Happy Feast Day of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Gentle Reader! It’s a day for deep but pleasant thoughts. I suggest the love and mercy of God, the lightness of the New Covenant, the generosity of the Paraclete, and the glory of the Beatific Vision. Saint Thomas dwelt on these things until they filled him to the top of his tonsure. Then he wrote more than 3,000 pages about them. The volume of his writings alone would make him the Supreme Doctor of the Church. But alongside that, he really liked to eat: just one more reason to venerate him.
But I digress. Regard the following tweet, especially if you’re a writer… or a reader:
I laughed long and hard at that. I’ve been there, you see: specifically, with my romance Doors. That novel has one of my favorite Laura Shinn covers. Yet when I saw it, I felt compelled to rewrite a half page of description. Same old sixes and sevens.
But as I’m thoroughly sick of current events, Anamika’s tweet serves as my justification for posting a snatch of my nonfiction guide for developing writers, The Storyteller’s Art. (No, it’s not for sale just now. I’m working on a second edition.) Here it is:
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Description And The Telling Detail
Many a novice fictioneer labors over description -- when to do it; how much of it to do; what to leave in and what to leave out -- as he does over no other aspect of the narrative craft. Strangely, the preponderance of the anxieties felt in this regard are unnecessary. Description is actually a much easier, and more easily comprehended, matter than most writers think.
Granted that first-class description can produce a unique effect:
Day was opening in the sky, and they saw that the mountains were now much further off, receding eastward in a long curve that was lost in the distance. Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness. [J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings, "The Two Towers"]
...one cannot over-indulge in such effects without losing the reader.
Why? Because of Brunner's First Law of Fiction: The raw material of fiction is people. More specifically, what your characters are saying, doing, and doing to one another.
Elmore Leonard, famed for his humor-laced thrillers, was once asked by a fan why he wrote so few descriptive passages, and kept them so short. Leonard smiled and replied, "I try not to write the parts that people skip."
Ponder that. The typical reader skips descriptive passages. Why? Not because they're badly written, though some surely are; they're skipped because most description contributes nothing to the forward movement of the story!
Remember how a typical reader chooses the books he'll read:
- He heads for the section(s) of the bookstore where he can find his favorite genre(s).
- He looks first for authors whose works have pleased him in the past. he doesn't find any unread works by familiar, approved writers, he scans spines and covers for clever titles and provocative art.
- When a title or cover painting catches his fancy, he picks it up and reads the back-cover or dust-jacket blurb. If it fails to intrigue him, he puts the book back on the rack and resumes his search.
- If the blurb has, at the least, not dimmed his tentative interest, he opens the book to the first chapter and reads one or two pages. If these don't impress him, he passes on.
- If the first page or two engage his interest, he might riffle the pages of the book, scanning it for "density." That is, he looks to see how tightly the words are packed on a typical page. If it's too high -- that is, if descriptive and pure-narrative passages overwhelm dialogue and character interaction -- he passes on.
- Finally, if all the above tests have been satisfied and his funds will allow, he buys the book.
To be agreeable to the overwhelming majority of readers, fiction must concentrate on dialogue and active events in the lives of his characters. A writer who forgets or disdains this pattern and concentrates on description might get invited to a lot of faculty teas, but he won't sell many books.
For all of that, some description is necessary if you want the reader to see your fictional world vividly. But there are guidelines to make it plain when it's necessary, how much of it there should be, and what specifically one should describe. These guidelines are nicely synopsized in the imperative: Cultivate an eye for the telling detail.
Let's unpack that command a bit.
1. What is an "eye for the telling detail"? Where does one find it?
Probably the best approach to acquiring this "eye" -- that is, the sense for what ought to be described and when -- is to concentrate on the consciousness of one's viewpoint character. That is: the sensorium, sensitivities, and priorities of the viewpoint character, through whose "eyes" the story is currently being told, should dictate what one describes.
For example, let's imagine that your viewpoint character is a doctor who labors, as so many do, in a hospital. The hospital is his typical frame of reference. While the precise details of the hospital do matter to him, on a typical work day he doesn't take active notice of ninety-five percent of them. He would not fix his attention on a respirator that he passes twenty times per shift. He would not muse upon the height, shape, or color of a reception desk. He would not remark to himself that Joe Smith is wearing a stethoscope, unless that were in itself an unusual thing that should trigger heightened attention (e.g., if Joe were a janitor, or a serial killer whom your character had thought confined to a jail ward).
Since the goal of good fiction is to involve your reader in the emotional lives of your characters, your descriptive prose should be guided by a cognizance of the sort of things your characters would care about, and the sort they would glide past, whether from their regularity or from their irrelevance.
2. What is a "telling detail?"
In keeping with the guideline above, a telling detail is a detail that tells the viewpoint character something that ought to arouse his active interest. Note the phrase "ought to." It might, or it might not; after all, he might be having a sub-par day. But either way, it should, because the detail itself is important to the course of the story:
- It indicates a difference in his environment -- either in the physical setting or the people that inhabit it -- that will factor into the plot.
- It characterizes a figure with whom he'll be involved in the subsequent action.
- It impels him toward his deeds in the subsequent action;
- It enables him to do something he'll need to do, or constrains him from doing something he'll want to do, in the subsequent action.
