To Describe or Not To Describe

All that I had written yesterday that suddenly disappeared on me miraculously reappeared after I had already written what follows. I think this new version is a little better, so that’s what I’m posing. I’ll have a look over the old version and see if there is anything that would add to this one and I’ll make a separate post. But for now, this will suffice.

Okay, here we go again. Description, hmmm…well, there are many facets to description. Many more uses than simply allowing the reader to see the things they are reading about. I could say, “Charlie poured water in the glass and took a sip.” That’s perfectly fine for a lot of people. I know what water looks like. I know what a glass looks like. The glass I see in my head may not be the one the writer saw in his head, but does it matter? And unless this is the first sentence in the story, I’ve probably already got a good idea of what Charlie looks like. Either way, I still know what human beings look like. I see Charlie with dark brown hair, average height, wearing a flannel over a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. Is that what the writer intends for him too look like? Probably not, but the image in my head still serves the purpose of seeing a man standing at the sink, pouring himself a glass of water. So what more do I need to know? If this sentence is unimportant to the story, then it’s perfectly fine. If it’s not important, then I probably don’t need the sentence at all. Maybe Charlie’s been working out in the sun all day, and I felt the need to let the reader see him get that drink he’s been hankering for. Though, in that case, he would take more than a sip. Maybe the writer hit a lull in the story and decided to get things moving by having Charlie get himself a drink. As a writer, I know those things happen. You’ve been pounding away at your keyboard or scribbling away with your pen, trying to keep up with the action in your head, when suddenly you sit back and think, “Okay, what happens next?” If you’re following an outline, then you don’t have this problem. You just glance over at your little cheat sheet and keep moving.

As I may have mentioned before, I don’t like outlines. That’s about the most boring way in the world to write fiction. Especially first drafts. I want to be just as surprised as the reader as I move from one scene to the next. You ever watch a movie with someone who’s already seen it a dozen times? Before each exciting part, they’re leaning over and saying, “Watch this,” as if you weren’t watching the movie in the first place. Instead, with outlines you get some past version of yourself leaning over and whispering into your ear, “Write this.” I wrote a mystery story some years back. When I set out to write the story, I never intended for it to turn into a mystery. It just happened. But when I got to the end of it, the plot was a jumbled mess. I spent days sorting through it and made a simple outline of the sequence of events that lead to the conclusion. Does this mean I should have made the outline before I wrote the story at all? No! Because before I sat down to write the story, I had no story. It’s this act of creation in the heat of the moment that I love the most about writing. Without it, I wouldn’t write. It’s like an athlete cutting up and down the field or court, making split second decisions as the game progresses, trying to take control of the game while knowing that he never quite can. Though we do have one advantage over the athlete. When the game is over, when the story is written, we can go back and make changes, correct our mistakes, while the athlete has to accept the outcome and try to do better the next time. Oh, and we don’t have to worry about all that heavy breathing…unless you’re an asthmatic like me and you’ve been putting off taking your inhaler while you try to finish a scene.

Sorry about that. Back to description.

So we have our nice little sentence. It’s a perfectly fine sentence, trust me, but doesn’t it leave you wanting just a little more. Maybe Charlie’s forehead was beaded with sweat. This would give him a reason to want a drink of water. Maybe the water was cold and clear. A fine drink for a thirsty person. Maybe the glass was cloudy. This would tell us something about Charlie’s character. Which is one of the many uses of description—building character. Since everyone on a very basic level looks the same, we need description to differentiate one character from another, other than each character has a different name. So, either Charlie’s dishwasher isn’t getting the job done, or in Charlie’s desperation for something to drink, he grabbed a dirty glass sitting beside the sink, which tells us that Charlie hasn’t gotten around to washing his dishes for some reason. Or maybe Charlie’s wife took off on him and between his two jobs, he just doesn’t have time. I’ve been assuming all this time that Charlie is getting this glass of water from the kitchen sink, but our sentence doesn’t say where he is. He could be in the bathroom or a hotel room. He could be anywhere. Now let’s change our sentence a little bit to clarify some things. “Out of breath, sweat beading his forehead, Charlie staggered into the kitchen of his small apartment, grabbed the cleanest looking glass he could find by the sink, filled it with cool, clear water, and chugged it as if he could never sate his thirst.”

