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Part ii. How to Write Vivid Descriptions

Why is descriptive writing so important in a novel? Because unlike movies, novels are not visual.

When you watch a film, all of the "description" is done for you by a camera and a microphone. All writers have are words. So you need to use those words to help the reader see and hear (and smell, taste, and touch, too).

You can use them literally ("she wore a red dress"). Or you can write more figuratively. For example:

• It's tough to describe the precise look on a character's face when they're in a really, really foul mood.

• But if you say that their face looked like "the sky before a storm," readers will get the idea.

Step One

The first step to vividly describing a place, person, or thing is to imagine it in your mind's eye. Alternately, if it actually exists you may prefer to look at it or a photograph directly. Either way, you'll start with some scene before you without dividing it into objects or attaching any words to it. Just form a "naïve impression" of the colors, textures, shapes, feeling, of whatever it is while refraining from your impulse to name them. Simply picture and observe.

Step Two

The next step is to carefully select the right words to convey it. If the words that come to mind don't seem adequate, look in a dictionary, ask around, or do some research if necessary, but be sure to keep searching until you have the closest match possible between experience and language. While it's okay to stop short of perfection, since words and thought inevitably fail to capture perception anyways, keep revising until you can't think of any way to improve your description further. At this point, your gut instinct should be telling you it's ready.

What I've said so far may sound obvious, but it's surprising how easy it is to get these two steps mixed up. Instead of allowing the meaning you want to express decide the words, you are enticed by alliteration, rhythm, and other literary elements, or you fail you to escape from common phrasing, and allow language itself to decide what it is you want to say. But this approach traps writers in worn out, traditional modes of thinking, which drains their images of vividness.

So now that we have a basic method, let's try to describe a lake at sunset:

The lake glittered in the light of the setting sun.

There is nothing wrong with this sentence. It might work well in many a story depending on the context. But it doesn't capture the particularity of the moment.

As the tip of the sun was about to slip below the green hills stretching in layered curves along the horizon, the lake caught its setting light, and glittering streaks of mauve and orange squirmed across the black surface with the undulations of the waves like worms of celestial fire.

Our second example may be slightly overwrought. The simile at the end adds precision to the image but may carry unwanted symbolic baggage, and we might find other ways to simplify it, but at least it transports the reader's awareness into the moment. This is not just any sunset on any lake at any time, but the particular phase of a particular sunset on a particular lake. You can see the effort made to envision a definitive scene and give it a commensurately definitive expression.

Step Three

You've probably noticed that the word count for the second example is much higher than the first, so once you've become proficient at writing with naïvety, the next step to consider is pacing.

You don't want to describe everything in meticulous detail all the time as this can overwhelm and potentially bore your reader. The key to writing memorably is effectively balancing action and particularity. But the ideal balance varies from story to story—with short stories tending to weight action more heavily than novels—and also depends on personal style. In this sense, writing with naïvety is a tool to help you discover what proportion works for you and the stories that only you can tell.