How to pull off descriptions
New authors always describe the scene and place every object on the stage before they press the play button of their novels. And I feel that it happens because we live in a world filled with visual media like comics and films, which heavily influence our prose.
In visual media, it’s really easy to set the scene—you just show where every object is, doesn’t matter if they’re a part of the action about to come or not. But prose is quite different from comics and films. You can’t just set the scene and expect the reader to wait for you to start action of the novel. You just begin the scene with action, making sure your reader is glued to the page.
And now that begs the question—if not at the beginning, where do you describe the scene? Am I saying you should not use descriptions and details at all? Hell naw! I’m just saying the way you’re doing it is wrong—there’s a smarter way to pull off descriptions. And I’m here to teach that to you.
#01 - What are descriptions?
Let’s start with the basics—what are descriptions? How do you define descriptions? Or details, for that matter? And what do the words include?
Descriptions refer to… descriptions. It’s that part of your prose where you’re not describing something—the appearance of an object, perhaps. Mostly, we mean scene-descriptions when we use the term, but descriptions are more than just scene-descriptions.
Descriptions include appearances of characters too. Let’s call that character-descriptions.
Both scene-descriptions and character-descriptions are forms of descriptions that we regularly use in our prose. We mostly use them at the beginning of the scene—just out of habit.
Authors, especially the newer ones, feel that they need to describe each and every nook and cranny of the place or character so they can be visualized clearly by their readers, right as the authors themselves visualized them. And they do that at the start of the scene because how can you visualize a scene when you don’t know how the scene looks first.
And that’s why your prose is filled with how the clouds look or what lights are on the room before you even start with the dialogues and action. But the first paragraph doesn’t need to be a simple scene-description—it makes your prose formulaic and predictable. And boring. Let me help you with this.
#02 - Get in your narrator’s head
The prose may have many MCs, but a piece of prose only has a single narrator. And these days, that’s mostly one of the characters of your story. Who uses third-person omniscient narrator these days anyway? If that’s you, change your habits.
Anyway, know your narrator. Flesh out their character. And then internalize them—their speech and stuff like that. Internalize your narrator to such an extent that you can write prose from their point-of-view.
Now, I don’t mean to say that only your narrator should be at the center of the scene—far from it. What I mean is you should get into your narrator’s head.
You do not describe a scene from the eyes of the author—you—but from the eyes of the narrator. You see from their eyes, and understand what they’re noticing. And then you write that.
Start your scene with what the narrator is looking at.
The dark clouds had covered the sky that day. The whole classroom was in shades of gray—quite unusual for someone like Sara who was used to the sun. She felt the gloom the day had brought with it—the gloom that no one else in her class knew of.
She never had happy times under the clouds like that. Rain made her sad. Rain made her yearn for something she couldn’t put into words. What was it that she was living for? Money? Happiness?
As she stared at the sky through the window, she was lost in her own quiet little corner. Both money and happiness—and even everything else—were temporary. All of it would leave her one day, then come back, then leave, then come back, like the waves of an ocean far away from any human civilization in sight.
All of it would come and go—like rain, it’d fall on her, like rain, it’d evaporate without proof.
And suddenly, drops of water began hitting the window.
You know it was a cloudy day, where it could rain anytime soon. You know that for other students, it didn’t really matter, but Sara felt really depressed because of the weather that day. You know Sara was at the corner, dealing with her emotions alone.
It’s far better than this,
The dark clouds covered the sky that day. It could rain anytime soon.
From her seat at the corner of the room, Sara stared at the sky that made everything gray that day. She…
The main reason it doesn’t work is that you describe the scene in the first paragraph, but it’s devoid of any emotions. Of any flavor. It’s like a factual weather report of the day. That’s what you don’t want to do—write descriptions in a factual tone.
If you want to pull off the prior one, get to your narrator’s head. See from their eyes, think from their brain. Understand what they’re experiencing, and then write that experience from their POV.
Sara didn’t care what everyone was wearing—they were all probably in their school uniforms, obviously, so I didn’t describe that. Sara didn’t focus on how big the classroom was, or how filled, or what everybody was doing. Sara was just looking at the clouds and the clouds alone, hearing everybody just living their normal days, so I mentioned just those things.
As the author, you need to understand that only you, the author are the know-it-all about the scene, not your narrator. And that you’re different from your narrator.
Write as a narrator, not as an author.
This brings me to filler words. Now, hearing my advice, you might start writing something like this,
Sarah noticed the dark clouds through the window. She saw that they’d saturated the place gray.
Fillers words like “see”, “notice”, “stare”, “hear” should be ignored. But many authors who begin writing from the POV of the characters start using these verbs to describe what the character is experiencing.
But remember, the character is not cognizant of the fact that they’re seeing a dark cloud, just that it’s a dark cloud. You don’t need these filler words—straight up describe what the character is seeing, instead of describing that the character is seeing.
There were dark clouds on the other end of the window, which saturated the place gray.
Sarah is still seeing the clouds, yeah. But we’re looking from her eyes, and her eyes ain’t noticing that she’s noticing the clouds.
It’s kinda confusing, but it’s an important mistake to avoid. Filler words can really make your writing sound more amateurish than before and take away the experience of the reader, because the reader wants to see through the narrator’s eyes, not that the narrator is seeing.
Character-descriptions are a lot harder to pull off than scene-descriptions. Because it’s really confusing to know when to describe them, their clothing, their appearances, and what to tell and what not to.
For characters, you can give a full description of their looks. Keep it concise and clear, so that your readers can get a pretty good idea of the character with so few words that they don’t notice you’ve stopped action for a while.
Or can show your narrator scanning the character, and what they noticed about them.
Both these two tricks only work when a character is shown first time to the readers. After that, you don’t really talk about their clothing or face anymore.
Until there’s something out of the ordinary about your character.
What do I mean by that? See, you’ve described the face and clothes of the character, and the next time they appear, the reader is gonna imagine the character in a similar set of clothes, with the same face and appearance that they had the first time. Therefore, any time other than the first, you don’t go into detail about the character again. But, if something about your character is out of ordinary—there are bruises on their face, scars, or a change in the way they dress—describe it to the reader. That’s because your narrator may notice these little changes.
Clothing is a special case. Some new authors describe the clothes of the characters when they’re describing the character every time the reader sees them. So, I wanna help you with this.
Clothing can be a way to show something about your character—a character with a well-ironed business suit is gonna be different from a character with tight jeans and baggy t-shirt. Therefore, only use clothing to tell something unique about the character.
Refrain from describing the clothing of characters that dress like most others. Like, in a school, it’s obvious that all characters are wearing school uniforms. Also, a normal teenage boy may wear t-shirts and denim jeans. If your character is this, no need to describe their clothing—anything the reader would be imagining is fine.
Refrain from describing the clothing of one-dimensional side-characters—there’s a high chance you’ve not really created them well enough that they have clothing that differs from the expectations of the readers. We all know what waiters wear, or what a college guy who was just passing by in the scene would be wearing.
You may describe the clothing of the important character in the story, but only in the first appearance. After that, describe their clothes only if the clothes seem really, really different from the first time. And stop describing their clothes if you’ve set your character well enough in the story that your readers know what to expect from them in normal circumstances—then, describe clothes only when they’re really, really different from their usual forms of clothing.
I think there was so much I had to say in this article, but I didn’t do a good job. However, I said all that I wanted to say. I hope you guys liked the article and it helps you in one way or the other.
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