Description, the Red Meat of Writing

Setting Description, the Static and the Active

I consider description, which comes in many forms and flavors to be the true red meat of writing. Neither in books nor film is it really possible to tell a story without filling in the environment, the surroundings, the place in which a story takes place. Nor is it really possible to create a character without filling in a character's being, which involves physical substance that is animated and sentient.

Let's pick on novice writers again. Quite often we can be two or three chapters into a novel and we've yet to know what the main characters looks like, what the houses they live in look like, or the streets and the towns in the story. Some argue that readers will fill in the details, but until we have a good description of each character and place, we might as well have our eyes shut and just listen to what the characters say. Worse yet, without a substantial description of place to go along with the characters, we might as well just listen to disembodied voices in a void—and that is boring. In fact, creating a complete story is like the problem God had when he created the universe out of nothing, or like the question posited by physicists in the Big Bang theory. First there was nothing and then there was...all this. Readers like to know where a story is taking place, what the characters look like, whether it is night or day, if it's hot or cold, windy or still, and if the location smells like dead fish, freshly brewed coffee, or...or...pine. In other words if they're on a pier in the Gulf of Mexico, in Starbucks, or in a cabin in a pine forest.

I've actually read books that are too laden with description of every kind, and many readers complain that there is too much description in some novels. This is true. Description can get in the way of the story and the plot, but without description, we're back to the void.

Now let's take a look at another important distinction in setting description, whether the setting is static, as in My Dinner with Andre, or if characters meet and have dialogue and perform action in changing and shifting settings. We also need to distinguish between the description of place and the description of the environment, the weather. Yes, I said the weather.

We set tone and mood by the use of weather. Which is more suspenseful, walking through a cemetery on a sunny morning during Memorial Day, when the sky is clear, and there's a cool breeze in the air or walking through a graveyard at midnight when it's pouring rain and so dark we can only make out the shapes of the gravestones when lightning flashes? This is active description. We have our setting, but with active description of the setting (in this case the weather) it all changes.

So, when we create a story, we should try to create an entire world, just as if it were being filmed. We have to create everything in the reader's mind, including concrete description of places and people, but we can also create description that we can smell, feel, and hear. The more we appeal to the reader's five physical senses the more complete the environment in which a story takes place.

For more on description as the red meat of writing visit this page. Yes, there is some repetition, but about halfway through this page, readers will be treated to a real graphic example of descriptive writing.