Setting and Description

Throughout your writing career, the most common criticism you will receive is that you should show, not tell. Every writer hears this, no matter how good or talented or experienced. Sometimes, it's just easier and more appropriate to tell than show. More often, the definitions readers have of showing versus telling might be different from yours.

The primary guideline of description (and indeed of all elements of fiction) comes to us from John Gardner:

Do nothing that breaks the fictional dream.

You're casting a spell on your readers, hypnotizing them so they're in another time or place or person. A jarring piece of description (or too much description) is no different than screaming while trying to hypnotize someone.

Description should be subtle, precise, and important. Describe nothing that does not need to be described, and make sure readers can visualize all of the important aspects of the story.

Refer to the following guidelines for description:

• Don't spell everything out. Trust the reader.
• Describe only dramatic or important details.
• Replace information with action or events that show it.
• Choose an appropriate setting (time, place).
• If you take the time to lavishly describe something, it'd better be important later.

Don't spell everything out. Trust the reader.

At its best, writing is a collaboration between the writer and the reader. The writer supplies the framework and details necessary to construct a story, and the reader does so in his or her mind. If you supply too many details, you deny readers the chance to imagine their own and estrange them from the work. When they add their own opinions and perceptions (this is what the church looks like, this is how Uncle Eugene sounds), they become a part owner of the story and are that much more drawn into it.

This is why people who read are always disappointed by movie versions of books. The movie never interprets the characters, situations, and settings they imagined. The studio of the mind is always superior to any in Hollywood.

Trust your reader. Give only enough detail to provide a stage for the reader to provide the rest. Be specific only where you must be specific.

Describe only dramatic or important details.

The question is which are the dramatic and important details.

An important detail is any detail without which there would be no story. Aunt Maisie's club foot is an important detail if it illuminates her character or if she uses it in the climax of the story to kick someone to death. Otherwise, it's filler.

Writers who are frequent readers sometimes describe too much in their stories because they remember vivid details from the novels or stories they've read. What they don't realize is how few of those details came from the author and how many came from them! We inject so much of ourselves in a book that we don't realize how little the author has told us.

Imagine your bedroom or office. Look over all of the objects in that room and choose one or two that define who you are. That would be the important detail to describe that room (and you as a character) in fiction.

The room was lined with bookcases. A model railroad whirred in the background, its miniature locomotive grinding through tiny towns.

We may or may not need to know what books are on the shelves, what color the curtains are, or how the room is illuminated. We need only know that the character reads and enjoys model railroads.

Replace information with action or events that show it.

Look through your work for long passages of description or narration. If the narration is important to the story, write it out. Dramatize it. Make it a scene.

Don't let significant portions of your story take place off camera. Show the dramatic progression of events as much as you can.

Does that mean you should depict every character urination as a scene? No. But you should make sure that you're not passing by an opportunity to reveal something about the character or his situation.

Choose an appropriate setting (time, place).

Your story belongs in a certain time and place. Perhaps the culture of a specific era and location is the only possible incubator for events. Perhaps your characters illustrate the zeitgeist of an era.

Choose the time and place into which your story fits best.

If you take the time to lavishly describe something, it'd better be important.

This is the Chekov's gun issue: if there is a gun hanging over the mantle, someone had better use it before the final act.

Don't confuse or tease your readers with details that aren't important. Don't take a page to describe the migration patterns of geese if they don't play into the story.

The only exception to this rule is the red herring found in mystery stories and novels. Even there, though, it is used sparingly.