That was better. But depending on the circumstances of the story and how important this drink of water is, I may have gone a little overboard on my description. In my writing, I try not to depict characters doing too many of the mundane everyday things of life. If I decided Charlie needed to get a drink of water but didn’t feel it was important for the reader to see him getting that drink of water, I would probably write it like this, “Charlie walked out of the heat and into the cool apartment and got something to drink.” Don’t get me wrong, I like good description. But good description is just that. Good description. Don’t mistake it for a lot of description as many people do. If you want a good lesson on good and bad description, pick up a copy of Richard Adams’s Watership Down. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. If you like nature and wildlife or just a good story, that book’s for you. I’ve never been to England, much less walked the English countryside, but if I ever do, I’ll be a lot less surprised by the things I see after reading that book. For the most part, the description is great. In the flow of the story, Richard Adams finds the perfect balance. But at the beginning of many of the early chapters, he goes into long bouts of description crammed into long block paragraphs that made me wonder if there was anything good on television. It took me a good little while to wade my way through this book because of that. I’d run into these long paragraphs and just set the book down instead of charging through them. This is not what you want your readers to do. Yeah, maybe you’ve already suckered them into buying your novel or short story, but when your next potential bestseller hits the shelves, that person is liable to hesitate, wondering if it’s worth the effort of going along another magical journey with your description magnifying glass. A piece of advice I remember from college is “omit needless words.” That doesn’t mean you can’t say that the water is cold or the day was hot, but if you’re reader already knows the water is cold or the day is hot from the context of your story, then you don’t need to repeat it. In my revamped version of our sentence, did I need to say that the water was clear? If the water from the tap isn’t clear, then we have a problem and we should mention that fact. Maybe there’s rust in the pipes or somebody dumped barrels of black poison into the municipal water supply. Otherwise, we can safely assume that water will be clear. I said that Charlie’s apartment was small. If we’re further along in the story and you already know that Charlie’s apartment is small, then we don’t need to be told this again. The same with him being out of breath and sweat beading his forehead. If we’ve been following Charlie along, then we were there while he was chopping weeds in his vegetable garden and his breath quickened and the sweat began to pour. But if we’re beginning our story with this sentence, then those things are fine.

About a week ago, I asked my faithful readers to “Pretend your character 'Charlie' is walking through his backyard and he stubs his toe on a rock. Describe this sequence, and especially the rock, with as much detail as you can in thirty minutes.” As it turned out, I only have one faithful reader who was kind enough to turn in an assignment. Though I hope this doesn’t mean that I only have one faithful reader, or one reader period. That last can’t be true because according the report on my ads I’ve been getting a lot of page impressions and a decent number of clicks, though most of the clicks are probably from me. But anyways. Since I have just the one, I shall post it in its entirety (edited for grammar and typos, since I’m sure it was done in a hurry as I requested).

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Charlie's fears were growing stronger. There were knots in his mind continually. He was preoccupied that matters would always go unfavorably for him. He did not know that this was unusual, for it was all he knew. As he stared at the grocery list that his wife had prepared last night, he realized that she only wanted him to get outside. She wanted to excuse him from his daily grind of doing nothing. He grasped the piece of paper and turned to go but the tension in his forehead made him ask if he should take a pill to get him through this. He decided against it and resolutely opened the door. Still trying to convince himself that there was nothing to fear, he counted his breaths. As he rushed out the door he stumbled on a rock. He held his throbbing toe and whined that he knew that something always happens. There is nothing but pain outside. His wife would not be back from work for another eight hours. She would find him on the lawn, a failure at getting out of the house. He should know the pattern by now. As Charlie lay ruminating about his misfortune, he picked up the rock that was the cause. It was not large but was not a pebble either as it fit in his palm. The rock's coolness and smoothness soothed him as he stroked its contours. His breathing was back to normal now. Charlie got up with the red and black speckled rock still in his grasp. He continued to comfort himself by rubbing the stone and he surprised himself by walking to the store. He got the groceries and forgot all about himself because he held that which caused him the pain. This little piece of the earth both hurt him and healed him.
By Carol

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I really liked this piece. I wanted a good description of the rock, but Carol took it a step further and developed Charlie into a strange and fascinating character, much different from the Charlie I’ve been describing before. The bulk of the description revolves around the rock, as I requested, and that’s what we’ll examine. Carol’s rock is the size of Charlie’s palm, cool and smooth, speckled with red and black, and the piece of earth that both hurt and healed Charlie. I especially like the last sentence. Now, can you see this rock? If Carol had said that Charlie stubbed his toe on a rock without any further description, what would the rock look like in your mind? When I made this assignment, I saw a large gray rock the size of a bowling ball buried in the lush green grass of a backyard surrounded by a tall wooden fence. I don’t know why, that’s just what I saw. But as Carol’s scene developed and moved along, I saw a small rock. “It was not large but was not a pebble either as it fit in his palm.” I would cut out the first part of this sentence. “The rock fit in the palm of his hand.” This tells me just as much as “it was not large but was not a pebble.” Then I see a rock with a smooth surface that feels cool to the touch. “The rock's coolness and smoothness soothed him as he stroked its contours.” I like the effect the coolness and smoothness has on Charlie’s fear of the outside world. “Red and black speckled.” Now I’m wondering what type of rock this is. The best I can come up with is a small piece of red granite, which is all over the place where I live. It’s mostly red but has black spots here and there. “Both hurt and healed him.” I think of a surgeon’s knife, which has the same power.

Thank you, Carol, for your contribution. Remember, this piece is entirely yours. Copyright law is a finicky thing, but the moment you write something original, it becomes lawfully yours. Proving it in the court system is another thing altogether. But if you decide to turn this piece into a short story or a novel, I won’t try to sue you for royalties, and I will testify against anyone else who may try to do so.

There’s a lot more that can be said about description, and I’m not sure how much my ramblings have helped you. If you have any further questions, feel free to post a comment. But the main point I was trying to get across was quality over quantity. I urge you not to worry about this during your initial draft. My first drafts are pretty bland. I’ve got to get the story down on paper before I can decide what is important and needs more or less description. I’ll write a piece on first drafts in the near future.