How to Write Description: Why Less Is More

By Gen Gavel

Information vs. Imagination

As a reader, have you frequently found your eyes glazing over large passages of description in an otherwise fascinating novel? Have you skipped descriptions, even though you know you probably need that information? Have you ever closed a book and never gone back simply because you felt the author was trying too hard to show you every detail, but instead every new word was just distancing you further?

For all those words, you still could not see the setting. You could not imagine it, and it was no longer worth trying.

Either you need a nap, or you’ve already begun to learn why less information often provides for more imagination.

TMI

Providing descriptive information to your reader has a single purpose: to immerse your reader in the world of your novel. You want them in there with you, dwelling within your setting, imagining it in synch with you. You definitely don’t want them to have to work for it, and, worst of all, you don’t want all those hours of carefully selecting hundreds of descriptive words to go to waste.

So, don’t write them.

Imagination is More Than Visual

Imagination is not only an effort of visual creativity. In fact, Dictionary.com defines it as, “the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.” Humans are capable of imagining familiar fragrances, tastes, sounds, feelings, and emotions, too, so it’s important to appeal to the whole human when you wish to immerse them in your setting.

Fact: between one and three percent of the population is incapable of imagining any sensory detail that is not present. They cannot draw them up, mentally. This unique trait is called Aphantasia. It’s interesting, though; even those with Aphantasia have an imagination.

Imagining Emotions

I asked my friend, who has Aphantasia, whether or not she still enjoys reading. When her answer was a firm yes! I asked how that works. She said she’s extremely empathetic. She cannot pull to mind an image, a smell, or a sound, but give her a hurting character and she will join him in the pain instantly.

Character First

So, you want to immerse your reader in a lush scene full of sensory details, but you do not want to lose them in lengthy passages of description.

Start with the one “sense” we can all identify with: emotion. Start with the character. In every scene, firmly establish what your POV character is feeling and why.

Note: This should not be done by simply stating the emotion.

Sam is not sad; his heart aches. Marta is not jealous; she can’t get her mind off the way Sophie celebrated the medal that ought to have been hers. Showing emotion instead of explaining it is a key method used to draw a reader into your story.

Emotional Descriptors

When your character’s emotion is front and center in your scene, (even if this was established at the end of the previous chapter) painting a mental image, or other sensory experience, will be much easier.

You can make any description both brief and powerful when you choose:

📚 Words that evoke memories

📚 Words that relate to the present

📚 Words that stir longings

Words that evoke memories

I hope I speak for all of us when I say, we all know the feeling of being a child at Christmas. Perhaps your “Christmas joy” wasn’t at that particular holiday, but that intense feeling of anticipation, discovery, and satisfaction is likely related to the experience of unwrapping a gift or being told to pack a bag because you’re off to Disneyland or a swim park.

You could waste two paragraphs describing Quan’s adoration for his new, flashy, dangerous, powerful, expensive, longed-for, white and blue, metal and plastic drone that makes him feel grown-up, and trusted, and strong, and so so brave. Or, you could save a ton of space and just say, Christmas of Christmases. No other gift would ever compare. For how could another gift grant a dream higher than the dream to captain your very own airship? Meet Captain Quan.

At this point, does the reader have a strong visual image of the drone? Probably not. But is the reader interested enough to keep reading? If they’ve connected with Quan, then yes. A perfect mental image is not as important as many new authors believe it to be. Still, if you dream of painting a particular image in the mind, you’ll first need to prepare your reader for it, by giving them a reason to care.

Words that relate to the present

Once your reader cares to see the scene or the item being described, you’ll want to be conscious of which words tend to paint mental images more easily than others.

Look around you. Do you see pops of color? My red car is outside my window. I have several bright green plants here in my office. My husband’s leather chair is a classic leather brown. That’s the same color as my Springer Spaniel.

If you’re writing a setting that is unfamiliar to your reader, be especially careful to insert choice descriptors that the reader might be able to find around them. If your king’s dog is the color of twice-cooked bore liver what’s been stewed in Glassberry Wine and fried in the crumbs of Kasinka Grain bread, your reader might be entertained, but they will not know the color you’re trying to describe. Instead, if you really want to get that dog’s coloration in the reader’s head, find a color he or she might see from where they’re sitting. Leather brown? Oaken? Cocoa bean? Dung?

Of course, make sure the words you choose are also appropriate for your character and your story world. Just as a twelfth-century knight would never reference a microwave, it should go without saying that a fantasy lord would never use the word mocha.

Words that stir longings

Another way to abbreviate lengthy passages that your reader is likely to skip is to get lofty. What I mean is, appeal to every human’s desire for more.

Princess Abigail doesn’t have a periwinkle colored dress with a purple sash and twenty violet bows and layers upon layers of snow-white underskirts, and delicate little laces up the mutton-chop sleeves and a plummeting neckline that would turn her grandmother’s plump cheeks to a shade of red close to cherry wine. No. She has a dress that has transformed her into a woman, a queen! It is splendid and blue like the very heavens, and when she swirls, she can swear it lifts her off the floor.

We long to fly, we long to run without growing weary, and we long to sing long and loud and clear without sounding like fools. Appeal to these lofty longings regularly.

Also effective, is appealing to the more base human longings such as power, pride, and pleasure. Don’t tell us about the young woman’s long list of perfect physical features, tell us how she makes him feel.

Go Macro

Everything we have established to this point will help you paint emotional, sweeping scenes which quickly becomes home to the reader. This is going macro, so to speak. You’re not filling your pages with descriptions, but rather spending your precious words on enrapturing your audience. Then, finally, you’ll have the opportunity to get extremely specific.

Go Micro

A dove. Not an ordinary dove. A dove the color of “it’s a girl” balloons and preschool ballet tights.

A dove straight out of an animated film has landed on your character’s city-flat balcony and suddenly the reader’s need to know the colors and textures of everything around him vanishes. In fact, it has become necessary that the surrounding cavass was not over-described. If you had started into this scene with red tile roofs, copper piping, and blazing blue fire escapes, the dove being pink would hardly matter.

Description as Blinders

Ultimately, the objects you choose to fully describe ought to be selected based on their significance to the story.

I’m not sure how humane they are, but the idea behind putting blinders on a horse is that the horse’s peripheral vision should not distract it from going in the direction that you have planned.

You are the boss here.

Let the campfire setting be whatever your reader imagines it to be, but if you want them studying the shapes in the flames, (perhaps because you’re developing a character who is capable of reading signs or dreams) then it’s your job to make those flames fascinating.

Use your descriptions to keep your reader’s eye on what matters most and let their imagination fill in the rest.

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Gen Gavel — Editor, Havok Publishing

Lover of meaningful stories and powerful connections, Gen writes and edits with one goal: to draw people together by the power of fiction. She has had several short stories published online and in print, has co-edited a teen authors anthology, and enjoys editing flash fiction for Havok Publishing as well as full novels for her private clients.

www.facebook.com/Gen-Gavel-Editing

“One Example of Why Less is More When Writing Description” K. M. Weiland, Helping Writers Become Authors. Accessed June 11, 2019 https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/why-one-descriptor-is-more-than-two/#

“Using the Best Descriptions in Your Writing” Novel Writing Help. Accessed June 11, 2019 https://www.novel-writing-help.com/details-in-writing.html

“Imagination” Dictionary.com Accessed June 10, 2019 https://www.dictionary.com/browse/imagination

“Aphantasia: When Your Mind’s Eye Fails You” Merriam-Webster. Accessed June 10, 2019 https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/aphantasia-the-inability-to-form-mental-images