Description: A Magic Paintbrush in the Hand of the Right Writer

In another guest post by John Bowers, we discover how to become Sorcerers of Settings.

By the way, if you’re looking for the best in cowboy-style shoot ’em up sci-fi, I highly recommend John’s Nick Walker, United Federation Marshal series.

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The Art of Description Part Two

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the importance of description and touched on how to describe People. Now it’s time to talk about describing Setting, also known as “Scenery.”

Describing Setting

Readers, like movie watchers, love going to exotic places, and your job is to take them there. With a movie, a camera records what it sees (which may include computer-generated visuals) and the viewer has only to watch. But if someone is reading a book, there is no camera to record anything. What the reader “sees” depends on you, the author. Giving the reader those visualizations requires using your talent to paint a mental picture.

Daunting, right? But it isn’t as hard as it sounds.

Modern readers already have the building blocks stored in their heads. They know what a beach looks like, what a mountain looks like. A metropolitan city, a small town, a dusty village, a tarpaper shack. A river, a swamp, a forest; they know that animals have four legs and most cars have four wheels. They’ve seen or been exposed to airports, seaports, marinas, parking lots, hospitals, skyscrapers, stadiums, freeways, and swamps. There really isn’t much you can describe that readers haven’t already seen on the screen or in person. All you need to do is assemble the pieces to paint the picture for them.

Hold Your Reader Hostage

Settings (or scenery) can vary as widely as your imagination, and they largely depend on your genre. A romance might be set in the tropics, on a yacht, or in a metropolitan penthouse. A western is likely set in some 1880s cowtown; a war story could be set anywhere from a jungle to a desert to an urban nightmare with bombed-out buildings.

Describing those things isn’t that difficult. But what about fantasy? Science fiction? Now we’re moving into the realm of world-building, which is a whole other animal. Remember Lord of the Rings? Starship Troopers? Worlds that don’t exist! The challenge just leaped into high gear, and whether it succeeds is up to you (and remember, you are competing with Hollywood, where millions are spent on CGI and special effects, for the reader’s attention).

To capture the reader and hold him hostage (because that is what you must do), you have to captivate him! Suck him or her into the world that you create and make that world so vivid that he can’t look away. Make him want to be there! (One of the most gratifying reviews I ever got was from a reader who said, “God, I would love to live in the world that Bowers created!”) Don’t give him a chance to put down your book and turn on the TV. Keep him up at night, make him beg for the next book, make him sad that he finished the series.

That is the challenge. That is the fun. That is the ultimate gratification of writing your book … captivating the reader (even if no one reads it but you).

So, Let’s Describe Something

Unlike Zane Grey, who was prolific a century ago, you don’t have to describe everything in sight. Remember, modern readers already have images in their heads, so use those images, assemble them, and paint the picture you want.

Here’s a scene describing an urban battleground that has been devastated by artillery (from Revolt on Alpha 2):

Pretty grim stuff, but (I think) visually compelling. A scene out of hell. Gut-wrenching.

Let’s look at something a little less gruesome where nobody gets hurt. A firebomb (Assassin on Centauri B):

Again, you don’t need every single detail. People have seen videos of bombs exploding, of flame gushing into the street. The images are stored in their heads, waiting for you, the author, to activate them (the bit about boys and cats is window dressing, a pinch of spice to hopefully add drama to the scene).

What Not to Do

When describing a scene (or anything else), the worst thing you can do in my opinion is something like this (describing a space station in orbit):

See the problem here? “There was” this. “There was” that. “There was” something else. Sorry, Danielle Steele, but that isn’t description, that’s boring as hell. Text like this brings to mind someone standing back with a bucket of paint, throwing it on the wall in great, shapeless gobs. Boring. Imaginationless. Lazy.

This is how the scene was actually written:

Can you see that? Visualize it? Not a There Was or There Were in sight. (Also note the use of descriptive verbs that add life to the scene — people aren’t walking, they are streaming; they aren’t looking, they’re gazing; birds aren’t flying, but flitting. Action verbs will be covered in Part 3 of this series.)

The Key to Description

Have you ever noticed that certain authors are just a lot more fun to read than others?

As we have seen, descriptions can be bright and vivid or weak and boring. Why is that? The same words are available to every writer, so why do some writers excel at description while others just lumber along?

First of all, a writer needs imagination. If the writer’s own imagination is lacking, he or she will never be able to fire the reader’s imagination.

It could also be priority. If the writer places a low priority on visualization (translation: the writer either doesn’t know how to describe something or simply doesn’t care), the story will limp through a wasteland of fog and featureless landscape (it might even be a great story, but reading it will be a challenge).

The same tools — words — are available to everyone. The key is choosing the right words to get the job done. Choosing the right noun is critical, but for a scene to sparkle, the right adjectives are even more critical.

For example, many objects can be described with various nouns: a house is a house is a house, but what kind of house is it? A house? A shack? A cottage? A bungalow? A mansion? These are some possible nouns that, all by themselves, evoke an image.

But to make that image glitter, try a few adjectives. Take that same house (whichever noun you have chosen) and modify it. A rustic house. A weathered shack. A ramshackle cottage. A comfortable bungalow. A gleaming mansion. Each of these modifiers adds depth to the image already evoked by the noun itself.

You can even improve the description by adding to it: a sprawling, split-level, single-family dwelling surrounded by towering pines and gorgeous, multi-colored flowerbeds that stair-stepped down the hillside to the pool and tennis courts. Here, in a single sentence, you have painted an unforgettable image that visualizes almost everything the reader needs to know. No further description is really necessary.

But be careful! Using salt makes food taste better, but too much salt makes it inedible. The same is true with adjectives, so don’t get carried away.

One More Example

To wrap things up, here is a more peaceful scene where no one is dead or dying or in danger. A young woman is walking on a causeway in Askelonia, the capital city of the planet Askelon (from my novel Starport):

I like this scene because it not only introduces Carlene for the first time in the book, but also evokes several emotions. Out to sea, a gorgeous double moonrise; behind her, a blazing metropolis, a sinful city without a shred of conscience. A romantic evening, an even more romantic setting, and a young woman whose troubles are only just beginning.

But the real point here is that in two short paragraphs, we are blending what I think is a captivating scene into the story without losing a beat. Carlene sees the beauty around her, yet her mind is on her personal troubles. Rather than stopping the story for the description, we actually move it one small step forward. No info-dump.

Play around with it. Nouns and adjectives are your best friends (so are adverbs, but that was the topic of a previous article).

In Part 3 of this series, we will talk about describing Action.

Now, back to that keyboard! Your readers are getting restless.

© John Bowers

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John Bowers began writing at age 12 and was considered a prodigy by his English teachers. He wrote prolifically until his thirties, but life got busy and he took a decade off, returning to the keyboard in 1993. He is the author of the Nick Walker, United Federation Marshal series and the Starport series, all available on Amazon.

Now semi-retired, Bowers still works part-time as a computer programming consultant and spends his free time writing novels. He lives in Central California.

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