Writing Description: Bewitch the Reader
Use Description to Bewitch the Reader. Depending on the writing style and the writing perspective, description can enable the writer to gift readers different details about different characters that collectively contribute to the greater, unfolding narrative.
If you describe a tense encounter with selective detail, then you can make a play at increasing the tension (the reader isn't sure what will happen next). If you reveal different information that explores different perspectives from different characters, then you might encourage the reader to play detective (the reader isn't sure who to trust). Description and detail can serve as meaningful points of differentiation -- of voice, experience, knowledge, familiarity, or perspective. Whether as nervous ticks, comments about clothing preference, poorly timed gestures of affection, or perhaps the refusal to acknowledge any of these (or other) markers of personhood or identity.
Additional Reading:
How to Describe: Writing Clear Places and Characters (Now Novel)
Novel Settings: 7 Tips to Get Setting Description Right (Now Novel)
Defining Place (ahb writes)
How to Make Your Description More Vivid (Writing Questions Answered)
❯ ❯ Adapted from description-writing masterpost: 5 Times When You Should (and 4 Times When You Shouldn’t) Rely on Description