Writing Description

A Student–Tutor Dialogue

Teach Me

Student:  This beautiful sentence by John Steinbeck still captivates me fifteen years after I first read it:

“At about ten o’clock in the morning, the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beam, flies shot like rushing stars.”

We need to teach me how to write and fill up stories with sentences this beautiful—it’s wonderful in so many ways.

Tutor:  Read the beginning of this book: The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey. It is free for Kindle on Amazon. I think it is a wonderful example of description. Read just a few pages. Then learn to SEE as Grey, and as Steinbeck saw. You already have the ability to write like that. It is a matter of focusing your attention on what you see and understanding how that affects your story and characters.

Notice how Grey invokes our five senses; we see, smell, taste, feel, and hear what is around us. As readers, we become immersed in the scene.

Student: Your comment above about “invoking our senses” and “immersing the reader” in the scene is rich. I will try this. Thanks so much for this way of seeing and writing.

Another Day

Student: Morning, I read Zane Grey and need to reread. Story details can be a matter of making a setting full of pretty details. This doesn’t make the story stronger.

Tutor: Of course, you are right. Grey’s book is about the forest, so all the descriptions are necessary and do strengthen the story, but I don’t think that spending MANY words with rich descriptions is suitable for most of your stories. However, if you could master this ability and learn to capture and immerse your reader into your scenes with FEW words, I think it would be a huge boost to your writing.

Steinbeck

Tutor: The Steinbeck quote you love is more than a few pretty words—it is loaded with meaning. Flies have a host of negative connotations. At 10 A.M., the sun is shining, so there are no or few clouds in the sky;  possibly a drought of some duration has caused all that dust—we can almost smell it. I haven’t read that book, but I am anticipating a hot day. The sentence compels our attention by its beauty, brevity, and internal contradiction— despised flies as rushing stars? It raises questions we must get answers to.

In the paragraph above, I deconstructed Steinbeck’s sentence. Suppose you were to write, in as many words as necessary, all the description, foreshadowing, hints, and connotations you would like the reader to perceive, and then, using your talent for simile and metaphor, shrink all of that to as few words as possible, being sure to leave out none of the meaning? In other words, you think about everything you want the reader to know, and figure out how to communicate it all in only a few words of description.

While I don’t propose that as a usual method of writing, I think the exercise could be helpful to you. Go overboard for a while; see how much meaning you can pack into your description. Your writing currently introduces scenery only as minimal props on a stage, with little regard as to how it could be used to advance your plot and characterization.

Student: I never thought about writing that way. It feels somehow backwards, but I can see how it would make me think harder about description.

Tutor: Think about what a messy apartment or car says about your protagonist. Suppose the home is stark white and black with a tile floor and a huge modern painting in primary colors on the wall. These details are show-don’t-tell, and they reveal much about the personality of the protagonist. 

Weather Forecasts

Tutor: Weather can be a factor in a plot, but don’t just write: “It hadn’t rained for three months.” Pack that description with meaning. What had that meant for crops, people, animals, structures, tourism, and real estate sales? Depending upon where your story is going, you can get a lot of mileage from simple weather. Make your description forward your characterization and your storyline. You can think of the environment as another protagonist.

Shakespeare shows how it’s done: 

From Julius Caesar: Casca describes unnatural weather:

“Either there is a civil strife in heaven, or else the world, too saucy with the gods, incenses them to send destruction.” (Act 1, Scene 3)

The strange weather reflects the political unrest in Rome and foreshadows Caesar’s assassination and the resulting chaos

Macbeth: The opening scene with the three witches:

“When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” (Act 1, Scene 1)

Witches and stormy weather set a dark, ominous tone, preparing us for the chaos and unnatural events that follow Macbeth’s rise to power.

All the Meaning that Matters

Student: I have to care that much about the environment? That’s going to be a lot of work, but I expect it will be worth it.

Tutor: You do have to care that much. You have to include all the meaning that matters. 

From Lynn’s Medium Account.