Memorize this principle:
| A descriptive passage is the story of a character's encounter with a person, place or thing. |
Description is not a list of details; it's not the passive experience of sitting back and looking at a scene. It's the story of a character's encounter with a person, place or thing.
For example, when you enter a room, what do you do? You look around; your eyes and ears get a first impression, then focus on specifics. The specific details you notice depend on the situation, your general personality, and your current mood. If you're urgently looking for a particular friend, you'll probably ignore most of what's happening in the room. On the other hand, if you're bored and just killing time, you may stop and look around for a while, even if you don't immediately see anything worth your interest.
In writing, a character's frame of mind influences what that character notices. It also influences how the character behaves in response. For example, suppose your viewpoint character enters a room crowded with people. Some VPCs will freeze in the doorway; some will back away and leave; some will stride into the middle of the room and say hello; some will slide along the wall and sit in the back corner; some will stand out of the way and see if they know anyone who's present.
When describing a character entering a room, the story typically consists of:
| Here's the point: you don't describe the room, you relate the story of the character entering the room. You tell what the character sees and what he or she does in response. Different characters will see and do different things. |
Let's look at some examples: an assortment of characters walking into a karate school where a group of teenagers is having a class. Though it won't be obvious, all three of the VPCs are encountering the same scene.
Example 1
I heard the kids long before I reached the door: high-pitched voices shouting, "Hai!" every three seconds. When I peeked inside, I saw it was some kind of kicking drill—the teacher would count, everyone would shout, everyone would kick. Some kids kicked higher and harder than others...a few keen boys tried to outdo each other, and some mousy girls, devoid of makeup, did what they were told because they always did what they were told.
The rest of the class were just dogging it: boys making no effort and girls (with plenty of makeup) doing their best not to work up the tiniest bead of sweat. I watched one girl for a while and wondered how high she could lift her long legs if someone gave her a good reason. When she saw me looking her direction, I swear the little flirt began to kick higher; and somehow the front of her karate robe came loose to show me teasing little flashes of the white cotton sports bra beneath.
Example 2
Like most such schools, it stood in a god-forsaken strip mall: between the U-Brew Beer Shoppe and some out-of-business whole-wheat-and-tofu bistro that used to be called Nature's Bounty.
Typical.
Cheap Sandalwood incense wafted out the school's door as I approached, foreshadowing what I knew I'd see when I stepped inside—tacky little Japanese tzotchkes bought at Samurais 'R Us to give that faux-Ginza flavor all soccer moms appreciate when it's time for little Megan and Justin to learn lethal strikes to the throat. Sure enough, when I stepped gingerly inside (onto a gritty entrance mat that hadn't been vacuumed since the Tokugawa shogunate), my eyes were assaulted by the requisite black-lacquered screens depicting pasty-faced blob-men trying to behead each other, and Laughing-Buddha urns that would have brought the real Gotama Siddhartha to tears. If that wasn't bad enough, the pimply-faced collection of adolescents inside were all wearing badly fitted outfits that I knew were a polyester-dacron blend. I mean, really! The scrappy old fellows who invented karate would have committed seppuku if they ever saw such a travesty. As for me, I closed my eyes and wondered if this was Tokyo's way of getting back at us for Hiroshima.
Example 3
There are two types of dojos: those run to make a lot of money, and those run to make enough money. If you want to make a lot of money, you put up fancy signs, you have big placards advertising enrollment specials, and you mount a shelf of trophies in the front lobby, where potential customers can see that your students win plenty of competitions. If you only want to make enough money—enough to keep the school in business so the owner and his inner circle have a place to train—then you decorate enough to meet the expectations of middle-class wannabes, and you save any excess cash for buying kick shields or focus mitts.
One look at the outside of Black Dragon told me this was an "enough money" school. The sign above the door was neat but not gaudy. The windows had no ads at all—just a small sheet of paper saying VISITS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. That told me there was no receptionist, secretary, anything like that; just the owner, who couldn't fully shut out the public but didn't want to be bothered too much by them.
When I went in, there was a class in progress—the usual thing, a bunch of teenagers hacking around, none of them very good. The instructor at the front of the room was a different story. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-two, Italian- looking, in her forties: maybe an office worker in real life, the sort who'd got to thinking she was a few pounds heavy and looked around for an exercise program that wasn't dominated by clones of Aerobics Barbie. Now it was several years later; she'd only reached her brown belt, but as she led those kids, every single one of her kicks was higher than her own head, with enough strength and focus to shatter a man's jaw.
I smiled. If that's what this school produced in a brown belt, the black belt people would be more than adequate for my purposes.
End of samples. Notice how much characterization is implicit in what each narrator observes—the narrators never describe themselves, but after reading these passages, we know a lot about each one. The first pays attention to which girls do or don't wear makeup; he believes (rightly or wrongly) that one of them is giving him the eye and that she even loosens her top in order to flash him. The second has no interest in the students; all this narrator cares about is the décor. The third seems knowledgeable about martial arts, and is the only one who pays attention to the instructor; we don't know what he's here for, but it probably involves big-time butt-kicking.
Notice also that each character has an attitude toward what is being perceived. They don't just describe what they see; they respond to it emotionally. I exaggerated the responses so they'd be more obvious. Still, these passages aren't too wildly over the top. They demonstrate that descriptions aren't passive lists of details—they're active interplays between a character and an environment.
When I say "active," the actions don't have to be
dramatic. The action of the first character is to stare at
one
of the girls. The second character looks around, then
closes his eyes in horror. The third character focuses on
the
instructor, watches her a few seconds, then smiles. These
aren't big actions, but they're all sufficient to set a
tone that
marks an endpoint for the passage. Each story can now go
on with some new development, having described the
basic setting to the reader's satisfaction.
| Since your VPC determines what you can say in a story, you have to choose a VPC who's suited to the story's needs. This means you pick a character whose knowledge and perceptions make it possible to tell the story through that character's eyes. For example, you probably wouldn't pick the "interior decorator" VPC shown in Example 2 if your story involved significant fights. The interior decorator just doesn't care enough about martial arts to give a sufficient description of a fight scene. |
Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner