Let's talk about descriptions

[Chessie2]

Nothing's ever easy.

Sometimes there's a better way to say what we mean. Other times our gut is correct. But you're right. Writing is not easy, far from it. I do believe some parts of it become more second nature over time. We all have our weak and strong points. Description is a strong point for me. Plot is not. Not sure if it ever will be honestly.

I agree with Skip: just write. Like, it's good to have discussions and think about these parts of the craft but ultimately the only way to grow is to practice, practice, practice. I'm a firm believer that our subconscious tends to know what it's doing whereas our rational, conscious mind is more critical. If we let the love of writing and that passion for words take over we can produce some pretty amazing stuff.

 

[FifthView]

I disagree with the "just write," because of how just can be interpreted.

I do agree with Skip. If we come to a discussion like this believing it can give us or help us discover The Ideal Method of Description (tm), a fail-proof method, then the discussion might not help much. "So you're pretty well doomed to fail, in someone's eyes." —Skip. So it's good to write for yourself; then seek readers who can help you see what you haven't been able to see in your own writing.

But if just means only—i.e. only write, don't come to these discussions or bother to discuss these things at all—then I disagree with that phrase. For me, these discussions are a way to help us see into our own writing and the POVs of others, so it's like writing and seeking input from readers. Like, but not identical, to that process. These discussions can help us shorten the journey a bit, but not complete the journey. That requires practice.

Edit: Also, reading. Not just writing. We've had examples, from established writers, in this thread, and some home-brewed examples. Seeing the good and the bad in those examples, or simply seeing the variety of approaches, is good whether you are reading novels or reading excerpts. Excerpts aren't including context, heh, so there's that caveat. But still.

 

[FifthView]

That last line would suffice.

I may not have been very clear. I do like the sort of succinct, to the point method of description in something like It was a desert, and he'd been there too long already. For some reason, to me that feels like something I'd read in one of those hard-boiled detective stories, or if the character is hard-boiled, jaded, in any type of story. I like it.

As you've seen, my comments here can go on at length as I work my way through a thought. My tendency is toward more, not being succinct and to the point. But I do like fiction that gets to the point. I've thought perhaps I need to work on doing that in my own writing. So when you made your succinct, to-the-point, clear comment, that comment exemplified for me the sort of thing I might try working on.

 

[Chessie2]

Being succinct and to the point is something I've worked hard on. It's not easy by any stretch to be more efficient with words. Writing shorts has helped a ton with this. I don't like to go on and on. I prefer that my words mean something in a story and that way I have space for more scenes as well.

EDIT: regarding "just write". If I'm joining in on these discussions it's because I believe that I have something valuable to say. They do tend to carry on more than I can join in on sometimes, but then I don't give a lot of these parts of the craft serious thought anymore. There are other aspects of writing and publishing that take precedent for me; so when I say "just write" I mean it. Just get the work done. STUDY. Yes! I still read and still study the craft, too. But we're all in different places so if focusing on descriptions to a detail is what you need to do, then by no means do I mean any disrespect by saying "just write". Writing is the only way we grow and put these things to practice. I don't really see what's wrong with that comment unless it's being dragged out for minutiae.

 

[pmmg]

Lot of reading to get through this thread and a lot of good stuff.

Can we write in a way that encourages the reader to create their own image of what we're telling them? Should we? How?

I will go one further than this, and say, if you don't, I'll skip it.

I don't know. I am not really a reader. I feel often that much of the descriptive passages are kind of wasting my time. If all it is mountains and trees, I don't need four paragraphs on it. Its got to matter, or my brain just kind of goes, mountain, trees...got it, and moves on. So, unless there is something extremely attention catching about it, and sometimes there is, I would rather just get back to what does matter, what is happening in the story below.

The only comment I think I find useful to make, is that this seems like an attempt to capture art with science. There just isn't a way to put this all in a formula and spit out reliable results. At some point the art and the artist has to take over and know just by their own feel and their own senses that this is what is needed, and give it what it needs. If its wrong, the audience will let you know.

