Hey guys, it's Shaelin and I'm here today with
another writing video. So today we're going to be talking about description, a favorite topic of
mine. I love description, descriptive writing is one of my favorite things to do in prose, so I
feel like this video has been a long time coming. I've been excited to make it for a while. Now part
of the reason this video has taken a hot second to pull together is because I didn't really know
how to approach it. When I think of description I don't really think of it through a list of
tips or rules, it's more like a skill-set that you can apply in infinite situations, so it's very
hard to boil down to like a boom boom boom list of points, in my opinion. I mean I could do that,
but I think you'd get fairly generic advice, like use all of the senses and stuff like that. So
this video isn't going to be necessarily a list of tips or points but instead I'm going to go through
what I think the tenets and qualities of good description are. If you are looking for some more
specific tips on how to use language I will leave my video on word choice in the description. I
scripted these two videos to be a set together, to be kind of used in tandem, so that one has more
specific tips for word choice. Here we're going to talk more about bringing it together into actual
description. You know description is kind of like the paint of your story. It's what allows your
reader to engage with the story in a sensory way, whether that's visual or really any of the
other senses. It can be very broad but also very specific because they are basically infinite
things you can do with description right, because they are infinite things that you can describe.
Now I wanted to start by distinguishing purple prose versus more fanciful language because
I think there are misconceptions about this, and purple prose is a very valid concern and
something that you should be working to avoid in your work, but I've also seen good writing
qualified as purple prose because I think the definition of it has become a little unclear.
Purple prose is something you might be familiar with, it is overly embellished language and so
a lot of the time what I see happen is people take any writing style that's figurative or
fancy in some way, and say that's purple prose, and that bothers me because I feel like there's
this weird thing happening where people will say that like more fanciful prosy language, will say
that that's the most upheld style of writing, but I actually don't think that's true. I actually
see that style of writing condemned a lot. I think the style of writing that's the most upheld is
kind of minimalist realism, you know like the Hemingway style. There's something to be said
about the fact that at some point a few white men started writing in a specific style and everyone
was like 'that's the good way to write.' Pared back, straightforward, smooth. I'm not saying
that that's a bad style to write in, actually that's a great style to write in. You know,
minimalist realism can be beautiful, it can be really effective, and it's a hard style to write
in. I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying it's bad. But it's not the only way to write.
There's nothing wrong with more embellished prose if that's your style. I love more prosy writing,
that's my thing. That's what I find fun and joyful in working on a piece, it's what's natural for
me. I'm not trying to show off. I do want to distinguish the difference. Something is purple
prose when it becomes convoluted, when it's lacking clarity, when it's cliche, and when it's
melodramatic. On the other hand you can have very fanciful good description with complex language
but it's still clear, it's not overly convoluted, and it's fresh and interesting, and it's not
melodramatic. There are differences between these two things. I definitely don't want anyone
to feel in this video that by telling you how to write descriptively I'm telling you how to
write in a certain style, because this applies to whatever your writing style is. If you have a
very clean sparse writing style that's amazing, there's nothing wrong with any range of writing
styles. You do want to be on the lookout of purple prose though, which is where the writing
becomes convoluted for the sake of complexity. With purple prose, typically what happens is the
writer is prioritizing the complexity of the prose rather than the actual effectiveness of the
imagery and the writing. So let's start with the first tenet of good description and it's
that good description is clear. If I had any advice to a new writer I would say focus on and
prioritize the clarity of your prose, and this doesn't mean your prose can't be fanciful,
this doesn't mean you can't use a simile, this doesn't mean you can't write more complexly.
I ran into a lot of problems when I was not prioritizing the clarity of my prose, because
prose can be any number of things but if it's not clear it's not going to be effective because
if it's not clear the reader won't be able to picture what they're supposed to picture or take
away what they're supposed to take away. No amount of complex sentence structure and obscure synonyms
will compensate for a sentence that is not clear. It's very easy to convolute the writing by overly
convoluting terms. Writers can sometimes avoid just using a noun because they're afraid
of telling, and I remember doing this too. I will give you an example for my own writing and
yes, slightly cringey. I wrote a story once when I had first started writing short stories. The
characters were walking through the snow and so they had snow shoes on. Rather than just referring
to them as snow shoes I felt the need to embellish that a little more and the main character
referred to a snowshoe as 'a biting board.' Why. So overly convoluting terms and just
avoiding being straightforward for the sake of it can really impact the clarity, and another thing
is just overly convoluting the sentence structure. Beautiful prose is not going to be built on the
backbone of eight semicolons in a sentence. If you want to again, cool, but that sentence will only
be as effective as it is clear. I struggled with clarity a lot in my writing. It is probably still
to this day the thing I struggle with the most. Even when I think I'm being really clear oh boy I
am not being. I had a professor in university who was really cracking down on my clarity issues and
he knew that I had clarity issues and so he was ready to call me out on my clarity issues. So the
third time I was ever submitting a piece to this professor, I was like okay I've had major clarity
issues both times I've submitted a story to this prof, I need to do better with my clarity.
