Describing Description

Hello, all! It’s Kamryn again. For this blog post, Kristin suggested I talk about something my over-writer brain tends to love that her under-writer brain hates: description.

We bring this up because one thing we noticed as we began to co-write together was that, out of the two of us, I tended to be the one adding in a lot of the description to fill out the scenes. In our manuscript The Visionary, this wasn’t much of an issue considering we were both writing the same chapters and same character. But when we began drafting its sequel (which has a second character narrating in addition to the first), this divide became much more apparent. Mostly because my chapters tended to be way longer. Oops.

Now, that isn’t to say that Kristin never describes anything when she writes- she does. But I also don’t have a toddler, so I have a bit more time to review and polish my chapters whereas she, a lot of times, just needs to get the idea down first before shading in later.

Still, the question Kristin asked me to touch on was simply about how you get yourself into thinking about description. Essentially, how do you do the thing?

In truth, there may not be a specific answer for getting yourself into thinking about how to fill in a scene except to perhaps train yourself to do so. I don’t know if the way I go about describing a scene is a one-size-fits-all answer, but I can try to explain how I work.

The easiest way to explain how I think about describing a scene when I start writing is this: I imagine what I’m working on is a scene in a movie. I’m someone who’s wired very visually, so I think about the setting, the characters, and the action I need to happen here the way I’d play them out if I was a director. If you’re writing, you aren’t constrained by some million-dollar budget, so you can literally do whatever you want. Your homesick astronaut needs a tricked-out space station full of crazy tech and a fleet of ships? Go for it. Your fearless princess flees the dark palace to steal a magic sword from a dragon’s treasure trove? Awesome.

The first thing then for me is thinking about what I need. I’m not confident I can describe how my brain works in a way that makes sense, so let me just run with the princess example and work through the process.

Okay, let’s say that before our princess flees the dark palace, she has a final confrontation with some antagonist (a villain or maybe just a character that’s an obstacle) triggering that escape. This would make her the protagonist (main character) we’re following. I’m just throwing out random stuff off the top of my head, so let’s pick someone that makes sense as a threat for a princess. Maybe a regent or council member or opposing king, for example. I’m going to pick regent.

So, we have a confrontation scene between a princess and a regent. Where do we need this to happen? My brain automatically says a throne room because it’s a big space offering lots of creative potential and would be symbolic since it seems these two would be fighting over a throne.

Now that I know the core characters for the scene, a general setting, and probably what sort of conversation needs to happen if the result is her escaping, this is the place where I’d say to put on your director’s hat.

Since we automatically described this setting as a dark place, then obviously the vibe is going to be kind of creepy. Probably shadowy and dark, maybe cold. If it’s daytime, maybe the light will only barely come through the windows of the room. If night, maybe the room is crippled by darkness beyond candlelight. Are those candles in candlesticks or hanging from the ceilings or in sconces? Could they be a potential element to aid in our princess’s sudden escape?

Think about how you want the room to feel for the scene, elements that make sense. Is our heroine confronting this bad regent alone, or are there others needed for the scene? If there are other people present, who and where are they? Whose side of the confrontation are they on? Does our enemy regent have councilors or guards to wage against her? Does our princess have loyal knights to aid her escape or allies? Are there other people needed? We’ve put these two in a throne room where people might gather to petition the monarch- people who could cause chaos if needed or be a good place to hide a character we need to pop up later in the story. Is the throne room a space the princess has been in a lot, rarely, or never? If she’s not on the throne and there’s a regent, what kind of feelings does this room bring up for her depending on her backstory? Could this hint at something happening to her parents?

Once we’ve thought about the setting and who needs to be in it, think about the action in the scene. Where does it start? Does the princess make a dramatic entrance in, walking into an empty room bravely to face an enemy on her own throne, or does she have to push through a jumbled crowd just to be seen? If this was a movie, the camera would follow her in, showing the posture, stride, expression, mannerisms of the actress’s performance. This would tell you if she was frightened or angry or defiant.

As a writer though, the reader is relying on you to convey the things you want them to picture. You are the camera, the microphones, the costume designer, the director that guides the audience through the scene and builds the world for them to react to.

One way to do this is to engage your reader’s senses. Just going off the things we’ve already talked about, our throne room is a place that at the moment seems very gloomy, maybe even oppressive toward our princess. Candles would have a very distinct smell. If the room is mostly empty, our princess’s footsteps would probably echo loudly on the stone floor. If it’s not, maybe she has to fight to be heard over the crowd or gets briefly jostled into a love interest she’s not met yet. All these things are what make a room come alive, enhance its realness- smells, sounds, activity, atmosphere, character emotion.

In truth, I think there are many factors that can be considered and used to inform how a writer goes about description. For instance, genre and styling. In my mind, fantasy books tend to utilize description in a more noticeable way than a contemporary book might, just for example. They both obviously describe characters and places, but fantasy does tend to be more whimsical or contains settings that might just require more description because they are unusual versus a setting or element anyone would be familiar with. A writer trying to describe a civilization that lives in a forest city probably needs to explain their setting more than one talking about, say, a post office.

I’m not sure if that was the best way to explain things or not, but hopefully all that makes sense. Ironic, isn’t it, that it is very difficult to describe description? I think, for me, the thing to do to get into a description mindset is to just think. Think as creatively as you can like we did walking through that example and ask lots and lots of questions. What elements do you absolutely need for the scene? Who’s involved? What makes sense to be in the scene that can engage reader’s senses? If this is a place we’ve seen before or the character is familiar with, how much does it need to be described anyway?

Beyond visualizing what you want to convey, a lot of description might just come from practice. Learning and training yourself to think descriptively is a writing skill that must be developed the same as your grammar, voice, etc. As you try to hone your description skills and work on automatically putting yourself in the mindset to think that way, it might just take a while to get used to purposefully adding in description.

If you write in a specific genre, it’s probably helpful to familiarize yourself with the terminology relevant to that- for example, architectural terms for castles, types of weaponry, the various words describing horse’s coats- because that will make your job way easier.

Grow your vocabulary so instead of saying “the princess walked into the throne room”, your brain might pull out something automatically infused with description like “the princess clenched her fists as she strode into the oppressive gloom where her father’s empty throne waited”. Use those verbs and adjectives to your advantage to convey emotion.

My general approach to description is to use that director’s hat to visualize the scene, the elements, action, and what’s needed for the story to move forward. If that doesn’t work for you, then that’s okay too. One thing that makes writing so interesting is that there are countless ways to do it. Find what works for you and stick to it.

Thanks for reading. Write On.

-Kamryn