Description troubles.

Hey! I am new here and I figured this would be the right place to ask for tips. Haha the title was a bit of a dead giveaway .
One thing I always have a hard time with is description. I was curious about whether or not any of you have any tips about how I can improve that in my writing. Any helpful ideas would...well...help.

What, exactly, are you having trouble with? Describing too much, not enough, weak descriptions, purple descriptions? The advice changes depending on what you're having problems with.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:What, exactly, are you having trouble with? Describing too much, not enough, weak descriptions, purple descriptions? The advice changes depending on what you're having problems with.

Weak descriptions and not enough.

Weak descriptions

First off, cut any and all descriptions that generalize something highly nuanced. Define words such as "angrily" to each individual character. Explain why something is beautiful. Show us the nuance and show us how the character sees the world (this goes double if you're writing first person).

Make the descriptions do double duty. I go into more detail on one particular subset of double duty here. Other types of double duty besides adding emotion into the description is to give the place character, and give the character character. What do they notice? How do they feel about what they notice?

Weak descriptions are usually those that describe simply for the sake of describing. Ask yourself why you're describing something. If it's simply "so people will know what this looks like/that person is feeling"... nope. Dig deeper. You want to describe to give emotion, to characterize, to tell us how the character emotes, to tell us what's important. Description can do so much more than people think it can, and you want to exploit it to every inch you have.

Weak descriptions can also only use one sense. You have five. Use them effectively to strengthen your descriptions and give a deeper experience.

Not enough description

In which you're talking to a minimalist, but I will do my best.

I am one of those people who describes the bare minimum amount I need to get the general image across. This sometimes confuses people, but I like to think I have a good balance.

My checklist is usually two items:
1- What does this setting need to come to life?
2- What could my character plausibly notice without this looking forced?

The two relate because #1 is the bare minimum amount I need to have people actually see what's going on, and #2 is the maximum I can get away with. You don't want to over-describe a scene, because characters won't notice absolutely everything in a scene. Things they're familiar with, things that are the background radiation of their life— they won't go on long, detailed descriptions of them. They might notice things in their way— a messy bedroom preventing them from finding their keys, for example— and they'll at least give passing mention to what they interact with, but there is a tightrope of giving the readers enough they know what's going on, but not so much they start wondering why the character is poetically describing things that really shouldn't have any attention drawn to them.

When it comes to what I include, I have a list:
- Unusual occurrences
- Changes
- Props currently being used by people in scene
- Indications of time or mood (ie- in a particularly description "heavy" scene I have, I describe dance shows behind windows just wrapping up to indicate it's early evening and people are still milling around before settling in to watch main shows)
- Anything the character is paying attention to at the time
- Key details of the architecture and background that give a feel for the setting (not everything, but pick one or two details that really capture what daily life is like)
- Key characterization details, such as a trademark fashion item or an unusual feature (this goes double if you've introduced a lot of characters recently and people need those key details to remember characters)

If you want to add more to that, then the expanded, "heavy" description list includes:
- Projection. An example would be a character describing an empty room while the character feels sad/empty. Basically, the character describes something to purposely make a metaphor or symbol of their emotional state
- Mood generating. Very detailed descriptions that invoke emotion and create an extremely strong sense of realness are appropriate.
- Detailed characterization. Describing more than key features can help give a general air about the character and let us know more about them, including appearance, body language, and what impression they give off.

Very important tip

Less description speeds a scene up. More description slows a scene down.

You will want to describe less for action scenes and tense scenes. This helps keep the tension up, and people can focus on the action. Keep description minimal, key features, things being used, and unusual things. Then people can have a forward progression and won't get impatient with descriptions.

However, if you want to slow a scene down and really give us a sense of the world, stretch that description out. Don't infodump it all in at once, but maximize what you put in there to immerse us in the world. Give us something to sink our teeth into. But only if you can afford to keep the scene slow.

Hope this helps.

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