A Curriculum of Writing Craft: Description

This week, I ended things with my second fitness coach. The official reason was money, but it was clear the coach wasn’t listening to me. Nor did the coach understand exercise for someone who hadn’t seen 20 in a long time.

When I dug around, I ran across this You Tube stream and discovered that nearly every exercise the coach gave me I shouldn’t be doing. Which seems to be the standard in the fitness industry. It treats women like we should strive to be forever twenty.

So I ended up making up my workout curriculum—exercise bands rather than weights. Weights are more for if you want to look like Jack La Lanne.

Writing craft also is prone to bad advice, writers putting their own spin on something they think isn’t important or that you shouldn’t bother with. Nearly everything taught is solidly stuck at the beginner level, so if a writer wants to advance their skills, there isn’t any way to find out what the means. Enter the writing curriculum. This just covers one section of writing, but it’s the foundation to get to some of the other skills.

Onward!

All about the character

Put yourself in the POV character’s head. Everything listed below is done from their opinion or judgment. For example, one person likes the heat of summer and another can do without. Adding all these elements framed from this opinion takes you to an advanced level.

Now start with the first of these on the list. You might need a cycling pass to verify you’ve gotten them into the scenes. You’ll find all of them are connected, so even doing one is going to stretch skills.

Establish the setting.

Every scene should establish the setting. Your character exists a location in the story. This also should be mentioned in the first or second paragraph of the scene, not three pages later. If you don’t give the reader an image, they’re likely to form a different one—then are rudely kicked out of the story when you present conflicting information.

Once you decide on the setting, add two or three sentences describing it. Remember, add the character’s opinion of the setting. Have something else happen, a line of dialogue, then do some more setting.

Many writers fear description and leave it out as boring. Description is boring when you disconnect the character from it. Which, unfortunately, is what most writing exercises do. Description must be firmly anchored in your character. Walter S. Campbell in The Writer, October 1939, defines it as “The purpose of description is to make the reader believe in the story.”

Bonus tip: If you’re having trouble with creating a setting (because it is challenging), use your home location as a basis. Makes creating it a lot easier when you can research it daily.

Decide on the season

Human beings are anchored in time. We look forward to taking summer vacation, or going to a Halloween party. We complain when two feet of snow shuts down our city.

Many books don’t have any sense of season. So, by doing this, you’re already ahead of a lot of other writers.

In every scene, bring up something that involves the season:

Your character decides what to wearYour character attends a Christmas partyYour character gripes about bathing suits for sale while there’s still snow on the groundColor can be sunflower yellow; Arctic blue; or Christmas greenFood can set a season, such as cranberries in the fall or strawberries in the spring

Can you believe how much writers miss in rich characterization by ignoring what time of the year it is?!

Bonus tip: If you need help with adding the seasons, use the one you’re in now.

Pay attention to the weather

I remember one of those top ten writing rules was “Don’t start with the weather.” This rule showed up because the weather became too many writers added it as a throwaway line. Who cares if “It was raining”?

When you add weather, give us the character’s opinion on the weather. Some examples:

Characters choosing clothing to wear because of the weatherCharacters expressing concern about the weatherCharacters enjoying the weatherCharacters having conversations about the weather

If it’s raining, describe the rain. Is it a thunderstorm hurling sheets of rain? Or is it a steady, soaking rain? Or is a light, prickling rain? Of course, if the weather can interfere with the character succeeding, add that, too.

Add a sense of light/time of day

Writer Dave Farland noted the problem of “unappeals.” That is, when the writer leaves out something that should be there. Like if it’s night or day outside, or what time of day.

So, in every scene, early on (that scene beginning does a lot of heavy lifting), add a reference to the time of day, including:

The sun rising/settingCharacters eating breakfast or dinner (and you sneak taste in)Characters saying “Good morning.”Character noting that the morning was already hot and humid (seasons!)Character eying the setting sun and worrying about what’s going to happen when it gets dark

I read a book by an author where it was obvious she’d lost control of her timeline. The events in one section all happened in one day, and yet there wasn’t enough time for all of them. Readers will notice!

