Description is one of the biggest problems new authors struggle with. Knowing how much description to use and when to include it (or leave it out) are important skills to have. After enough practice and experimentation, you’ll develop those skills on your own, but in this article, I’ll give you a few pointers to send you in the right direction.
I have a few description rules that work well in most circumstances. I’ll tell them to you in a minute, but first, you should know my definitions of description. My definitions might be a little strange, but hang in there. I want to make sure that we're all on the same page when talking about description.
Most people only think of the typical type of description, which is what a person/place/object looks like. That is one type of description, but to have a fully-fleshed book, you need to keep all the types of description in mind.
Description Definitions
Note: These definitions can overlap somewhat, and in some cases, you can see all these types of description in the same sentence.
Action description - Description of what people/animals/things do.
The leaf fell.Mental description - Description of a point-of-view character's thoughts about what's happening.
She was so happy because the sun had risen at last.Character/creature description - Description of the appearance of a character/creature, as well as how they sound and what their history is.
She was beautiful, and she had the voice of an angel because she had spent five years in singing lessons. The moose was large and furry, with a bellowing call.Setting description - Description of the characters' surroundings.
The trees around her looked like giant cucumbers. A cool wind brushed her cheeks.World building description - Description of things that usually can't be seen. These things have to do with the inner workings of your world.
Every five years, the high councilman was replaced. The Faralian people lived to the age of 15 before metamorphosing into giant birds. How Much Description is Necessary?
Disclaimer: These scenarios are mostly based on my observations about my own writing and the writing of other aspiring authors. They might not all apply to everyone or every situation, but I’m sure you’ll find something useful here.
Below are several problems authors often face and possible solutions to solve them.
Problem 1: If you're a new author (and especially if you're young), you're not writing enough action description. Readers might have a great idea of what your characters look like (because new authors tend to over-describe physical appearance), but they won’t be able to visualize the most important part of the story: what’s actually happening in the story.
Solution 1: Focus on what your characters are doing, and describe it so much that it feels like you’re being redundant. When you’re editing, you can cut some of that redundant description, but most of it probably isn’t redundant if you’re a new author.
Describing action during dialogue is a definite must. People don't just talk when they talk. They also move around, pick up stuff, touch each other, hit each other, etc. Their voices change depending on their mood and what they’re talking about, which can be described as well.
Note: Using outlandish words like “growled,” “hissed,” and “shrieked” as dialogue tags is not a good way to describe someone’s mood. Besides the fact that you can’t really do most of those things while talking, using uncommon dialogue tags distracts from your story.
Problem 2: New authors describe characters/creatures way too much. We don't need to know a character's whole life history when we first meet them, and we definitely don't want to read a full page of their physical description. The same is true about animals. We don’t need to know their lifespan, mating habits, and diet all at once.
Solution 2: Choose two or three unique/important things about your character's appearance and/or history to include in the character's first introduction. Do the same with animals. By important, I mean something that directly affects the immediate plot, not something that is only likely to interest you.
Problem 3: If you're a more experienced author, you're writing way too much world building and/or setting description. Experienced authors develop amazing worlds, and they want to share it all with their readers in one fat paragraph. This slows down the action and causes readers to skim, which is the last thing you want.
Solution 3: Wait. Don’t introduce any information until it becomes necessary for the reader to follow what’s happening. They don’t need to know why everything is happening, but they do need to know what is happening. When you do have to describe something necessary, follow the 2-3 unique/important characteristics rule from above.
Problem 4: Every author seems to fall into the trap of not having enough mental description at one time or another. Readers want to know what the point of view character is thinking and why they do what they do. If readers don’t feel close enough to the POV character, they won’t feel grounded in the story. They won’t have a real interest in what happens.
Solution 4: Don't assume that readers can guess what your POV character is thinking. It's your job to tell them. If you think you’ve written enough about what your POV character is thinking, write a little more. If you’re not sure if you’ve written enough, write a lot more. However, there are good ways and bad ways to describe what someone is thinking/feeling. Writing any sentence along the lines of "he/she/I felt..." is probably a bad way. Writing someone's thoughts in a way that imply what they are feeling is a good way.
How to Describe
If it’s hard to come up with guidelines about how much to describe, it’s even harder to come up with rules about how to describe. But here are a few pointers:
Step 1. In the first draft, describe a ton of stuff. Use as many pages as you want. Use the first words you think of, arranged in whatever sentences you first come up with. Don’t worry about sounding professional or interesting.
Below is an example of unedited description I just came up with:
Saphira ran across the giant, purple-painted room that looked like a giant ballroom but probably had never been used for dancing at least not in a long time because the tiles on the floor were broken and dirty. She waved her red, burned hands in the air. The room was so strangely cold, probably because of magic. The old wizard loved frost magic. Her shrill, freakishly high-pitched scream cut through the air and hurt everyone’s eardrums. She ran past an old man in a gray jumpsuit with a machine in his hands. The machine was long, and it had a bunch of silver knobs on it. He waved it at her, and her hands stopped burning. She stopped running and screaming, sighing with relief. She was so glad her hands weren’t burning anymore. They had been burning for what seemed like five years because she had accidentally touched a vibrantly pink fire crystal that burned her. The crystal was the old wizard’s, and she was his apprentice. Step 2. Edit the heck out of your first draft. Ask yourself what you need to describe, and if you don't really NEED to describe something where it's currently described in the story, cut it or move it. Ask yourself what interesting (but not insanely complicated) words you could use in your work. Use them.
The same is true about sentences. You want the edited sentences to be varied and interesting, but it’s more important that they make sense than that you use big words. Also, dialogue can often be used to replace some description, especially world building and character (history) description.
Note: It is more important to have a story that makes sense than a story that is poetic/deep/pretty. It's also more important to have a story with too much description than a story with so little description that your reader has no idea what's happening. Keep that in mind when you're writing description, and be careful when you're editing.
Editing is like getting a haircut. If you cut off too little, you can go back in and cut off more. If you cut too much, you have to wait until your hair grows back in (aka rewrite everything), and you (aka your story) are ugly in the meantime.
Example of edited description:
Saphira raced across the violet ballroom, hands burning. Her shrieks of pain cut through the silence of the dusty space. Why had she been so stupid? Touching the fire crystal was an amateur’s mistake, and she’d gone and done it by accident.The room’s unnatural cold gave her a brief respite from the burning, but it wasn’t enough. She ran toward a pair of old wizards in gray robes standing by the far wall. Halfway there, she tripped over a broken tile, but she managed to stay upright by flailing her arms and stumbling forward. “Master,” she shouted, waving her hands at the nearest wizard.
He glared at her through his thick-rimmed glasses and shook his balding head. “You touched the fire crystal, the one I told you to stay away from.”Saphira whimpered. Touching the crystal had been a simple mistake, one she would never do again. Obviously, Master could see she regretted it. She knew he had a cooling rod on him. Why hadn’t he used it yet?“Please, Master.” She held out her hands. “Please heal me.” “If you touch my elemental crystals again, I’ll think twice before healing you.” He drew a long, silver rod out of his robes and turned several of the knobs attached to it. Instantly, the heat faded from Saphira’s hands. She sighed with relief and leaned against the wall. The few minutes it had taken her to run here had felt like an eternity. If she’d had to wait one more second with that burning in her hands, she would have gone insane.“Thank you, Master,” she said at last.Now, I'll be the first to say that the above description and dialogue aren't perfect, but I’m sure you'll agree that it's much better than the original blocky paragraphs of description.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you learned something.