I can say, I have some tricks I employ, but they are not magic. I often employ what I call the rule of three. Three details seem to resonate best to my reader-ish mind. More and I start looking for the skip button, less and it does not ring as vibrantly. Another might be don't waste time on things that waste the readers time. Perhaps I am more cognizant of that than others, just due to the fact that I don't really fancy myself a reader. I sometimes think of myself as a minimalist, but that is not really true, I just don't add stuff that does not seem to matter. And another might be make it vivid and try to include something more than just how it looks. Add sensation, or taste, or smell...something a little trickier to get in. For most of my own work, I don't include stuff the POV would not notice, care about, or know. That is sometimes hard, because stuff does have a history and the POV does not know it, and so it does not come out. But I don't force it. I have another story to tell, and I am telling that one. Maybe a last one, and this goes along with art, is paint the scene enough, let the reader infer the rest, and start to the action.

One trick I was told and see the merits off, but don't always follow, is try to always have more than one character in a scene. That way they interact and there is stage business. A solitary character tends to lead to long slogging blocks of text that just look dense and scare a reader off.

Anyway...Lot of good stuff in this one.

 

[skip.knox]

I have found these kind of discussions, no matter how much they squirrel around and leap from topic to topic, to be useful because every once in a while there's a gem. It might be something I sort of already knew but this time when I read it, it clicks. Or it might be something quite new to me. And because we are all not just at different points on the road, but are on entirely different roads, chances are just about everything said will resonate with someone.

Rule of three
Invoke more than one sense
Show what the character sees (hears, smells, etc)
Put more than one character in the scene

All good ones. Thanks, pmmg!

 

[pmmg]

I have found these kind of discussions, no matter how much they squirrel around and leap from topic to topic, to be useful because every once in a while there's a gem. It might be something I sort of already knew but this time when I read it, it clicks. Or it might be something quite new to me. And because we are all not just at different points on the road, but are on entirely different roads, chances are just about everything said will resonate with someone.

I find just the same. I read them cause I am looking for something nugget like to file away. I've been unfair though. I should list out the nuggets I found, but I would have to go read the whole thread again...

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm just bringing this one back to life for a little bit as something came nagging at me.

This ties back to using sensory input as mentioned earlier in a way, but it's not necessarily the same. I'm talking about instead of focusing on how something looks we can describe how it feels - emotionally. Rather than trying to show how something looks or sounds, we can try to trigger an emotional respons and give the reader an impression through that.

We can see this used in various kinds of advertising, where we're showed something that's largely unrelated to the product advertised (happy people dancing on the beach to sell laundry detergents (somehow they're all wearing very clean white shirts too - unbuttoned)). The images try to create a positive vibe to associate with the product. I think similar techniques can be used to great effect in writing too.

 

[FifthView]

I'm just bringing this one back to life for a little bit as something came nagging at me.

This ties back to using sensory input as mentioned earlier in a way, but it's not necessarily the same. I'm talking about instead of focusing on how something looks we can describe how it feels - emotionally. Rather than trying to show how something looks or sounds, we can try to trigger an emotional respons and give the reader an impression through that.

We can see this used in various kinds of advertising, where we're showed something that's largely unrelated to the product advertised (happy people dancing on the beach to sell laundry detergents (somehow they're all wearing very clean white shirts too - unbuttoned)). The images try to create a positive vibe to associate with the product. I think similar techniques can be used to great effect in writing too.

Do you have an example?

The laundry detergent ad is still showing/describing something, people dancing on a beach, even if it's not showing the detergent. This, I think, might be related to the use of metaphor in prose. For instance, describing a long underground, man-made chamber in terms of a crypt built for giants.

So I wonder if any description founded on how the item or environment feels to a character would still revolve around sensory things. The nondescript face of the coroner gazing at her leaves her feeling as if spiders are crawling over her skin, tunneling through her skin, seeking her vital organs.

On the other hand, perhaps a memory from childhood would work. The nondescript face of the coroner evokes the feeling she felt every night as a child after going to bed while her parents argued in the next room. Such a description might forsake vivid nouns, adjectives, and description but instead turn on an ineffable feeling. ("Parents" is general, vague, "next room" is plain and non-specific, etc.) Even so, there are sensory impressions, insofar as any of us can remember and visualize similar experiences—the darkness of bedtime, the sound of activity in another room, etc.

Edit: As an afterthought, I've wondered if conceptual, i.e. non-visual things could be used to describe or at least imply a character's reaction. For instance, "a sad, forlorn place" might imply the character's impression and so something about the character as well as the environment. My mind's just trying to go over how it might be done.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Do you have an example?