And so I did what I called a clarity read. It was a draft where I only focused on clarity.
I went through and any sentence where I was like, I'm not sure this makes sense, I either got rid of
the sentence or I clarified it. Yes sometimes that meant making it a bit simpler but that also meant
making it digestible. So I would say focus on the clarity of your prose before really anything else.
Nothing else can compensate for a lack of clarity is I guess what I'm saying. It doesn't matter how
beautiful the image is, if it's not clear it's not going to be effective in its beauty. The second
core quality of good description is specificity. If you clicked on this video you knew that
I was going to talk about specificity. I am sorry it's the good shit. I have an entire
video on specific detail and word choice so I will leave that in the description if you want to check
that out and you want some more detail on that. It was a light bulb moment for me when I realized,
wait a second, I can write powerful description not by overly complicating my prose, you know
let's say biting board instead of snowshoe, but instead if I just pick more specific things
to describe the image and the language used to describe the image will be inherently interesting.
Rather than saying that there was a song playing on the radio I could specify what the song is.
That in itself will be a more interesting turn of phrase. Song is very vague there are a lot
of songs in this world. Specifying what the song is immediately adds more interest to the
sentence because that is a more interesting set of words, assuming you choose an interesting
set of words. So it was probably the biggest step up for my description when I realized that
the key to it was just to be more specific, what you're describing will be inherently
interesting. Describing specific things is more interesting than describing vague things. Vague
things are hard to picture and they're usually quite expected. Describing specific things or a
more specific version of a vague thing, right song to specific song, immediately adds more interest
to a sentence because the details themselves are interesting. So it kind of helps take the weight
off this need to overly convolute things that can really impede the clarity because what you're
describing in itself will be interesting. So we welcome funky things with language, but you'll
have that base if what you're describing is more specific and you're using more specific word
choice.So I'm going to read a little excerpt to you, this is from The Beguiling by Zsuzsi Gartner
who I think is one of the most amazing specificity queens on this earth. So I kind of just started
flipping through the beginning to be honest, just looking for a good chunk of description, and it's
everywhere. This entire book is just viciously specific. So let's look at some examples of
specificity. "When I did show up at a wedding a few years later, I finally figured out why a
nice guy like Zoltan was so alarmingly single: he was too nice. He'd turned the friend guy.
The guy you went for coffee with at 2 30 a.m after the accordion player in the Klemzer punk
band dumped you, the guy who assured you that you didn't look stupid in the faux fur jacket you
spent too much on at the Aritzia warehouse sale, the guy you could go to a movie with who wouldn't
think it meant anything other than going to see a movie. All women needed a Zoltan. Ff he'd
lived in Toronto he would have been my Zoltan." Very specific right, in this case the language
is interesting because of the specificity. Now I did get a lot of questions or comments on my
video on specificity, concerns from people saying that adding specific details is just adding
redundancies and if you're making your writing more specific then you're just adding redundant
details and so it would be better to be vague. To that I say, then don't pick redundant details.
