be learning how to write the day you die.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I wouldn’t call head hopping omniscient, I use head hopping for the unintended POV gaff. I also wouldn’t claim any POV is more difficult than another to write well, they just have different strengths and weaknesses that fit different stories and styles well.

 

[skip.knox]

I agree with Malik. Maybe not a million words. Maybe only 900,000. But I want to add this: pretty much all writing counts. Not business reports or the like, but anything where you are trying to communicate with strangers to make a point that is yours. So I wouldn't count ad copy, for example. And I think some words count more than others; specifically, anything you write that gets critiqued by someone else counts for more than stuff you just write. I learned more from my two short stories that were critiqued by readers at the magazines than five times that much writing on my own.

I also learned a great deal from my academic writing. Not how to tell a story, but how to construct sentences and paragraphs that hang together, and how to recognize when they don't. Most importantly, I learned how to take criticism. Years in grad school, followed by some academic publications. I learned to listen to the other person when they said change this or why did you do that. Invaluable.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, one of my favourite Canadian authors Anne Marie McDonald said of her first novel that she wrote the same novel ten times before she ended up with the published cut we read. She said for sure it was close to a million words.

I agree with Skip too about academic writing. My degrees are English Lit and History, and that was a loooooooot of papers to write. It didn't help so much with characterization and plot development (though I was theorizing on these issues in my lit papers). But the benefit of having to argue my own point in a direct and cohesive way was invaluable.

 

[Dren]

Yeah, one of my favourite Canadian authors Anne Marie McDonald said of her first novel that she wrote the same novel ten times before she ended up with the published cut we read. She said for sure it was close to a million words.

I agree with Skip too about academic writing. My degrees are English Lit and History, and that was a loooooooot of papers to write. It didn't help so much with characterization and plot development (though I was theorizing on these issues in my lit papers). But the benefit of having to argue my own point in a direct and cohesive way was invaluable.

Oh definitely. When I was in high school, I not only journaled extensively, I also did a lot of... online debating, shall we say. Word choice, idea structure... it's not just for fiction.

 

[Malik]

I write and lecture for a living. My editor (at the office, not my novel editor) is tough, and our standards and regulations are strict. I think it's critical to every author's development to have at least one professional writing gig in your life where you want to hit your editor with a brick roughly once a week.

 

[Chessie2]

Yeah, one of my favourite Canadian authors Anne Marie McDonald said of her first novel that she wrote the same novel ten times before she ended up with the published cut we read. She said for sure it was close to a million words.

I agree with Skip too about academic writing. My degrees are English Lit and History, and that was a loooooooot of papers to write. It didn't help so much with characterization and plot development (though I was theorizing on these issues in my lit papers). But the benefit of having to argue my own point in a direct and cohesive way was invaluable.

Heh. Mine were scientific papers with graphs. Didn't do shit for learning how to write anything engaging, that's for sure.

 

[Lexi_Banner]

First off - take it easy on yourself for the first draft. So long as you get the words on the page, they can be made better.

I find it hard to smoothly lay in description. I loathe stories that drag over the details of how a character looks down to the last thread on their socks. The problem is that I tend to go too far in the other direction and wind up leaving the reader completely lost in a world with nothing to anchor them in my story.

So what I do is layer it in during my edits. I force myself to describe every room they enter, even if it's only a sentence. I do the same for characters - at least once a chapter, they get a minor descriptor. Sometimes it's as simple as mentioning his green eyes, or her kickass leather jacket. Just enough to ground the reader in the reality I've created.

Hopefully that gives you some idea of how to find places to layer in details of the story.

 

[Devor]

Ohh gosh. Where to begin.

1) Use Good Verbs. Not nouns, not adjectives, not POV - the visuals are all in the verbs. Compare these two sentences:

The German Shepherd's fur had a black coat and a golden underbelly.

Golden fur spread across the German Shepherd's underbelly, breaking up its black coat.

Spread? Breaking? Really, those words in this context are so vague they shouldn't add anything, and yet just by being verbs they make all the difference.

2) Power comes from detail. People have mentioned this, but they haven't gone far enough. Power comes from detail that implies the context of the scene.

The red apple had a short stem and a bite in it. There was a bruise on one side and dirt in the lower part of the bite mark. It sat on the table.

^ Nobody cares that the apple is red or that the stem was short. The bite implies something, but what? The bruise and the dirt imply that it was dropped. The location of the dirt in the bite doesn't matter at all. And a table? Okay.

Three details matter here: The bruise. The bite. The table. These details imply parts of the bigger scene. Just mentioning those details, and cutting the others, makes the passage stronger..

The apple had a bite in it and a bruise on one side. It sat on the table.

