Vivid Description

March 24, 2009

 

Mary Rosenblum:  I wanted to talk about description because it seems to easy and yet so many novice writers do it in a way that weakens the story.  Once you become aware of what makes the scene strong rather than weak, it IS easy.  It's understanding those mechanics that are difficult. At first.  Essentially, description needs to evoke a vivid visual scene in the reader's mind's eye and do so without requiring any work on the reader's part.  What makes description weak, in both first and third person POV is a narrative intrusion  that tells the readers 'you aren't really seeing this, I am telling you about it'.  The reason that it's hard to understand this effect as a novice is that YOU see the scene perfectly! Every time!
You imagined that scene in the first place. Of course you see it perfectly! The task of the writer is to make the readers

a: see the scene as clearly as you do without bogging down the story  

b: 'show' them the scene, don't just 'tell' them about it.
If you try to describe a scene in full detail, your story grinds to a halt.  And the more action in your scene, the less 'time' we have to sightsee. If you want to show your readers a complex and important scene for some reason, come up with a good reason for your POV character to have the leisure and reason to examine it.  Maybe that person walks into an unfamiliar room to wait for someone and has lots of time to examine the family portraits on the wall. He's bored, nothing's going on, and we need to see those portraits, maybe one picture is a clue and this is a mystery.  Whatever. If your POV enters the room in deep conversation with someone, how can that character have time to look around?  He might notice the pictures briefly, but he's busy talking. He can't examine them right now.  If your character runs through the room, pursued by a ghost, burglar, vicious dog, what have you, how much time do you think he's going to give those pictures? Pictures? What pictures? He's looking for a weapon or a door. You reveal a complex visual scene by handing the readers key details and letting those readers fill in the rest for themselves.
  Those key details are seeds and they 'suggest' the rest of the scene to the readers. Ultimately, each scene will be unique to that reader's mind's eye, but they should all be more or less the same.  Say you're describing the great hall of a manor house. You might mention plank trestle tables, nearly white from years of scrubbing with sand, smoke-grimed tapestries on the walls, rushes on the floor and great wolfhounds gnawing bones under the tables.

What about that which is familiar to the character, but alien to the reader? The character wouldn't think anything of it, but my reader need to see at least a little of it.

Mary Rosenblum:  : That's an excellent question, sundale, and one that I, as a SF/fantasy writer face constantly. You can 'define' alien details in a couple of ways. You can let your characters interact with them so that we see them as part of the action, and can figure out what they do. Or you can have your POV plausibly contemplate that detail. Plausibly! That's the key. I have no reason to study my bedroom as I'm groping for my jeans in the early AM. But if I'm on my way to something momentous, I might be stopped by a flutter of premonition. What if I never come back here? Now I might look around the room almost as a stranger would. I might never see this again. Or I might come back as someone totally different. Or whatever works for your story. It is very tricky to make your character look at the familiar as if it is not familiar, but you can do it.

What do you mean the scenes should all be "more or less the same"? In level of detail?
Mary Rosenblum:  No, Claryce. I might see dark colored tapestries, and arched windows with carved stone lintels. Other readers might see square windows and a huge hearth at one end of the room. As long as they see a room that is more or less the same as my space, we're fine.

So as long as long as the reader imagines something similar to the needs of the character, it doesn't matter what the details, as long as the room works?
Mary Rosenblum:  Exactly, Julia.  In my manor house, I don't want readers seeing modern kitchen cabinets and a running-water sink. You have to let the readers share in the invention of the story. That's what makes printed fiction stronger than visual fiction, in my opinion. We readers get to play, too. Try to include details that you'll return to later, so that you don't have to describe them all over again. For example, if later scenes feature the hearth in that manor house hall, I'd include it the first time I 'showed' the readers the room. You can fine tune that in revision, once you know what your readers need to have seen.

In my own Sci-fi, I need to describe an alien. Do I need to give all the pieces fairly quickly, or can I spread the details out a little (like over one page at most) to keep my first person POV intact?
Mary Rosenblum:  Sundale, if your POV is seeing the alien for the first time, then that POV is going to do a visual inventory.  But if you're introducing the alien to us in a scene without an unfamiliar POV, then you reveal that alien's features through action. I just got a novel chapter from one of my students who had to reveal a winged fantasy being who had no reason to think about his appearance. But as he landed at a camp, used his fiery breath to start the campfire and so on, you quickly put the picture together. She never once 'told' us what he looked like.
Avoid 'filtering words' like 'she saw', 'he noticed', and that's especially true in first person!  Try to use 'I' with action as much as possible and try not to use it with description. You'll create better 'showing', which is hard to do in first person as is.: Instead of 'she noticed the clear blue sky and puffy clouds and thought that it was a beautiful morning'
it this way:
She turned her face up to the clear blue sky, smiling at the puffy clouds. What a beautiful morning. Those little words 'she noticed' and 'she thought' tell us 'this is told to us by the author'. When  you constantly do that, you keep the readers pushed back, away from the scene. They don't step into it and share it with your POV.  It's harder to do in first person. I stepped outside, yawning. Blue sky. I looked up and smiled. Just puffy clouds, no rain. Yeah, it was gonna be a nice day after all. Notice that the 'I' is coupled with action verbs: stepped and smiled.: What I see all too often is something like this.
I stepped outside and yawned. Overhead, I noticed the blue sky and puffy clouds. It was going to be a nice day, I thought.  Here, we have two 'non-action verbs' coupled with that 'I': noticed and thought.
We can't 'see' the character 'notice', you, the author, are telling us what the character is doing. Same thing with 'thought'. Stick to verbs that 'show' us the story.  You can't do it 100 percent of the time, but do it as infrequently as you can.

