We artistic writers have only eleven tools we can use to pull readers into our stories and ultimately seduce them into willingly, even joyously, reading them, and then granting them multiple "stars" and calling them "entertaining page-turners" or something similar on GoodReads.com.
Here are the tools:
1.We can write what we imagine characters in our stories are saying.
2.We can write what they're thinking.
3. We can write what their faces and their bodies look like.
4. We can engender a world around them that our characters inhabit (what it looks like and what the "weather" looks like) and the social rules characters follow (or choose to ignore) that govern this world.
5. We can write about the land that exists in this world, and in the process of writing about it, we can create a place. Place cannot easily be divorced from weather because weather has so much to do with creating why any given place looks the way it does.
6. We can write how characters get around (assuming they do get around); we can write about their conveyances, everything from riding horseback to riding inter-galactic starships. We can write how the world changes as the characters in this world go from one place to another.
7. We can write how our characters get sustenance in this world, what they eat and drink.
8. We can write about what characters smell or what they smell like.
9. We can write about sensory feelings, what our characters feel as they touch the world around them. How does it feel to touch silk? How does it feel to touch someone else's skin or hair?
10. We can write how these characters feel, both physically and emotionally, both about themselves and about the characters around them. In other words, we can write about their emotions and what drives them. Are they lonely? Are they in love? Are they in a state of hate or frustration? Are they hungry? Sad? Happy? Livid? Jealous? Bloated? Filled with shame? Filled with pride? And if that's how they feel, how do they want to feel? For example, maybe they're alone and want to be alone. We can cover every shade of emotion and physical feeling in facial expressions and affect, plainly stating how the characters in our stories feel and wish to feel. We can write about their dreams and how the difference between their aspirations and their current reality causes them to feel.
11. We can write about beings with powers greater than our characters'. They can live in worlds beyond the one(s) our characters inhabit. Thus, we have mythological gods and super-heroes as we do in stories like Wonder Woman, or we have God Himself in Biblical stories such as The Story of Job.
Now let's "pull back" from those eleven "writer tools" and place them into general buckets:
#1 is dialog.
#2 is interior monologue.
#3 is description of characters and their behaviors.
#4 is description of the physical world our characters inhabit, including weather descriptions.
#5 is description of places, for example, story setting.
#6 is description of travel and how the story setting changes as the character or characters in the story change their location.
#7 is description of food preperation and dining experiences.
#8 is description of smells.
#9 is description of sensory feelings, i.e., physical touch.
#10 is description of physical and emotional feelings.
#11 is description of beings with super-human powers.
I've taken the time and space with this admittedly lumbering introduction to my review of the book, Description by Monica Wood to make the point that for artistic writers this stuff called description isn't just important, it's essential. Description represents nine-elevenths, or 81.82 percent of all the tools we writers have at our disposal. You can't be a writer of any note without mastering description.
If you want to improve your ability to write descriptions, you could not find a better-informed and more complete instruction book than Description by Monica Wood.
Here's a subject breakdown based loosely on the table of contents:
-Detail, and how you can use telling details to make your descriptions come alive.
-Describing touches, tastes, sounds, smells and sights.
-Showing and telling; how your descriptions can drive both, and also, when to show and when to tell.
-Editing descriptions to pull readers through a work; what to avoid so they'll never be chore to read.
-Using your descriptions to create a writing style that matches your story's content and theme.
-How your selection of either first person, third person omniscient, or limited third-person point-of-view can place limitations on the strategies you use when writing descriptions.
-Creating original word depictions of characters, animals, places, weather and character movement.
Monica Woods' approach is clear, thorough and tremendously well informed. At every turn she demonstrates how a description would be affected by any given writing choice—either style, point-of-view or descriptive technique. She quotes plenty of noted writers including John Barth, Anne Beattie, and Raymond Carver. (But darn, not James Patterson. Hmm. I wondered why that oversight. Really I did!) You'll find plenty of tips, reminder lists and descriptive alternatives to common verbs and nouns, and tips for editing your work. More than anything else, though, I found Woods' book Description to be inspiring. It's extremely inspiring. It convinced me that even I can go from slug-to-swan when it comes to description. For example, her explanation of the differences between simile and metaphor:
"Simile and metaphor make fiction breathe. Similes can help readers "see" what you are describing. Beware of their overuse. Metaphor is subtler; it does not compare so much as transform. A little girl becomes a kitten when described in terms of a feline mewing and skittish motion. Metaphors can be contained in one sentence or expanded to thread through through an entire story or even be made into a central metaphor. A snowstorm, a railroad, or a pair of red shoes are images that could be expanded into metaphors that express confusion, progress and heedlessness.
"The telling detail is where description begins. It is the device through which you introduce your readers—and sometimes yourself—to the true nature of your characters."
That's Monica Wood's strength. Her instruction got me. I found her book to be an instructional rhapsody thoroughly covering the topic while at the same time delivering inspiring and practical you-can-and-should-do-this-at-home advice.
