Making Description Work for You

Wednesday's Writing on Writing

I use description sparingly, because as a a reader I find it deadly boring. How many ways can you describe sunrises, sunsets, moonlight peeking through tree branches? Now, if you could handle description the way Charles Frazier (below) did it in his debut masterpiece, Cold Mountain, you'd never lose my attention. Here's a taste of Frazier's prose:

"The hayfield beyond the beaten dirt of the school school playground stood pant-waist high, and the heads of grasses were turning yellow from need of cutting. The teacher was a round little man, hairless and pink of face. He owned but one rusty black suit of clothes and a pair of old overlarge dress boots that curled up at the toes and were so worn down that the heels were wedgelike. He stood at the front of the room rocking on the points."

Some writers make you want to emulate them. Frazier makes me want to surrender and simply read.

For me, often the best way to make description work in my fiction is to leave it out and depend on the reader's theater of the mind. If you can come close to what Frazier does above, go for it.

Other writers go for economy. The late great mystery writer John D. MacDonald once described a character as "knuckly." It evoked a complete picture in my mind.