I do, but this is from my own writing again, so bear with me.

Edit: As an afterthought, I've wondered if conceptual, i.e. non-visual things could be used to describe or at least imply a character's reaction. For instance, "a sad, forlorn place" might imply the character's impression and so something about the character as well as the environment. My mind's just trying to go over how it might be done.

This is probably a bit closer to what I originally wanted to say, and it's pretty close to the example as well. This is from Emma's Story when she finally gets a cup of hot whiskey after having been out in the snow and cold all day:

Emma picked up the little cup and cradled it in her hands. It barely fit a mouthful – perhaps two. The rough surface warmed her palms, and the faint smoke rising from within hinted at evenings free from work and chores long completed.
[…]
She moved the cup to her nose, closed her eyes, and let the fumes find their way into her. A campfire by a forest lake. Morning mists rising from the valleys. Pipe smoke and sheep and walking over ground covered by fallen pine needles on a warm summer night.
[…]
Touching the cup to her lips she tilted it ever so slightly and sipped the warm liquid. Gold and brown and moss covered rocks. Fire in the hearth, stew in the pot, and a good friend with no need to talk.

It's not so much the taste of the whiskey itself, as her emotions and associations to it that's shown. I think you can probably do similar things with other descriptions too, but it's probably most suitable for moods and vibes.

I'll try and come up with a different example over the next few days.

 

[FifthView]

Thanks for that example. I know exactly what you mean, have encountered this sort of thing lots of times, but I'm having a difficulty coming up with the right words to describe the approach—perhaps this is ironic.

Usually there seems to be some sort of transference, so that as a reader when I encounter that, it's as if the whiskey or whatever is being described. If it hints at evenings, smells like campfires, morning mist, pipe smoke, etc,, then the taste/smell is precisely like some indescribable combination of these things. Even if I know, intellectually, that the actual taste & smell can't be that.

This is using actual imagery however, and the question might be asked whether this is a description of the whiskey or a description of those other experiences merely triggered by the un-described whiskey.

I do, but this is from my own writing again, so bear with me.

This is probably a bit closer to what I originally wanted to say, and it's pretty close to the example as well. This is from Emma's Story when she finally gets a cup of hot whiskey after having been out in the snow and cold all day:

It's not so much the taste of the whiskey itself, as her emotions and associations to it that's shown. I think you can probably do similar things with other descriptions too, but it's probably most suitable for moods and vibes.

I'll try and come up with a different example over the next few days.

 

[FifthView]

Not long after leaving my last comment, I realized I'd offered an example recently in a different thread, from Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, when the main character begins to describe how the massive sun he's viewing from an observation deck strikes him:

"To me," I said, "it seems at once both bitter and sweet; it speaks to me of concatenations of taste as eccentric as mace, vinegared lichen, and powdered alum served three hours after sunset at the very moment when the musicians cease to play—it casts me out of myself, then hurls me back like a suddenly encountered odor from childhood that, as I name it, I only then realize I have mistaken for some other, and I am forced to contemplate all the possibilities that, in their shadings and subtleties, must be as varied as the red and black variegations on that star itself, and thus I am struck with the notion of something so large it might as well be infinite, so old it might as well be eternal."

I think this is different from your example in the way it's placed in direct speech rather than free indirect speech? Also, Delany's description is using a speaker who is more consciously musing on his ... musing, hah, over thoughts and feelings triggered by the sun. But it's still the same sort of thing, just applied differently.

I've become certain there must be a particular term for this literary device, but I haven't been able to find it yet. It's similar to ekphrasis, similar to synaethesia, seems to be related to stream-of-consciousness in some way, relates to metaphor and simile, heh, and might even have a bit of juxtaposition going on. But there might be a specific term for using this in a work of fiction; I don't know.

I do, but this is from my own writing again, so bear with me.

This is probably a bit closer to what I originally wanted to say, and it's pretty close to the example as well. This is from Emma's Story when she finally gets a cup of hot whiskey after having been out in the snow and cold all day:

It's not so much the taste of the whiskey itself, as her emotions and associations to it that's shown. I think you can probably do similar things with other descriptions too, but it's probably most suitable for moods and vibes.

I'll try and come up with a different example over the next few days.