Pick details that add something to the story. I know that people had a lot of concerns about
that in the examples from my specificity video and I get that and it's very hard in an example to
judge whether or not a detail is adding something because it's just a standalone example, there's
no context, there's no larger context to place it within. But in your own writing you'll know
whether something adds or not. Like I find when I'm editing my work especially I cut a lot of
details because I get there and I just go, this doesn't add anything, and so it can go. There's no
specific way to know whether it adds something or doesn't. I don't go through a list of questions
or qualities, you'll just know this detail adds something, this one doesn't, this one reveals
something this one doesn't. Good description is also surprising and insightful. I think really
good description goes a layer deeper than just telling us what things look like and it has an
element of insight or truthfulness to it. So I'm gonna read just one sentence as an example that
I want to unpack because I think it's a beautiful example of that. This is from a short story called
Baba by K-Ming Chang. It's a really good short story so I will leave it in the description, the
writing throughout is really amazing. K-Ming Chang is a really incredible descriptive writer but I
just want to highlight this one sentence and it's from the first paragraph. "It's August when my
father leaves. He says he'll take a job at a slot machine factory outside of Chengdu, a city that
sizzles out in my mouth like a match." So already we have specificity here saying that he's going
to take a job at a slot machine factory, that's this very specific detail, but what I really want
to highlight is that line 'a city that sizzles out in my mouth like a match.' I have never been to
Chengdu, I know it's a city in China and that's pretty much all I know about it. I don't know
anything about it, I can't picture it in my head, I don't know where in china it's located. I
know nothing about the city. From that one line, a city that sizzles out in my mouth like a
match, I have a perfect sense for the energy of the setting. For the context of this story I don't
really need to know more. I don't necessarily need to know what the buildings look like or what the
weather is like, that one sentence kind of does enough. It's a very surprising but insightful
detail to say that the city sizzles out in your mouth like a match. It's very visceral. It engages
the narrator's body, it engages the senses, it's such a punchy surprising insightful piece
of description that kind of tells me everything I need to know about the setting without actually
even describing it. Now K-Ming Chang could have equally taken the more obvious approach and
said 'he'll take a job at a slot machine factory outside of Chengdu, a city that has buildings like
this and weather like this' and describe it in the more concrete way and concreteness is good, but
what she's done here is she's taken the abstract qualities of the city and she's presented them to
you in a concrete way. She's taken the abstract feeling of the place and she's synthesized it
into a physical experience and it's amazing. It's a great use of sensory writing and insightful
truthful interesting writing. Now one thing people ask a lot about description is how do I integrate
into the story, like how do I get it to flow. This is a question I've seen a lot, how do I get my
description to flow. And it's a tricky question to answer because I mean there are a lot of ways to
get description to flow, and it's a very intuitive thing really based on your better judgment.
Typically with description you won't just get like a solid block of only description with
nothing else around it and I think the best way to think of integrating your description into the
story is to make it active and in character. The best descriptions will reveal us something about
the character, using your character's actions, their perceptions and their emotional biases.
Their emotional reactions will be one of the best ways to integrate the description into the story
so it does more than just tell us what things look like. I think it is a missed opportunity to
see description as something very utilitarian, something that's just there to tell us what
things look like so we can get on with the story. Description is an integral part of the story and
it can tell us so much more about a character, about a situation, about a story, beyond just
what things look like. How your character sees and describes the world can reveal a lot
about them. Now I do want to address one piece of advice that I see a lot thatIi think is really
bad advice. Now again, is any writing advice bad? I don't know, this is writing advice that does not
resonate with me. So I'll see it said a lot that characters won't notice things that wouldn't be
important to them, so for example if you walk into a room and it's full of sports memorabilia
but you don't know anything about sports and you don't care about sports you won't notice it,
you won't describe it. Do y'all not see things that aren't directly relevant to your interests?
If I walk into a room full of sports memorabilia it's not like the walls will be blank to me
because I don't care about sports, I just won't have the language to describe it as specifically.
I'm not gonna know who the players whose penants are hanging on the wall are I'm not gonna have any
emotional attachment to it, I'm gonna know that I'm in a room with someone that I probably don't
have much in common with. We have very different interests. But it's not that I'm not gonna see
it and it's not that I'm not gonna describe it. That doesn't mean that if your character who
doesn't know anything about sports walks into this room they shouldn't describe all of the
sports memorabilia, they can still describe it, it's just gonna be with a very different tone than
if the person who walks in is like an avid sports enthusiast. The tone's gonna be very different,
the language is gonna be pretty different. Using a character's actions is a great way to integrate
description into the narrative using the physical cues your character provides you with or another
character provides you with can be a great segue for description. If you have to describe a tree,
just describing the tree on its own maybe works in some cases, but knowing how the description
of that tree fits into the movement of the scene can be a lot more effective. Knowing where the
character is standing in relation to the tree, if they're doing anything in relation to the tree,
like if your character is about to start climbing the tree, that's going to give you action to leap
frog off of. It's going to give you a very natural point to build description off from. I just wanted
to give you a little bit of an example of some description integrated with action, so you don't
really feel like you're reading description but you're getting a lot of descriptive language. So
this is from History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund, one of my favorite novels, I've talked extensively
about this novel and how much I love it, and the writing in it is really beautiful but
accessible. I think it's just a master class in language and atmospheric tension. As you'll
see there's action happening and we're getting description based on the beats of the scene. "Mr
Grierson treated history odyssey like we both knew it was a chore. Secretly I wanted to win. I was
determined to see a wolf. Nights I went out in mukluks, a ski mask and my father's down jacket,
which was redolent with his scents, with tobacco and mildew and bitter coffee. It was like wearing
his body while he slept, like earning a right to his presence and silence and bulk. I sat on an old
ice bucket near the furthest fish house and sipped boiled water from the thermos, but it was rare
for a wolf to be spotted here so late in winter. All I ever saw were distant logs squirming with
crows. In the end i had to settle for a dead one. Saturdays I snowshoed to the forest service
nature center, where i studied the soft bitch in the lobby, with her glass eyes and coral nails,
her sunken black cheeks pulled back in what looked like a smile. Peg, the naturalist there, pouted
when she saw me try to touch the wolf's tail. 'Uh uh,' she scolded. She gave me gummy bears
and taxidermy techniques, told me how to sculpt eyelids from clay and muscles from polyurethane
foam. "Iron the skin, iron the skin," she warned me." There's a lot of really impeccable writing
here going on. So here we have things that the character is doing right, she's going out to see
a wolf. She actually has a goal so there's that drive, it's not just senseless wandering. We
get that description of what she's wearing and we get that wisdom about her father's jacket.
