How to Write Great Description in Your Book, Part 2

​Today I’m going to finish talking about how to write great description in your book. In Part 1 of this double post, I talked about how description provides an anchor point for the reader, sets the pacing, and adds beauty to the text. In this second part, I’ll conclude with the other two things description does and how to use them effectively.
 
(If you’d like to view this post in video format, click here. It’s part of our “Advice from an Editor” series on YouTube.)

​Tied into the beauty I talked about in point three are points four and five, which I’ll sort of talk about together: Description sets the mood and it gives commentary.
 
How you describe things within a book matters. If you’re in an action scene and you say, “I went into a room, and there was a table and a chair and a tea kettle,” that’s boring and it has no real flavor to it. It’s just a list of things. And so, yes, although you’re providing the reader with this information, and you can even do it with all five senses: “There was a chair, and it felt like wood, and it smelled like sawdust, and it sounded like knocking on wood, and it tasted like splinters” [laughs in the video] . . . It’s strange, and it doesn’t give the reader the feeling of being immersed in the world because that’s not how people experience the world.
 
People experience the world through their own personal filters. So if I walked into a neon-lit bar . . . I hate neon. I mean, I hate neon lights. I have very light-sensitive eyes, and there are certain types of lights—fluorescent lights, backlit screens, neon lights—that just mess with my head. And so if I walked into a neon-lit bar, I would have a very different experience of it than someone who absolutely loved bars and spent their time there voluntarily and loved neon. And so by incorporating this into my description, I can very easily help set the tone of the scene and also help give commentary on the perspective of my character. So let’s say my character is like me, someone who doesn’t like neon. In a scene with neon lights, I could say something like “the filthy bar beneath the sickly glow of neon lights.” Or if my character loved neon, I could say something like “the neon lights lent life to the otherwise filthy bar.”
 
Of course, “filthy” in itself gives a lot of commentary. There are different words in the English language that give commentary in different ways. I read a book (one I got by mistake; I thought it was by a different author but I ended up loving it) called The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work. It’s part of a whole series; there’s a lot of the same material in all of them—I’ve read about five in the series now. But one thing the author talks about a lot is sensory language. She says that every person has a different sensory language and primarily sight is the most common, followed by hearing, followed by touch. Under circumstances of extreme stress, people tend to revert to their primary sensory language. So if my sensory language were sight and I were trying to resolve a conflict that was very tense, I might say to this person, “Look, I see what you mean, but . . .” But if my sensory language were hearing, I might say, “I hear where you’re coming from, but . . .” Or if it were touch, “I feel you, man, but . . .” By communicating with the other person in the same sensory language as they have, it helps them feel like they’re coming from the same place and therefore helps the argument to be resolved more quickly. If I come to them with a different sensory language, we’ll be clashing heads more. If one person says, “I just want to be heard” and the other person says, “Yeah, I feel where you’re coming from,” then it’s like they’re speaking two different languages. And because it’s a high-tense situation and they’re both reverting to their primary sensory language, it doesn’t help. (I think mine’s sight, but I’m not sure.)
 
One of the very interesting things the author mentions is that there’s a negative connotation, in U.S. culture at least, to touch sensory language because—depending on who you are, if you’re male or female, young or old—touch may be more or less socially acceptable. Another thing she mentions is that taste and smell metaphors and descriptions tend to be negative. “Something smells fishy in here” or “That leaves a bad taste in my mouth.” Often these are the sorts of things we have, and you can use them as a writer; you can say, “Okay, I want to bring a very negative connotation to this, so I should focus more on the smell and taste of the place.” Although of course you can turn this around.
 
You can also use loaded words like “filthy.” “Filthy” is a much more loaded word than “very dirty” and also a more interesting word. But beyond that, you can use your descriptions in ways that use metaphors to give commentary and your protagonist or your narrator’s opinion on subjects. So instead of using the boring “She had brown eyes,” you could, if you wanted a positive connotation to this, say (but this is a cliché, so don’t actually use it), “She had chocolate eyes.” If you want a negative connotation, you could say, “She had excrement-colored eyes.” Or the word of your choice that means such. This tells you a lot about the person describing the thing, whoever your narrator is, and if it’s a third-person narrator, whoever’s point-of-view it’s from. And it tells you something about that person and their relationship while bringing a sort of beauty and interest to the text. So all these things work together.
 
The one thing you do want to avoid is using the same sort of boring descriptions a lot in a list. I recommend, when writing descriptions, first of all stop and think, “What sense haven’t I used recently?” But also think, “Is this memorable? Do I want to say that Harry Potter has green eyes or that he has bottle-green eyes or emerald-green eyes, or that he has eyes the color of the killing curse? What am I trying to tell my reader here?” Every book is different, every book will require a slightly different balance, but as long as you provide enough description and keep the description interesting enough, it will improve your book vastly.
 
Good luck, everyone.
 
Do you have any other advice, comments, or questions about how to write great description in a book? Leave them in the comments!
 
For more writing tips, check out our Advice from an Editor YouTube series, or this set of blog posts.

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Deborah J. Natelson

Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora and two pretty black kitties. She is the author of Bargaining Power, a smart, twisty fantasy thriller; and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.