What about internal narrative like, That old bat is nuts, Jimmy thought. How would you do it without the, Jimmy thought?
Mary Rosenblum:  Like this, CD.. Jimmy shook his head as the old woman took one can of soup off the shelf after another, dusting each one and replacing it. That old bat was nuts. He shrugged and went back to stocking the dairy case.
No reader will doubt that 'That old bat was nuts' is Jimmy's thought. Since it's embedded in his action, we not only see the scene, it's nearly impossible to attribute that sentence to anyone else.
The main thing to focus on when you're working on a description scene is to leave out those 'filtering words' that make the description feel 'told'.  You want your readers to see it in their mind's eye without that sense of someone telling them about it.  That's what makes a scene feel real.  Once you start to see where you're using those words and begin to leave them out, you're going to find that your stories are going to gain enormously in strength.

Let your reader "be"

Mary Rosenblum:  That's it. It's the difference, Claryce, between standing on a beach and watching the sunset and listening to your neighbor tell you about how she stood on the beach and enjoyed the sunset.

Are there other words we can avoid?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, Julia, if it's not action and it's simply defining how your character perceives something, you can get rid of it.

But is there such thing as to much sensory detail?
Mary Rosenblum:  : Good question, DaSith, and there sure is. Think about how you interact with the world...what you are aware of when.
[Mary Rosenblum ] 10:40 am: If you're strolling along a woodland path on a lovely spring day, you might notice the scent of flowers, the warm caress of the spring breeze, the feel of the sun on your shoulders and so on.  Now what if you're walking down the same path and you just got fired...the mortgage payment is due, your bank account is empty.  What are you noticing now?
When the description of the scene does not match the POV's emotional state or level of concentration, that scene will feel 'told' and 'phony' no matter how good your description is.  Your POV is angry, anxious, not at all delighted by any of those spring season details.
One of the big problems I see is in fight scenes. The MC is in a new space and a sword fight or what have you ensues. But the poor author is trying to handle the fight choreography at the same time he describes the scene. If you are fighting for your life, you really are looking at only the immediate event of the moment and how it relates to staying alive. So these scenes really fail.  If you're going to have your character engage in a fight, be sure to let him see what we need to see before the action starts!  This is when a lot of authors 'pull back' out of the fight so that they can describe the setting and action from the outside.
But then you miss the power of the readers being in the fight with the POV character. Visual description is rarely if ever more powerful than dramatic visual action.
And watching from the wings isn't as powerful as doing the action yourself, which is the effect we're trying to create.

Is the key to a good fight scene the mix of action and some dialogue?
Mary Rosenblum:  You have to be careful with dialogue. You can get a few words in, but if you've ever been in real fight, you might recall that you're pretty engaged with watching your opponent and planning your next move. Glib dialogue during the fight is a big Hollywood trademark. Not very realistic.

Describing the fight itself can be hard too, especially big ones with lots of people.
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, Sundale, it can. And if your POV is not in a position to show readers what the readers need to see, this might be the time to pull WAY back and simply go to cinematic POV. Stay out of any one character's head and show the readers the 'satellite image' of the sweeping battle.

Cinematic pov?
Mary Rosenblum:  Camera eye, DaSith. Say your character is a soldier in the Battle of Gettysburg. You aren't going to be able to show that battle to the readers through that POV...the soldier will see only the chaos immediately surrounding him. So you 'dolly back' and now we're looking down on the battle from afar. We see the entire thing spread out over the fields and you describe the action from this perspective. Afterward, you drop us back into the head of that soldier again and we're back in the field, experiencing what he does.

My two takeaways today..."Visuals are rarely if ever more powerful than dramatic action." and leave off of "thought" and "heard" as POV useable verbs....
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep, those are the two most important points, but what I meant by viosuals and action is that visual action is stronger than mere description.  That is, if your character is striding down the path and noticing the day, it is stronger than if you simply describe the day and then say 'Annalee walked down the path to town'.  That is what I see a lot in novice scenes. The day dawned clear and lovely, the rolling hills spangled with dew and starred with wild daffodils. Birds sang spring and a warm breeze wafted the scene of lilacs through the cottage's open windows. Ariel started down the path to town carrying her basket of eggs for the market.
So here, see how the description is separated from Ariel's actions?  First we have description, now we have bare action.  You want to blend the two.
Ariel started down the path to market at dawn, smiling at the birds' bright song. Nesting season. Shawn would be climbing every tree after nests and Mama would be after him for tearing his pants. She drew a deep breath of warm, lilac scented air hesitated, drawn by the gold glint of daffodils in the dewy sheep-fold. Aye, right, and be late for market! Swinging her basket, she hurried now. Daffodils on the way home! They'd still be there.
Here, I've mixed visuals with action with internal narrative.  If you're doing a fight scene, you're going to have more action, fewer visual details.

So Ariel's perception of the visuals in short burst is okay?
Mary Rosenblum:  Sure. I’m not using 'she saw' or 'she noticed' or any of those filtering words.  She draws a breath of lilac scented air. Action verb. No 'she smelled'. She hesitates, drawn by that glint of daffodils. No 'she noticed daffodils on the sheep-fold'
You don't need those unnecessary and empty words.