In my own writing, I don’t usually work with a large cast of characters. I like simple stories that are more or less stripped down to their bare essentials. Whenever I write a scene that has more than two characters, I tend to get worried about whether or not everyone is getting equal billing.
Has the third wheel gotten enough lines? Do they even have anything to add at this point? Will the reader wonder where they’ve gone if I don’t mention them soon? It’s a point of stress for me that I try to avoid whenever I can.
That being said, I see absolutely no reason I can’t offer you advice on the topic. Just think about it like someone with agoraphobia giving you tips on how to enjoy the great outdoors. At the very least, it could be entertaining. And, really, what else do you have to do for the next five minutes?
(Most likely the answer is a lot of other things, but for now let’s pretend your schedule’s wide open.) So buckle up. Here we go.
I’ve already blogged here and elsewhere about my difficulty writing description. My prose tends to be terse and action-oriented, much like the television, movies, and comic books that have influenced my work. I think in pictures, and write only what needs to be shown.
This was not always the case.
Back in college, the most baffling comment I ever received from an instructor was to “show, don’t tell.” I had no idea what this meant. I assumed that it meant that I needed more description, but I discovered it was really more than that. It was about setting the scene and putting the reader there with my character.
It’s one thing to say, “There was someone in my apartment.” That’s telling. It’s quite another thing to show the scene. In order to show the reader what was happening, I had to learn to write on a different level.
It's a sunset. Everybody already knows what it looks like.
Sometimes a scene springs from me fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead. And sometimes, every word has to be squeezed from my neurons like the last bit of toothpaste at the bottom of the tube.
What’s the difference?
It took me awhile to figure it out, but descriptions bore the living hell out of me. Some scenes require more narrative than others. You can’t tell a story at a constant breakneck speed. The characters need to breathe. The reader needs to breathe. The writer needs to breathe. So, sometimes the pace does require something to slow it down. Still, I find those scenes difficult to write.
The best scenes for me, the ones that are easiest to write, start in the middle of something already in progress. This is especially true with first scenes in a novel. My first book starts with my main character hovering around a corner, clutching a toilet brush as a weapon, and about to jump out at an intruder at her kitchen table. The second in the series starts in her swimming pool. She’s covered in blood and mucous and has both arms shoved up inside the birth canal of a sea serpent. Book one of my new djinn series starts off with my main character dressed as a pirate waitress, getting ready to set a customer on fire because his hand is on her ass.
I suppose all of those things require some description to set everything up, but when something really interesting is going on, nobody cares what every character is wearing or what the wall sconces look like. I prefer to spatter description in between other things rather than lose momentum by taking up several paragraphs as an aside.
But this is coming from somebody who tends to under-write and fill in the gaps later, rather than write extra to be deleted later.
In the slower scenes, I get bored. I meander. I let my characters ruminate on the color of their coffee mugs. I let them contemplate their navels, discussing the pros and cons of innies versus outies.
So, how do I know what to describe and what to leave out? I look for the holes later and fill them in. What gets told and what gets shown? In a great scene full of action, show it all. If a description is necessary to fill in the scene, character interaction with the environment or dialogue does a better job than straight description.
But what do I know? I have a main character who’s known for her quirky style and bizarre outfits. Number of descriptions of these outfits in book two? Zero. Completely forgot to describe them.
If there’s one failing to my writing it’s probably a lack of description. This isn’t to say that I don’t include any description. I do. But when it comes to including long, laborious passages about the moss-covered flagstones or the texture of the fabric in a character’s clothes, I tend to ignore it and move on.
For me, the story is the thing. So I prefer to write about the action and let the reader fill in the details with his/her imagination.
Personally, I blame this tendency on the game developer Infocom.
Back in the 1980s, when personal computers were little more than suped-up pocket calculators, the great game designers at Infocom put out a series of video games based on the Great Underground Empire known as Zork. Go ahead, Google it. I’ll wait. … You’re back? Okay.
Unlike the early arcade games and Atari console offerings, Zork was a text adventure. No pictures, just words. And the descriptions in the game were utilitarian, to say the least. If the game said the room included a table, you’d better believe there’s something on the table. A lamp? You’d better take it. Chances are you’ll need it later.