Bonus Tip: I like to put a placeholder (bracketed, all caps) at the top of each scene to make sure my brain anchors later in the scene as to when it’s happening. I sometimes forget, especially since author time is not the same as story time. I was writing a scene in Superhero Vs. Superhero and suddenly realized that it should be dark outside in the scene; I’d had a different mental picture of the time in the previous scene, which led to a continuity problem in the following scene.

Establish day of the week

Most writers don’t think about this…at all. I read a lot of books and can’t tell what day of the week it is.  On a con panel, a developmental editor said it was common in YA for the characters to attend school every day (no weekends. That’s terrible! Weekends were the best part of school.).

It’s understandable if the main character loses track (a common problem with Eve Dallas when she bumps up against a holiday and wants to plow forward on the investigation. But everyone else reminds her of it (and she forgets and has to be reminded again).

This goes back to human beings needing the boundaries of the days of the week. We all know what’s it’s like to hit Friday and be done for work for two days. There are also everyday events associated with days…going to church on Sunday, getting back to the grind on Monday, humpday, and so on.

Even in a fantasy novel, a day of the week might be associated with events in the world, such as market day.

You don’t have to state that it’s Wednesday in the scene, though you need to be aware of where you are in the week so you don’t have a never ending week. I always put the day of the week in my placeholder.

Whew! This is a lot of information. And we haven’t gotten to the bigger skills yet!

Add the five senses

This one’s tricker. You’ll have seen writers lecturing on it everywhere, but not a lot of detail on it. I searched for five senses in the old The Writer Magazine. Many writers mentioned it but didn’t explain beyond a general level (like a blog post today). The explanations were maddeningly vague. Is it any wonder that no one knows how to do this?

Dean Wesley Smith says to use all five senses every 500 words (he goes into a lot of good detail in his Depth class. Well worth taking). When I took the class, I was horrified at the amount I had to write. How do you get taste into a story when your characters aren’t eating? How do you describe smell when we don’t have words for smell? (The words are from other senses; smell is a complicated sense).

So …

You already have the backbone of what you need with all the steps above. You couldn’t have done some steps without venturing into the five senses. Now cycle back and add more. At Superstars, Michael LaRonn said to look for places where you can add adjectives that do double duty—convey more than one sense:

Snow-crusted mountains: Conveys texture, and sound, in addition to sight.Coffee-colored hair: Conveys taste and smell, in addition to sight.

This is where diving deep into your characterization and pulling out their opinions. In one of Michael Connelly’s books, Harry Bosch was headed for a building and didn’t know his fate. He described the building as looking like a tombstone.

Make the description work, using the five senses. Make the description show us who your characters are.

And the last one…

Telling Details

This is one that vexed me. I always heard it out of context of all the above. It’s hard to do details if you don’t have setting, description, or five senses.

Vince Flynn said at the first Thrillerfest this means to be specific. A dog (his example) shouldn’t just be a dog. It’s a good example because a Bichon Frise is significantly different than a Great Dane.

Dean Wesley Smith calls the non-specific references (i.e., trees, instead of hemlocks) “fake details.” Like a character walking into a bar, and no details on if the place is a seedy bar or a high end bar.

An easy place to start is with birds (inspired by the book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy). Birds are specific to a location, and it’s something that every reader experiences. Look up common birds in the setting and pick two. Then look up those birds to see what they look like and also what they sound like. Not all birds chirp (fake detail alert!), and not all birds are melodic (fake detail alert!).

Birds also have an additional advantage: they are a double duty detail. You can describe the trill of a red cardinal. While trees often are listed as describing the setting, you can only say they are oaks and maples. Plus, your cardinal can fly into the branches of an oak.

So look for details you can add that do double-duty and pack more punch in fewer words.

Whew! This is a lot of work. But it’ll take you to the next level.