Our question for week two is asked by [
SleepingDragon]. He says:
Descriptions of people (and working them into the story) are kind of tough for me for some reason. Any advice?
We all love our characters. We want our readers to see them, understand them, and appreciate them the way we ourselves do. Because we want this, we explain too much. Therein lies a major problem.
It is hard to resist the urge to 'info-dump' and tell the reader everything that there is to know about our characters. We think, how can they possibly know Sharla Hinglebottom and come to empathize with her if they don't know about the time in second grade when she dropped Harold Sanger's valentine in the mud? Or the incident in the girl's locker room when Sharla's best friend Tory told her how big Brad Buffin's weiner was? Or the fact that Sharla's hair is naturally brown and curly but she straightens and dyes it blonde?
We don't need to know any of that!
Every detail in a story has to have a reason, and that reason is to drive the narrative forward. A descriptive passage gives details about someone or something in order to give the reader a better understanding about the characters and their world.
We don't need to know that Sharla is blonde and has blue eyes unless it is integral to her motivation or has an impact on the story. If Sharla is a 45 year old woman whose story revolves around her mid-life crisis, we may need to know that Sharla's hair is naturally brown and curly but she straightens and dyes it blonde
because it makes her feel younger. But even that might be too much information. You'll be surprised how little description you actually need.
Where description is necessary, avoid a solid, dull block of descriptive prose by integrating description with action, or by having the description filtered through the eyes of a character. When you do the latter, try to remember that the reader should only be allowed to know what the observing character knows.
Example: Trina was short and stocky. Her hair was dishwater blonde and her eyes were grey. Her nose hooked slightly to the left.
Better: He wrapped his arms around Trina, revelling in the softness of her body. Looking down into her pretty grey eyes, he hated to think about how insecure she was. She constantly degraded herself over her imperfections. "Darling," he whispered,"You don't have to be a supermodel for me to love you."
It is easy to reveal characters when you can combine action and dialogue. Personality, character flaws, and speech patterns can all be expressed without a single sentence of description. If your reader can tell through dialogue or action (
remember those pacing adverbs? Think how much they can tell you about a character's physiology without using descriptors!), there is no reason to expound by adding unnecessary passages of description.
A good descriptive passage has three elements: (1) specific, well-observed detail (2) revelation of the character's inner life and (3) motivation, the impulse that drives that character.
The purpose of good fiction is to tell the story in a satisfying way. A good writer doesn't hide in the details, or repeat information, or bore hir readers. A good writer draws hir readers into the story, letting them feel the storyworld intuitively. A good writer should strive to use the fewest possible words to achieve the greatest possible meaning.
If you are confused about how much description is needed, think hard about the last sentence in the paragraph above. How can you use the fewest possible words and achieve the greatest possible meaning? Two ways: remove the unnecessary, and combine what is happening with the way it is happening (action and dialogue).
You must rethink, refine, and rewrite until nothing can be altered without losing the full meaning or damaging the narrative flow.
Advice for those who feel at a loss when it comes to description: cut. And keep cutting until you think you have reduced your story to a skeleton. The skeleton is your story. The rest is obesity.
There is no need to spell everything out, hit every nail on the head, cross every
t and dot every
i. If you write them well, your characters will be well loved even if the readers don't know about every little detail. That goes for the appendicitis scar, too.
Questions or comments about this column are welcome.
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