Like a novelist, a nonfiction writer can engage the reader’s imagination through the use of the five senses. ☐ Vivid details enhance the reader’s understanding and highlight key points. We usually think of this kind of detail as being visual. The shape of someone’s eyeglasses, the colors of the flowers …
Tag: Description
Vivid word choices enhance detail
A portrait painter works in large tonal blocks first, light and dark, before adding detail. As writers, we can do the same, focusing on the big-picture elements as we write and do our developmental edit. But now we are down to line editing, adding the details that will make the …
Engage all the senses in your novel
I used to have a critique partner who was really good about examining each scene for the sensory details that were missing. For example, when a couple of characters walked into a kitchen where a woman was cooking, and I hadn’t thought to describe the smells. ☐ All senses are …
Know your genre’s standards for description
One of the main reasons we must read other writers in our genre is that we must know what is usual. Readers of a particular genre come to it with a set of expectations. You may tweak those expectations to make your work unique, but if you violate genre expectations …
Avoid extraneous details in your fiction
Part of achieving balance in your descriptions is managing the details. While on the one hand it’s possible to give the reader sensory deprivation by not providing enough details, on the other hand you can give the reader sensory overload by including too many details, especially if they are the …
Details embed the reader in your storyworld
One of the most difficult aspects of novel-writing is finding the right balance between providing enough description to create an image of the storyworld in your reader’s imagination, and providing so much that the story is bogged down and ceases to move forward. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact …
Use similes and metaphors to aid description
Several years ago, Margie Lawson taught a workshop put on by the Florida Writers Foundation in advance of the annual Florida Writers Association Conference. Margie teaches about the need to delve deep into character emotion to reach readers. When, at the end of the course, she asked what most struck …
Give richer descriptions of important things
One key to having an appropriate amount of description in your story is proportion. The amount of time you spend describing an object should be relative to its story purpose. ☐ Settings and objects are described in proportion to their importance. It’s easy to spend lots of time describing the …
Use description to engage the reader
Description is a necessary element of fiction, but people differ greatly on how much is enough and how much is too much. When you show your draft to critique partners and beta readers, you may get wildly different evaluations about how you’re doing on this point. I recently finished the …
Ground Your Readers in the Setting
Setting may not be the most important aspect of a novel, but it is critical to a great reader experience. Some genres are almost entirely defined by their settings. Regency romances are set in England during the early 1800s. Westerns are usually set west of the Mississippi in the late …