There's something funny happening here. The other details, the ones that were cut, are easier to fill in with your imagination than for the reader to try and copy and absorb the details that used to be there. It's true, maybe now some people are seeing a greenish red apple, or don't see the bite mark as a little dirty, or that the stem is short. But the overall image is more clear, and easier to generate, without those details.

It is absolutely true that there are times where you can go on and on with the detail, setting the scene, and implying the attitude around that setting. But every detail you mention needs to hit that mood. Or with a character description, if you're implying that character's personality, every detail needs to touch that personality.

3) Use detail according to your skill level. A good story can do well with a basic, bare-boned writing style that anyone can learn. You can forget the detail and nice touches.

It's enough to just be clear with your writing.

If detail is difficult, on the one hand, absolutely, try some exercises - sit down and describe a fisherman's hut inside and out - and get better. No matter what you're writing, it's one of those skills you should work on and improve. But don't force yourself into a writing style that doesn't fit you. You don't have to dribble every page with detail if you're not good at it. Find the moments where it's necessary - there's always some - do your best.... and get an editor.

 

[Rkcapps]

There isn't much to add, everyone has it covered. Brilliantly. I would, however, echo the sentiment "take it easy on yourself in a first draft". Slowing down is key to getting it right but if you're participating in NaNoWriMo, wait to slow down in December. Wait until then to go back and fix things. Sounds like you're working on the first draft of something. Just get the story out. Get something on paper you can go back and fix things after.

I must say, I really relate to the comma comment. I agonise over the placement of them because my inner grammar voice says, "that's wrong " but my character says, "I don't speak that way!"

 

[skip.knox]

And if there's a bite in the table, now we're talkin'.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

So what I do is layer it in during my edits. I force myself to describe every room they enter, even if it's only a sentence. I do the same for characters - at least once a chapter, they get a minor descriptor. Sometimes it's as simple as mentioning his green eyes, or her kickass leather jacket. Just enough to ground the reader in the reality I've created.

This is what I'm doing now in editing my WIP, laying in the descriptions that I left out while writing the first draft. I'm terrible at putting in description as I go. I'm so focused on what's happening, what's being said, who's involved, and how they are feeling about it all, and getting that on the page. I have a mental picture of the scene setting in my head, but that doesn't often get onto the page in the first draft. The mental images have stayed with me, so I'm making sure they get onto the page now that I'm making an editing pass over the manuscript.

Anyone who is participating in NaNoWriMo is forgiven for anything one might consider as bad writing. The goal is to get 50K words on the page. Doesn't matter if you have description or dialogue or voice or character arcs or plot or anything else. Just get words on the page. Worry about making sense of the story, if there is sense to be had, in December.

 

[FifthView]

Anyone who is participating in NaNoWriMo is forgiven for anything one might consider as bad writing. The goal is to get 50K words on the page. Doesn't matter if you have description or dialogue or voice or character arcs or plot or anything else. Just get words on the page. Worry about making sense of the story, if there is sense to be had, in December.

My experience of Nano:

I'm putting in lots of description as I go along, and this is one of the things slowing me down. I like that description. I like trying to use motivation-reaction units as I go along, so something objective that leads to a reaction of some sort (including action) from one of the actors in the scene. Sometimes the reaction is not so direct as in "There's a shuttered window. Darkness sucks. 'Man I hate the dark..' He walks to the window and throws open the shutters." [Heh, not an actual string of sentences I would use.] Sometimes there's a more tonal thing I do, so that the description builds a tone and then a character's thoughts will be of the same tone, but the two aren't directly related, one leading to another.

Anyway. This slows me down when I begin to realize, after exhaustion has set in for the X day in a row, that the description is becoming clunky, repetitive, mechanical. Then I'm like, crap, I need to think about the details of this place/thing/person more. And I can grind to a virtual halt.

OTOH, voices talking in a white room can also begin to feel meaningless to me, if that's all there ever is. They are context-less, maybe on the nose, dunno. I like my MRUs.

Ultimately I'm in the same boat. I have to move on and worry about fixing/fine-tuning the description later, to get the most efficient and effective MRUs.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yep. Same boat here. Repetitive descriptions. I find I use favourite words all the time. I also find I tend to gravitate towards smells for some reason? I don't know? Maybe I'm super sensitive to smells. I have to remind myself to describe more than just smells lol.

But yeah, when writing a draft I simply focus on Scene/sequal and MRU's like FifthView mentioned, then I go back waaaaaaaaay later and add in descriptive detail. But this is normal for me. Drafts come in layers. Usually the first draft is lots of telling and showing thoughts and emotions, often time in the form of pages and pages of nothing but dialogue. Then the next layer is rearranging it so it has some decent structure. The next layer is considering the differences in each character present and making sure they are coming off as distinct (re-writing dialogue, describing actions, etc), then I'll do another layer about setting... it's a process for me. It takes a lot of tries.