Level Up Your Descriptions
I learnt a tip for resume writing that I find applies pretty well to novel writing too. Essentially, you shouldn’t write on your resume that you took orders and handled cash at the till at your restaurant job because people already know what a server does. You should write the unexpected or unique things you bring to the job.
Same with writing descriptions in fiction. There are certain things that people are going to automatically assume about others, about a place, about a thing. For example, you wouldn’t say, “she grabbed out brown coffee” or “the car drove on four wheels.” Because when we think coffee, we already think brown/beans, and when we think car, we already think four wheels.
This seems obvious, until you consider that mentioning that the café is warmly decorated, cozy, and is full of writers working on manuscripts and people catching up over coffee is… exactly that. While maybe a baseline of information like this is appropriate, all you needed to say was ‘café’ and we’re already in this image. For a setting or person that doesn’t mean much to the story, this could suffice.
However, for an important element in the narrative, you’re going to want to bring your descriptions beyond that assumed/obvious baseline.
We know an elderly person is going to have grey hair, shuffle slowly, and speak in a creaky voice. We might not know that their purse seems far too heavy for them, and they have a distinct smell of gunpowder that follows them into rooms.
I’m reading a book right now by Jasper FForde called ‘Jack Spratt Investigates The Big Over Easy’ and it’s full of interesting and unexpected descriptions. Here is one of my favourites:
“The years had been charitable to Mrs. Spratt, and despite her age she was as bright as a button and had certainly not lost any of her youthful zest. Jack put it down to quantity of children. It had either made her tough in old age or worn her out—if the latter, then without Jack and his nine elder siblings, she might have lived to one hundred ninety-six. She painted people’s pets in oils because ‘someone has to,’ collected small pottery animals, Blue Baboon LPs and Jellyman commemorative plates. She had been widowed seventeen years.”
Think of what things make a person or space you know well unique, and try to imbue those details into your work. What makes a place look lived in? What sort of objects or feel or smell does it have? What distinguishes your best friend from others in a crowd?
Feel free to share a description that's really stuck with you!
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
