I’m still in the midst of description boot camp. I’m working really hard to make sure that what I see gets put on the page. It’s not difficult, if you know exactly how much description that readers are looking for. But since each book differs on how much description is appropriate, it’s like figuring out a giant puzzle each time you sit down to write a scene. Once you’ve got your point of view worked out though, it’s just a matter of sustaining it over 200 to 500 pages. Easy, right?
Not exactly.
So what do we see? Is it a slow and ponderous retelling of every detail we view per millisecond? Or is it a quick scan of the details, just stopping long enough to register? Or is it a aerial view that only sees outlines and landscapes, but not specific details?
That’s what I mean by point of view. Description works off of your character’s view of the world. If your character is someone that sees things in a peculiar way, you’ll want to include peculiar descriptions.
So description, as I’ve found out in the past two weeks, is knowing how the character looks at the world and how I want them to continue looking at the world throughout the book. That’s quite simplified, however, as it is much more nuanced than that. (Thus why novels and memoirs take years to write.)
If you’re writing a story, an essay, or like me a novel, it’s description that brings it to life. It’s our job to show a world through our eyes or through our character’s eyes. That’s it.
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This blog was for me an important finding, I ever loved read and when I was a teenager I even wrote some amazing stories (not kidding, they were really good) and today I’m working out in a novel that I whant to write, but I don’t have concept or theme yet, I’m researching about that. Thaks a lot for this blog!
Hi, Jona. Thanks for your comment. Keep at the writing. Let me know if you have an specific questions or issues you’d like me to talk about on this blog.
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