THE ART OF DESCRIPTION, PART ONE

The first thing you need to know about description is that it’s necessary in a book. The second thing you need to know is that description is not always “telling.” Description can be a form of telling, but that doesn’t mean you can get away without describing things in your story for fear you will be telling and not showing. If you don’t describe the scene and characters, how will the reader know what anything looks like?

First we’ll spend a few days focusing on how not to do description, how it is telling, and how you can avoid using description this way. Then we’ll look at what makes a good description.

1. The information dump

A lot of people feel the need to tell everything about their character up front. This is called an information dump. A bad example might look like this, though they are often much, much longer.

            Kate grabbed her backpack that Grandma Kay gave her last Christmas and headed out of the school. She was a studious young girl, and never left home without her backpack. Good grades were important to her. Grandma used to help her study when Kate lived in Miami. They used to spend hours working on Math, Kate’s most challenging subject. Kate missed Miami. She especially missed Grandma Kay. She remembered when he dad told her they were moving.

            “Kate, we’re moving,” her dad had said.

            “What?” Kate blinked in shock. “No, Dad! I won’t go!”

And the scene would go on and on in the past telling us about the move. Eventually the story would shift back to the present, but by then, the reader would be totally lost.

DON’T DO THIS!

Why is this bad? The reader wants to know about what Kate is doing right now. In case you missed it, she was walking home from school. There wasn’t much of that in the story. A good writer will start the story with some interesting action and save Kate’s backstory for when it’s important for the reader to know.

Telling backstory can also happen in dialogue.

Ex:

“How are you, Mike? I know you broke your leg last week. How is it feeling?”
“It’s better, but I couldn’t play in the basketball game last night like you did.”
“I’m sorry. I know how much that mean to you. I’m sure we would’ve won if you’d been there.”

Or:

“I don’t want to go to the party tonight. I’m tired of trying to meet boys,” Megan said.
“But Meg, you’re so pretty,” Jessica said. “Your blonde curls make me jealous. And you have great posture and a nice figure. You’re taller than me, too, and I know boys like that.”

DON’T DO THESE THINGS, EITHER!

Dialogue had to be natural. Read it out loud and ask yourself honestly if people would talk about those things like that. They wouldn’t. Find another way to get the info into the story.