We don't just say she's wearing a down jacket, what it looks like, we don't just get told what it
smells like, but we get that wisdom. "it was like wearing his body while he slept, like earning
a right to his presence and silence and bulk," which is a revealing detail about the character
and it's a great example of using description as a way to reveal character psychology, you know
we're learning about her based on a description of a jacket. Rather than just being told that
there are distant logs squirming with crows, which is an interesting image, it's active it's
through the context of a scene. It's through the context of her having a goal. She's looking for a
wolf. So all in all I think that this is a really strong paragraph, it's not pure description but
it's description paired with interesting narrative and with motion, with scene, with movement, with
character. The description isn't just there to tell us what things look like, what things smell
like, it's there to actually move the story. The description here is part of the narrative movement
so you don't feel like you're reading description, because the description is doing more than
just describing, which good description does. It doesn't just describe what things look like,
it's part of the movement of the narrative and part of the depth of the narrative. Another really
important quality of good description is that it is well edited and economical. This almost relates
more to writing style in general. I think it's not a bold statement to say that if your description
isn't well line edited it probably won't be that effective. Learning to line edit effectively
is what will help your style shine through. One thing that a lot of people will say when you talk
about line editing and you'll talk about all the things you can cut from your work, like okay you
can cut all these weasel words, you can cut these filters, these are weak verbs etc etc. You talk
about all the weak constructions you can cut, one thing a lot of people will say in response to
that is, well you're just editing out your style. But you're actually doing the opposite. Your
style is not built on weak words, your style is not built on the word just, your style is not
built on the word very, your style is going to be built on the strong aspects of your work. So when
you cut the weak aspects, your style can actually shine through. I remember a professor talking
about this in my first ever fiction workshop and we were a couple months into the fiction workshop
and she was like "it's really exciting because I'm starting to see all of your styles shine
through. You know at the start of the semester you kind of all had the same style because you
were all making the same mistakes, you all had all this mess to your writing and so what it was
doing is it was just burying your style. Now that you've got rid of the mess your style can actually
shine through, and now you all have a very unique distinct voice." So learning to line edit is going
to do so much for your descriptions. I will leave some of my line editing videos in the description.
And finally good description is enjoyable to read. I think it's a mistake to see description as
like a utilitarian thing just there to serve its purpose of telling us what things look like and
then moving on with its life. Description can be part of the joy of a piece, it can be in itself
something that's beautiful and interesting to read. Reframing description as something that on
its own can be interesting can be beautiful, can be effective, can be fun to read will really help
in taking your descriptions to the next level. Finding joy in the descriptive writing itself
rather than just seeing descriptive writing as something that needs to go there to serve a
purpose but is not the most interesting aspect of the story. It doesn't inherently have to be
boring or slow, it can inherently be interesting and engaging. Especially when you start using
your description to do more work in the story and to reveal more about the character, using
it as a way to explore subtle emotional states, can help you really take your description to
the next level because the description will be doing so much more in your work. I think in good
description the reader can take something away beyond just the visual sense, whether they pick up
on that consciously or not, you know it's feeding into other aspects of the story and even just on
a linguistic level like the language itself can be part of the joy of reading a piece. That's all
for this video! Thank you so much for watching, if you have any questions you can always send me an
ask on tumblr and I'll see you in another video. Bye
