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Debunking still more writing advice!

Keep your description minimal

This counts as the one I hate the most because it held me back for a long time. And it’s advice that will not die. As you will see in the later debunking, it also conflicts with other advice.

There’s no particular catchphrase. I’ve seen authors advise minimalist Description, “drips and drabs,” and “Let the reader imagine it.”

First, let’s deal with letting the reader imagine it. This is always applied to Character descriptions. The writers seem to think that the reader will picture themselves as the main character. There are two problems with this thinking.

1. It’s a copout. You’re essentially saying, “It’s my story, but what the character looks like isn’t my problem. I can’t be bothered.” You’re handing control of your characters over to the reader.
2. In Characters Make Your Story by Maren Elwood, she says that if you’re vague about your character descriptions, the reader will refuse to picture the character.

For me as a reader, if the writer doesn’t provide description details, the character stays vague. Sometimes it works if other character elements are solid, like Michael Connelly’s Bosch. But if the characterization isn’t solid, I stop reading or don’t get the second book.

But where does the problem with the description start? Why are writers and experts so insistent that you shouldn’t do much of it?

Because writers do it badly. And the reason for that is how it’s instructed, so it feeds on itself.

I took an online class on writing descriptions. The instructor approached it by assigning exercises to describe settings like a restaurant. We were supposed to use the five senses also.

It might not be obvious, but something is missing: Character.

Good description is filtered through the character’s point of view (and that’s hitting characterization, point of view, setting, and pacicng, just to name a few). Their commentary on what the experience is part of the characterization and can be entertaining.

Which is better?

1, The dining room was made up of booths with vinyl seating. Dirty dishes were left on many of the tables from the breakfast rush. The room smelled like coffee, maple syrup, and bacon.

2. He exhaled at the sudden warmth as he entered the restaurant. Not a dive, but maybe a step above. The vinyl seating had a shabbiness no amount of cleaning could fix. The staff hadn’t yet recovered from breakfast to clear the tables. Still, he decided, that smell of maple and bacon wasn’t half-bad. It’d do. Coffee might be lethal though.

Showing description from the character’s perspective is key to not writing boring descriptions. One of the things I discovered was to hit three items, then come back and hit a few more. Sometimes I had to take a sentence out to adjust the pacing flow. No one teaches this, certainly not with drips and drabs!

“Said is dead.”

This refers to the dialogue tag said. It shows up because writers overuse said. The result tends to veer in one of two directions:

1. Ridiculous dialogue tags that draw attention to themselves. Writers will even collect these on long lists. Yikes!
2. Writers try using actions to show who’s talking instead. This is actually a good decision, but the actions often tend to come off as superficial. More about that momentarily.

Dialogue does need an attribute to the reader who’s talking. There are opinions on whether to use said or not, and both are right. Dean Wesley Smith declares it’s invisible (not entirely true; if you use it after each line of dialogue, it’ll stand out). The late Dave Farland stated it was outdated.

That takes us back to actions using the narrative. Writers have trouble finding attributes that add to the story because they don’t know how to write description. If you establish a setting, your characters can use that as they talk. Think about Law and Order. The show’s writers recognized they had a problem when Lennie and Curtis interviewed a witness: It was too easy for the scene to turn into a bunch of talking heads. So the witness is a driver unloading boxes from his truck as he answers questions. Lennie might look in one of the boxes and make a typical Lennie comment.

Use the description to establish your setting. Then you can use the setting to help with identifying your speakers. You can still use said, asked, etc, but you won’t need to as much.

Eliminate all adverbs

This one is a favorite of the top ten lists. I think it showed up on every single one. It was a common complaint from agents, and may have been popularized by Stephen King. But it’s been around a long time according to Merriam-Webster.

This is typical of the writing that lands it on the top ten lists:

• He shook his fist angrily.
• He ran quickly.

Some writers may also go overboard, using a bland, factual description and adding adverbs to spice it up.

All of this stems from the same problem: the advice to keep description to a minimum. Pretty hard to show a character reacting angrily if you parsing out the description in drips and drabs. The result is that the writer has to rely on adverbs to show what’s going on.

Use more description through the character’s POV and you’ll have no problems with adverbs.

And this sounds like a broken record repeating the same thing again, well…it’s going to get repeated again. The minimalist description approach results in a LOT of related rules because it undercuts so much.

Show Don’t Tell

This one lands on the list because minimalist description causes writers to have problems with show don’t tell. This advice actually refers to a fairly advanced writing skill. Someone, on the quest of being helpful for beginners, boiled it down so simply that it makes the skill hard to even understand. Especially with all the conflicting advice about description.

Dean Wesley Smith calls it depth, though you will find it in many articles in The Writer Magazine during the 1940s and 1950s. Edith Warton writes about it in 1928. This skill shows the reader the setting through the five senses and the opinions/judgments of the characters. You cannot do this with drips and drabs of description.

For example, the typical tell version of showing a character is angry: He waved his fist angrily.

The Depth way: For a moment, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t react. Then fire roared through him, scraping him raw.

If you’re having trouble showing emotions, do more description.

Description was the hardest thing for me to learn. I’d heard the drips and drabs everywhere and dutifully did it, getting boring writing. I feared doing too much because we’re taught at the beginner level to fear it. When I discovered I needed more, I had to keep reminding myself to add more description. It also horrified me because everyone advocates a minimalist approach and this was a lot!

The problem with the sound-byte writing advice is that it only teaches not to do something, not how to do it correctly.