Beyond the Looking Glass: How to Write Meaningful Description

by Judith Tarr

Description is easy. It's fast. It runs up the word count nicely, and keeps those pages coming. But all too often, it doesn't help the story at all.

We've all run into the "mirror technique" of character description, in which our heroine, having reached page two of her epic adventure, pauses for her closeup. Nothing could be easier or simpler than that she stop in front of a convenient mirror and regale the audience with an inch-by-inch description of her manifold charms - or, for that matter, her lack thereof.

Unfortunately, while our heroine is either admiring or deploring her reflection, the story has stopped cold. And story, in genre fiction, is God. If the story doesn't move, the reader can't move with it. She starts skimming or, worse yet, throws the book at the wall and moves on to the next item in the to-be-read pile.

Readers are a tough bunch. They want their story straight and smooth, but they also want a judicious proportion of chewy bits. They want to know who the character is and what she looks like and where she lives and how she lives there. They want description - but only if it doesn't throw them out of the story.

The writer's job is first and always to give the reader what he wants. When it comes to description, that means not getting lazy. There are no shortcuts or easy outs in good writing.

The writer has to ask the right questions and give the right answers. What do I include and what do I imply and what do I leave out? How much is too much, and how much is just right? And above all, how am I going to get in the local color and necessary details without stopping action in its tracks?

Choose your details and choose them wisely.

Harry Turtledove likes to say that you should know five hundred things at any given time, but only let the reader see five. The other four hundred and ninety-five will come through in the way you've chosen those specific details - the way they relate to one another, the way they describe setting or character, and the way they advance the action. Readers can tell when you're winging it and when you know your stuff.

Say you've built and conceived an entire future world, in detail, with backups and footnotes, and you want to convey a key element in your story. You can do what Heinlein did and say it all in three words: "The door dilated." Here we have doors, but they don't open and close like the doors we know. They dilate like the iris of an eye. This implies a high level of technology, a way of thinking that departs from square, flat panels on hinges or sliders, and some specific reason why a door would contract and expand in so organic a way. We can assume that reason will be explained as the story progresses, and might even be the story.

Use Your Senses

Once you've chosen just the right details according to the needs of the action, you can use descriptive bits to make your points clearer and your action livelier. If you want to set a mood, you can do it with sensory elements: color, shape, taste, sound. Our Fellowship walks through the echoing halls of Moria with only a pinpoint of light to guide them; Prince Arren sits by a fountain in Earthsea, and "his face might have been cast in golden bronze, it was so finely molded and so still." In the second example, we get a surprisingly thorough sense of what this character looks like, in a few deft words - and not a mirror in sight.

That's not to say every description should be a one-liner. Sometimes the flow of the story needs to pause; the characters need a breather, and the reader is up for a bit of a break before the next mad gallop. Then you can stop to explore a new portion of your world, reveal another side of a character, or even resort to a bit of education.

Maybe your characters have been questing for the past half-dozen chapters and it's time for them to stop in the Forgotten City, where the plot will develop a new twist and the story will leap off in a new and fascinating direction. You can build up the tension by taking your time coming into the city, hinting at ominous matters yet to come - shadows in the doorways and sun just a little too bright in the deserted squares - until your characters reach the most shadowy shadow on the edge of the most unnaturally bright square...and there it is, the sudden turn: the ancient curse, the mysterious stranger, the ambush by the hitherto unsuspected enemy.

Staying in Character

Character description works in much the same way as description of world and setting. Either it can be sketched swiftly into the action - the way he moves, whether fast or slow; the clothing she wears that either helps or hinders her - or it can be the occasion for a moment of rest in a headlong action sequence. Lovers can discover one another through vivid sensory images, or enemies can stop to take one another's measure. The way they react to each other, and how others react to them, both advances the story and develops their personalities.

Here as always, the better the choice of detail, the more effective the description will be. The way a character acts and moves can tell us much more about who he is than his shoe size or the shape of his jaw. Is he slow and languid, quick and energetic, nervous and jerky? What is his characteristic expression? Does he have a favorite gesture? (Beware of overdoing this - with tics and quirks, a little goes a long way.) Is there a particular garment or weapon he prefers? Does he affect a certain color or combination of colors? Does he have scars, tribal markings, peculiar cultural habits?

We seldom, if ever, need a catalogue description of any character. The right two or three details will convince readers that they know exactly what a character looks like - even if they've never actually been told the color of his eyes or the shape of his face.

A Word on Extaordinary Characters

In choosing these details, beware of Mary Sue syndrome: the character who is always the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most intelligent creature in the world. Beware also of the character who is too conscientiously weird - he is just as distracting as the one who is too obviously perfect. If he is nine feet tall, there should be a good and valid reason for it, and a plot point that revolves around it.

That doesn't mean all your characters have to be scrupulously ordinary. They can be flamboyant and exciting and different and, yes, alien. But their differences should feed the plot, just like every other detail.

Chekhov is said to have declared that if you put a gun on the mantelpiece, you should be prepared to use it before the play is over. The same applies to personal oddities in fiction. If your hero has silver eyes, let him use them for effect, to set a mood or creep out another character. If your heroine is a blazing redhead, is she outrageously noticeable everywhere she goes, or is everyone else a redhead, too?

Flying Without a Narrator

Sometimes it's more effective to describe the characters or events of the story in the voice and diction of a particular character than to show them in straight narrative. This kind of "distance" can be more immediate and serve the story even better than direct narration: you're hearing the character's voice, being influenced by his biases and quirks and distinctive choice of words. When you let a character describe the action, pay close attention to every word, making sure it's matched exactly to your character, and above all try not to get lazy and fall into tell-don't-show.

For example, you can say, "The Targs attacked Zamora and conquered it." Or you can say, "The bloody Targs wiped out my frelling city." Or, "Alas, my lord, the Targs have come; Zamora is no more." Or, for that matter, "General, we did it; we took Zamora!"

All of these are ways of conveying important information, but each presents a different viewpoint and a different mood. Whichever one you choose, it will perform that crucial function: it will move the story along. It will also, in the process, develop the characters and establish a background without drowning the reader in unnecessary details.

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© Judith Tarr

Judith Tarr has written a whole lot of description in her time - beginning with The Hound and the Falcon trilogy (which is not about elves) and continuing most recently with Rite of Conquest (Roc) and The Mountain's Call (writing as Caitlin Brennan for Harlequin LUNA). She lives on a mesa in Arizona with an invasion force of Space Aliens in white horse suits, some of whom are featured in her Brennan books. She blogs about Life Among the Lipizzans and features her dual existence as novelist and horse breeder here.