Wise Words About Description
For many writers, description is a real stumbling block. Either they offer too little, and fail to create an interesting world for their characters, or they offer too much, and swamp the plot with meaningless detail.
If you’re struggling, I suggest you think about each element of description you provide, and decide whether 
it adds depth to your story. Here’s one way:
I happened to overhear my son’s social studies teacher giving advice about a paper his students are currently working on. The kids are learning about the African slave trade and are assigned to write a few paragraphs from the perspective of a captured man or woman awaiting placement on a slave ship.
The teacher said: “These people are locked up right by the sea. What would they hear? The ocean — they’d hear the ocean while they were chained together, sweaty, dirty and hot. To hear the ocean and not be able to jump into it to get clean and cool off must have been awful. What else would they have heard? Seagulls. Seagulls flying free while they were locked in chains.”
Now, not only does the description of the sounds these captured men and women hear give the reader a real “being there” sense, it dramatically increases the reader’s connection with the plight of the captives.
It was really beautiful advice about how to make description mean something, rather than simply add atmospherics.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Methinks the teacher should have been a writer. But she’s probably chosen the better career: at least she gets a stable wage.
I wish I’d had teachers like her.