I’ve had some good teachers – in drawing, singing, running a business. Every time I find a good teacher, it reminds me of the difference between a taught course / curated resources versus just looking things up myself: they teach me the stuff I don’t know I need to know. Stuff I might otherwise ignore, dismiss, eyeroll at, or even actively refute.
Description is that, for most writers. Plot? Character? Dialogue? Everyone’s signing up to learn those. Description? I weave that in alongside the others, because I know you need it. Contemporary novels of all genres average 48% description, but so many people, avid readers of those novels, still believe description bogs things down and isn’t used so much these days.
So here are ten things all that description is doing.
It makes the story immersive. We live in our bodies; we experience the world through sensory information. That’s the info we need to feel like we’re living in the story.
It makes scenes memorable. Place is memory, as I’ve written about before. Do you want the reader to hold onto a particular scene or key information? Describe the place vividly.
It does your world building. Historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and travel fiction all hinge on a world that’s not the same as our own familiar environment. Everything you can describe – rooms, floors, food, clothes, scents, colours, plants – is giving information about your story’s world.
It creates mood and atmosphere. You want it darker? You want it creepy? Poignant? Vibrant? Intimate? Your description will create the mood in which you nest your action and dialogue.
It deepens your characterisation. Your character’s home. Their room. The pub they chose to meet in. The clothes they chose to wear, or are all they have. Every titbit of description here is a wealth of character info. Add point-of-view description from another character, and you’ve got a two-fer-one on characterisation.
It creates scene anchors. Are you interweaving story threads? Plaiting in sub-plots? Flashing back to the past then returning to the present? The rich description you seed in is the reader’s anchor for returning to that thread so they remember, quite literally, where they were in that story-thread before.
It creates action. Where your characters are limits or creates what they can do. Whether you’re writing epic fantasy, spicy romance, quiet literary fiction, or an action thriller, the place shapes what they can (or can’t!) do – so we need to know.
It paces your story. Need a beat for the reader to absorb what just happened, and really feel the ramifications? Want to draw out the building tension before The Thing happens – or doesn’t? Description is your pacing.
It’s the silence in dialogue. ‘They were silent for a long time’ doesn’t create a pause for the reader: it’s seven words; we skip right over it. A passage of description allows us to feel the silence, and whatever resonance that has in the scene.
It does your exposition. All that stuff you want to explain to the reader, for them to understand your characters, story, plot, world? A huge swathe of it can be woven in through descriptive detail.
With all that at work, it’s a wonder we can even cap description at 48%! We don’t give it all in one wodge, of course: we weave it in. Just I weave it into my teaching. The Story Elements course, for instance, has one session explicitly on Place, but description gets snuck into everywhere else it matters: characters, time, symbols, themes, subplots, dialogue.
If you’re thinking about doing the Story Elements course, look at this topic list: premise • characters • place • time • plot layering • tension & stakes • plot point of view • beginnings • themes & symbols • subplots • detail & dialogue • endings. All the stuff that catches your eye as an “Oooh, yes!”? That’s what you know you need to know. The rest? That’s the unexpected riches, like all the things description can do. You can read more about the course, and heaps of reviews, here.