The way to describe a telling detail is through the viewpoint character's perception of it, including those aspects of its setting that make it significant. Note how, in the Tolkien passage above, the author makes note of the "change of clime" and that "spring was busy" around the hobbits from whose perspective the details of Ithilien were described. These features of the physical environment are why Frodo and Sam noticed their surroundings; they constituted a noticeable change -- and a most unusual one, given that their course was taking them toward a land of limitless foulness.
Here's another illustrative passage:
Lori took in the situation with a glance, glared at Aaron, and immediately slapped the code call button. Andrew went to Berglund's bedside and sank to his knees. Incredibly, he groped for the patient's flailing hand and folded it between his own. The volunteer's eyes closed and his lips moved rapidly.
The etheric sense Aaron had cultivated over his years of exploration of the dark forces quivered like an alerted hunting dog. A miasma of power was forming in the room, hovering over Andrew's head. It was not a familiar one. Aaron's inner eye watched it wax in potency. It grew blindingly bright, then descended and wrapped itself around the thrashing, dying man.
Berglund's eyes closed. His spasms slowed, became progressively gentler. By the time the team with the crash cart had arrived, the old man was still and his breathing had ceased.
The glowing cloud of power was gone.
Andrew rose from his knees and deposited the limp hand onto its owner's motionless chest. He turned to the crash cart team, who had frozen in place upon first confronting the strange tableau.
"He's gone." The technicians started forward, but the volunteer held up a hand. There was an ineffable authority in him that halted them where they stood. "Let him be."
Lori was trying to jam her fist into her mouth.
Andrew slipped past the emergency team, wrapped an arm around Lori's shoulders and coaxed her from the room.
[From "Virgin's Prayer," in The Sledgehammer Concerto]
The viewpoint character, Aaron, doesn't dwell upon the mundane features of the scene before him. Indeed, he hardly notices them. He's fixed upon the things that matter most to him: the immanence of a great cloud of supernatural power, apparently invoked by Andrew; Andrew's own assumption of authority, before which everyone else at the scene automatically gives way; and Lori's reaction to it all. These aspects of the scene are critical to the action that remains; nothing else about the scene matters at all.
3. How much description is enough? Is there a way to know?
In a word, yes.
Enough description is description that follows the guidelines above. It tells the reader what the viewpoint character is thinking and feeling about his surroundings. It also tells the reader what the viewpoint character ought to notice, whether he does so or not; this is particularly important in stories with an element of mystery. Finally, it's married to what's happening to and around the viewpoint character at the moment, rather than being a superfluous lump that sits in the way of the action.
This gives us a third guideline that proves most useful in practice: The best description is married to what the characters are doing.
Consider the following passage:
The tall, ungainly woman walked haltingly up the winding, tree-lined path that led to the large, green-shuttered sprawling old white mansion. Her old, arthritic vein-corded hands gripped her silver-topped cane, and its worn brass ferrule stabbed feebly at the unyielding earth with every faltering step she took.
To the best of your Curmudgeon's knowledge, that passage is not from a published story. Lawrence Block uses it as an example of overwriting in his book Telling Lies For Fun And Profit. But it's also an example of pointless description. It's unmated to any significant action of the viewpoint character -- not clearly revealed here, though one might assume from this snippet that it's the old woman being described -- and advances nothing in which the reader might take more than a yawning interest.
Here's another passage, from a masterwork by one of the funniest and most creative writers ever to scatter words upon a page:
"Well, then," Sir Gules said, leading his guest down the carpeted floor past the silent manservants to a high wainscotted room in which a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the great onyx fireplace.
Marvin did not answer. His eye was taking in the details of the room. The carven armoire was surely tenth century, and the portrait on the west wall, half-hidden by its gilt frame, was a genuine Moussault.
"Come, sit, I pray thee," said Sir Gules, sinking gracefully to a David Ogilvy half-couch decorated in the Afghan brocade so popular that year.
"Thank you," Marvin said, sitting upon an eight-legged John IV with rosewood handles and a backing of heart-o'-palm.
"A little wine?" Sir Gules said, handling with casual reverence the bronze decanter with gold chasings engraved by Dagobert of Hoyys.
"Not just at the moment, give thee thanks," Marvin replied, brushing a fleck of dust from his stuff-colored outercoat of green baptiste with lisle froggings, made to his measure by Geoffrey of Palping Lane.
"Then mayhap a touch of snuff?" Sir Gules inquired, proffering his small platinum snuffbox made by Durr of Snedum, upon which was portrayed in steel-point a hunting scene from the Orange Forest of Lesh.
"Perhaps later," Marvin said, squinting down at the double-furled silver thread laces on his dancing pumps.
[From Robert Sheckley's Mindswap.]
If you're not rolling on the floor, just barely keeping your sides from splitting, it's not your Curmudgeon's fault. Sheckley has brilliantly pinned the very worst failings of innumerable writers of historical and Gothic fiction, so funnily and perfectly that comment is unnecessary -- as was every one of the interminable details of that passage. A novice writer can learn better what not to do by studying that passage than from any dozen books on the writer's art.
Bad description is almost always over-description. It's "the parts that people skip." Your reader's principal reward for consuming your work is the emotional journey he takes alongside your characters. That's the prize. Everything else is, well, just details.
