Compelling Descriptions are Full of Opinions

One of the biggest challenges of writing a novel is dealing with descriptions.

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Most people get bored reading long descriptions of rooms, or castles, or women’s ball gowns. Most writers are bored writing such descriptions.

This is why many modern writers skip over descriptions entirely. But this can result in a bland world, or a sense that the action is happening in a white room with no furniture.

Our job as writers is to “invoke” the world. So here is my guidance:

When the events of your novel move to any new setting, whether it’s a bedroom, a concert hall, or a battlefield, use the idea of an establishing shot.

This is from film and TV. It’s that wide shot that shows the apartment building on Friends, or the wide panning shot of the Shire in LoTR, taking in the green grass, the little road, and the hills with doors in them.

Simply start your scene with an establishing shot.

So how many words does it take? It can be a sentence, a paragraph, or a page, depending on how you handle it.

And this gets to my second tip:

When you’re writing, get yourself mentally in your character’s point of view. For descriptions of all types, tell the reader what the character notices about the environment. Tell us what the character’s opinion is.

And this is key: setting is opinion.

Example of standard description:

Grandma’s bedroom was square, ten by ten, with a window overlooking a back yard. Jen saw a tree back there, an oak. The walls were red and the bedspread was a garish, neon floral. Grandma had been colorblind, and her stitching had been uneven, and that was before her stroke. The closet door was one of those sliding, folding things, but it was off its track and now hung open on one side. Jen saw clothes on the floor inside. And it stank as if a cat had died in there. Jen left.

Example of setting as opinion.

Jen felt claustrophobic the second she went into the boxy little bedroom. A sinister oak crowded too close to the window, blocking out what little light oozed through the autumn clouds. The crimson walls clashed with the weird floral bedspread. Tulips and daffodils, but stitched in garish neon green and orange. She knew grandma was color-blind, but she could not help but see madness in the embroidered flowers. Her eyes went to the closet, where the folding door hung askew on one side, as if it too had suffered a stroke. Inside, on the floor, lay a wadded nest of old clothes. And from that shadowed maw came the stench of cat pee and decay. Covering her mouth, Jen retreated.

Notice how the second description is longer yet much more compelling. This is because it reveals character through Jen’s opinions. It also reveals more about her grandma. The combined effect is to invoke setting more completely. There is mood and tone and atmosphere. But the primary technique is reporting setting through the opinion of the point of view character.

Practice this skill and you’ll soon discover that establishing your setting helps you understand your character better and helps generate plot ideas.

“Write. Don’t think. Relax.” —Ray Bradbury