Just Write 2020

The Art of Describing

The following chapter is roughly 3000 words long, please read it slowly and take your time in order to get the most out of it.

Hi New Writers

Description. A beautiful and wonderful thing, all it wants to be loved. Nursed into existence, brought up with a gentle hand to live and thrive in this glorious world. And what does it get?

His eyes were blue, his hair was black and he smirked at me.

Poor description, we are so sorry, we know all you want is a little detail, a little love. We know was you really want is this:

His silky eyes looked into mine with a blueish hue that reminded me of summer days eating ice-cream and riding bikes down a shady avenue. His midnight hair was slicked back, I personally wasn't a fan of the greasy 'I don't wash my hair' look but it seemed to melt into the structure of his face, highlighting his prominent cheekbones. His lips pulled mischievously as a shiver ran down my spine.

But on a more serious note: Please for the love of Timothée Chalamet use good, interesting description in your books.
We love you, we really do but if we have to read another description about the exact brands your character is wearing we might just cry. Descriptions are not there just for the sake of it, they play an instrumental role in world-building and character building.

Knowing that Felicia wears Versace doesn't tell me a lot about her character other than the fact that she is either:
a.) Rich
b.) in an obscene amount of credit card debt.
(our money is on the later if we are talking about realistic characters)

Knowing that Felicia associates the colour blue with a good memory in her childhood does tell me a lot about her. In fact, it tells me loads about her. I know that she has had a somewhat good childhood, she knows how to ride a bike and that she has prominent memories associated with the colour blue.

Okay, so it doesn't tell me that much at the moment. Whether it will have importance later on in the story is solely up to you as a writer. You can bring in the colour blue to have more importance in the progression of the plot. Maybe Felicia associates happiness with blue, so you can describe her as blue when she is happy? Maybe she has a weird obsession with bikes? Or avenues? Who knows but you decide whether you give that description power or not.

Look this was a bit of a weird way of getting my point across, but there is more to description than showing and telling. There is more to description than setting the scene. Description is everything in a book. Remember this is a book not a script.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, let's have a quick chat about characters.

What are characters?
This is not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely asking you to answer that question. What are characters?

The answer to that question is a little more complex than what a lot of people think. Characters are often gravely misrepresented and misunderstood and worst of all oversimplified. Characters are not just the people in your story. They are anything that holds significance and has a reoccurring role in your novel; to a degree, let's not be extreme about it.

For example: In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg are a character in the novel, they become a representation for the eyes of god and shine a light on the immoral actions of the human characters. The green light across the bay is also a character in a sense, it represents hope and Daisie.

Characters are not necessarily people, they can be objects, colours, concepts and a whole host of other weird things. Because at the core characters are part of your story to progress the plot and send the message that your novel is trying to convey. Whatever that message may be. SO you could have the colour blue represent something, or an armchair or a film. These then become a part of your story, thus they become a character.