How To Elevate The Descriptions In Your Book

When it comes to creating an immersive book world for your readers, it boils down to the little details.

But how many precious words do you dedicate to detail when you have so many other things to include? The answer is only what you need to, by playing it smarter and elevating the descriptions in your book to all the right elements while still leaving room for everything else.

How To Elevate The Descriptions In Your BookStart With The General Description

When writing a description, you have to start somewhere, especially during the first draft when all you’re trying to do is write your way into the story. It’s easy during that process to go with a general description so you can move through your scenes as quickly as possible.

There’s no time to wax poetic about the unique sparkle of each rainbow layer as it reaches across the sky on a day your MC is just simply getting out of the house after a storm. Go with what’s generic, such as what most people will think of during a scene after a storm—raindrops, chilly air, dark clouds.

Use this general description as your base and fill it with the most obvious answers.

Add In The Different Description

The first step to elevating your descriptions after creating your generic base starts during the next round of edits. This is when you’ll be adding what’s different to the norm.

Keeping with our rain theme, something different could be that it’s not always cold when it rains. Sometimes there’s sunlight and a sticky warmth that makes the raindrops a refreshing reprieve.

Brainstorm the different things you can add to your description to take it from a typical description to something more. It doesn’t need to be wacky or out there, just something above the typical.

Sprinkle In The Right Elements

After you’ve nailed down a mix of basic and unique elements in your description, it’s time to sprinkle in the right elements. This is where your description moves beyond the visual to something with more depth.

POV

Any descriptions in your book usually come about because of your character’s POV, so lean into that and write from the place of how things look to them.

What would your MC notice about the old office their new promotion has moved them into? Or what would they see and feel when a bow-wrapped gift lands on their desk?

Another way to stick to their unique POV is knowing what they wouldn’t include in their thoughts or actions. If your male main character isn’t the type to notice what everyone around them is wearing, don’t add clothing descriptions when you’re writing from their head. Keep that for the fashion major POV character of chapter three.

Stick with descriptions that are relevant to the POV character and see them automatically elevate while also giving each character their own way of standing out.

Relatability

Using well-known elements in your descriptions will already help here, but go the extra mile by adding a personal touch, too.

If you love stormy rain because afterward everything feels clean, or because rainfall usually leads to lush grass and colorful flowers, mention that during your descriptions.

Readers may feel the same way, and you’ve upped the relatability by adding something that they’ll love and connect with.

Senses

It’s tried and true, and that’s why it’s important.

Adding the five senses of touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound will make your descriptions as immersive as possible. It can be as simple as writing what the MC smells and tastes when the burger they’re eating is the tenth they’ve had in as many days on an endless business road trip.

Include how their mouth waters when they imagine the home-cooked meal they’ll have when they’re off the road, and how it’ll look and taste in contrast to the lifeless, beige, greasy, smelly burger they’re eating now.

Adding senses to your descriptions is a great way to up their elevation.

Showing Instead Of Telling

Yep, this old nugget of writing advice applies to descriptions too!

After all, wouldn’t your book world be better if, instead of telling the reader how the flying broomstick transportation system works, your descriptions show them how your characters glide through the air via a vivid description? The answer is and always will be, yes!

Use your descriptions to show off your fictional world and the characters in it instead of just telling the reader what they look like, how they act, and how things work.

The better your description details, the better the picture you’ll create, so make your book rich in descriptions that are elevated above and beyond the usual during your next editing pass and see how well it can work for you.

— K.M. Allan

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