Welcome to A Novel Approach. If this is your first issue, I encourage you to check out my back issues for more tips on how to write a novel. It's my fondest hope that I can help other writers do the best they can do.

If you have any specific aspects about novel writing you'd like me to address in future issues, please feel free to contact me and let me know what those are. Thank you for your interest, and here's to better writing!

Writing Fantastic Fiction -
Description That "Lives"

The rewards? Readers tell everyone they know about the great book they just read.

In other words, more money for you!

Description can make or break a novel - do it right, and people can see, smell, touch, taste and hear what's happening from page to page. Do it wrong, and it's just a simple narrative of events.

How do you create description that the reader feels?

Simple. By evoking the five senses.


Five Times the Impact

When I write my first drafts, I occasionally stick in details like how the sun feels on the heroine's hair, what the bees sound like flitting from flower to flower...

More often, though, my first draft is all action and dialogue and little description. If I've learned anything in the years I've been writing, it's that rewriting is the longer part of writing a novel.

I've had a novel race off my fingertips in as little as two weeks. Was it ready to be published? No. I had to go back and add detail and life to it.

One step I take with every page I've written (once I'm sure it's a page that's staying in the final product) is to look to see if it's appropriate to add any details from the five senses to it.

For instance, if my hero walks into a room and someone is stamping a new design in leather, he should smell the leather or the dyes used on it, or hear the "ting" of the hammer on the punch - or both.

That doesn't mean he should taste leather in his mouth, feel the bumps and dents of the design (unless he runs fingers over it) or see every curve and point of the stamping tools.

You can overload your prose, too. Then you're no longer writing fantastic fiction.


Striking the Right Balance

When I first read about how you should include all five senses into your novels, I rushed back to my first one and tried to stuff sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch into every page I'd written.

Not a good idea! In the same way you'll bore readers if you don't give them any details, you'll bog them down with too many.

So, how do you know the balance is right?

Use your viewpoint character to guide you.

What's that? How can a fictional person tell you how much detail you should include and what kind?

If you have the right point of view character for each of your scenes, using his or her personality to help you know what details to add and which ones wouldn't be noticed will make for very vivid writing.

If your heroine always notices shoes, for instance, have her notice the color and texture of what's on the hero's feet when he walks into the room, or the sound of the soles on the wood floor.

If your hero is from a foreign country and feeling lost in his new one, use the overwhelming sounds, sights and tastes of foreign foods to convey that.

Whatever your point of view character would notice is a good thing to describe. You may find you need to add a few other details (especially if you're writing a whodunit-style mystery), but for the most part, the details should come from the POV character's viewpoint.


Just Right

As Goldilocks found, you may have to try a few chairs before you find one that's just right. Same goes for your novel. Writing fantastic fiction isn't a once-and-I'll-get-it-right deal. I have passages I struggle over five or six times (or more, occasionally) before I'm happy with how they turned out.

So, I'll show you one example of too little, then too much, then just right. The excerpt is written from a 14-yeaqr-old girl's perspective when she's been awakened in the middle of the night.

Too Little:

I yanked my pajamas off and jerked clothes back on. Stomped feet into my hiking boots and snatched up the flashlight. I'd need that to follow the tracks.

What's wrong? "Pajamas" and "clothes" are both too generic.

Too Much:

I yanked my silky blue sleep shirt and shorts off, grabbed yesterday’s Levi jeans, my "Save the Earth" T-shirt and my favorite Patagonia fleece jacket, shoved my skinny arms and legs in it all without worrying about fastenings. Clean socks. I had to have clean socks. The thought of yesterday's grit and how stiff they'd be with dried sweat was too much at midnight.

My Merrill hiking boots last and—yeah, a flashlight, since it was pitch night out. It was new moon time. Dark as the backs of my eyelids out there. I wouldn’t be able to follow those new tire tracks without a flashlight. Brrr, it was cold in my hand.

I don't know about you, but I've never met a young teen whose thoughts would be on the brand of jeans and jacket she's putting on in the middle of the night, have you? And while the images and sensations you're creating are good, they're more than a sleepy teenager is going to notice.

Let's try just right:

I yanked my blue sleep shirt and shorts off, grabbed yesterday’s jeans, T-shirt and my favorite fleece jacket, shoved my arms and legs in it all without worrying about fastenings. Clean socks. I had to have clean socks. I couldn’t stand the thought of yesterday’s gritty ones.

Hiking boots last and—yeah, a flashlight, since it was pitch night out. It was new moon time. I wouldn’t be able to follow those tracks without a flashlight.

There. That sounds like an irritated, sleepy teen, doesn't it? No extraneous details thrown in just to add another sense of touch or sight to the description. Just right.

I hope I've helped you learn how writing fantastic fiction is all in the details. Good luck on your next novel!


More Help

For more details about adding details and how best to do so, try any of these pages from my website:


Description
Alliteration
Analogy
Descriptive Phrases
Figure of Speech
Language
Metaphor
Simile

Here's one way to look at getting enough details done the right way into your novels:

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable. ~ Terry Brooks