Don’t Use Description in Your Writing
Now hold up. Wait a minute, and let me explain myself.
I understand that what I’m saying sounds absolutely crazy. Description is one of the oldest and most useful techniques in the history of writing. When used properly, it can help to create an atmosphere, set a scene, give context to the events of a story and allow the reader to feel like they are in the world of the story, standing right there with the characters.
But it’s a technique that many people seem to have a hard time with. This isn’t unusual, beginning writers struggle with all sorts of issues. But in my experience, description is a particular thorn in the side for some writers. These same writers may find themselves able to come up with interesting characters, intriguing conflicts, and passable (if not stellar) dialogue. Their work isn’t great, but they can at least keep your attention, and you can see their potential on the page.
But the idea of having to contend with description, of staring at a page, and trying to figure out what to describe, and how to describe it, fills them with dread and frustration. To them, description is almost a foreign language, and they have little to no idea how to speak it. They don’t know how to work it into their story. Despite their other talents, the fact that they can’t master this one skill makes them totally unsuited to be prose writers, and they must find another avenue for their creativity.
Description is often held up as the main thing that differentiates novels and short stories from other kinds of written works. Plays, movies, comics, none of them really have to describe anything. They just show it to us. Books don’t have that luxury, so they must describe. And it is in trying to figure out how to use description that some writers find themselves at a loss. They feel that the book they’re writing is incomplete unless it contains pages upon pages of dense description.
But there is a very easy way to overcome this problem. If you’ll indulge me:
Imagine for a moment that you’re talking to a friend, and you’re going to tell them a story about something interesting that happened in your life. When you relate your anecdote, you’ll likely go to great lengths to explain who the people in the story are, what they were doing, why they were doing it, and where they were doing it. But are you going to describe, in great detail, what the people looked like? Will you spend several minutes describing the setting? If your story takes place in a park, for instance, are you going to describe what the park looked like?
Chances are, most of you answered something like, “Yes, but only if it’s necessary to understand the story.”
And that right there is the key. For all the hullabaloo that is placed on description, the fact is that it’s just another tool, like dialogue, and it can be used as much or as little as needed.
If you write a scene where your character walks into a living room and all the reader needs to know about the living room is that it has a couch and a TV, then that’s all you say. You don’t need to force yourself to spend three pages describing the ornate pattern on the rug, or the fabric of the curtains, or the way the lamp light reflects off the walls just so. Just write, “Jenny walked into the living room. It had a couch, and a TV.” And then tell your story.
This isn’t really a radical idea. Many well-known authors, like Ernest Hemingway, Elmore Leonard, and Isaac Asimov, didn’t use much description in their own work, only describing what was essential to the story, and then moving on. On the other hand, there are also many great stories that don’t have much dialogue, relying mostly on description. Those books do just fine with little dialogue, so your book can do just fine with little description.
Now some of you reading this might be writers who enjoy description, and like to use it as a way to enhance your story. To you I would say, please keep using description as much as you want.
When writing, you should use whatever tools you have, whatever strengths you possess, to tell the best story possible. Don’t listen to people who say, “Your prose must have a lot of description,” or any other contrived nonsense like that. Tell stories the best way you know how to tell them. Don’t listen to anyone except yourself. Ignore everyone else.
That includes me.
Don’t listen to me.
