This year the CRAFT OF WRITING blog is focusing on Aspects of the Novel, such as Plot, Dialogue, Characterization, etc. We’ve had some great discussions so far, including James Scott Bell on Voice, DiAnn Mills on Plotting, Debbie Burke on Antagonists, Randy Ingermanson on Scenes, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi on Emotion, Larry Leech on Dialogue, Terry Odell on Deep Point of View, Sue Coletta on the Anti-hero, and DiAnn Mills on Christian Romance. If you missed any of these, go to kaydibianca.com/blog and choose the post you want to revisit.

I’m excited to welcome back P.J. Parrish, the award-winning author of the Louis Kincaid thriller series. For those of you who don’t know, P.J. Parrish is the pseudonym of the writing team of sisters Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols. (You can read more about these exceptional sisters in the author bio below.) Kristy is a fellow contributor to the Kill Zone Blog, and she is my guest today on the topic of Description.

So get your pen ready for a Master class on Description.

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So join the conversation and earn a chance to win. I’ll post the name of the winner after 9 PM Central Time tomorrow night, so be sure to check back to see if you won. (Previous 2024 winners are not eligible to win.)

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Welcome back to the Craft of Writing blog, Kristy, and thank you for joining us!

How would you define descriptive writing?

Wow. That’s a toughie. Well, let’s start with a distinction. There’s explanation and then there’s description. Explanation is you, the writer, just dealing with the prosaic stuff of moving characters around in time and space. Explanation example: The man walked into the room. Simple choregraphy. Gets the job done but pushes no emotional buttons.

But description? That’s where the magic happens. When you work your descriptive powers, you engage the reader’s senses and imagination, maybe tugging on their memories and experiences. The man didn’t just walk into the room.  Rewrite:

The old man stopped just inside the door of the café. He was in his eighties, that much was clear. But as he stood there, erect and with a small smile tipping his lips, heads turned to him. It wasn’t just the panama hat or the seersucker suit. Because the hat was yellowed and his sleeves were frayed. No, we were staring at him because the air around him seemed to vibrate with an aliveness. He caught my eye and started toward me, and my throat closed. It was like looking at my father, the one I had seen only in photographs.

See the difference? The main purpose of descriptive writing is to show the reader a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in their mind. It means paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses. Explanation vs description. When you explain something, you try to make it clearer and easier to understand. But when you describe, you’re tugging on their emotions.

When should an author include a descriptive section of their book?

Not as often as some might think. Use it sparingly and carefully. It is powerful stuff, a spice to be added to the main ingredients of plot and narrative only to enhance. (I love to cook so pardon the metaphors here!). Too much description, or used too often, and you’ll stall the forward momentum of your narration. You have to keep the story always moving forward. But one of the most common issues I see when doing manuscript critiques is writers not using enough description in the right moments. You have to ground your readers in a sense of place, time, geography and especially character. You have to “world build.” BUT…pick your moments. Be aware of pacing. Save description for the quiet sections of your narrative, those moments when you want the reader to catch their breath. One of worst mistakes I see is tons of description in intense action scenes – stuff like “shards of glittering glass fell around him as he was pushed out of the ten-story window of the gleaming white skyscraper toward the rain-shimmering street below.”  Nope. This is when you use simple explanation: The window shattered and he fell out into the blackness, flailing and screaming.

Should description and action be alternated in fiction? How does that work?

See above! Seriously, again it goes to understanding the difference between explanation, which is utilitarian, and description, which is emotional enhancement. There is nothing wrong with good clean expository (explaining) writing.

Example: The phone rang, jarring her awake. She grabbed it and before she could answer the voice said: “You better be sober. We’ve got another body.”

What you don’t want is description at an inappropriate moment in action:

“The shrill chirp of her iphone penetrated her nightmare and she felt herself drift back to consciousness. She grabbed the cell, almost knocking over the empty bottle of Jack on the nighstand. “Hello,” she croaked. It was all she could manage given her hangover. “Dectective Morris? This is Chief Spencer. We found a new body.”

Ugh, right? And an aside about showing not telling: See how I slipped it in the bit about her being a drinker? In dialogue, not in description. Pick your moments!

One more example. This is from the great thriller movie Seven, where Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are detectives chasing a serial killer. I made this up, just to make a point. They are entering the creepy house where the killer has left a body. Here is simple explanation:

They entered the room. Bare bones furniture overlaid with dust. A quick scan told them it was empty, no sign anyone had lived in the place for a long time. Another dead end.

Yeah, it works. But here is same scene description-enhanced:

John opened the door and walked into the room. The smell hit him — decaying flesh but with a weird undernote of…what was that? Pine trees? The pale December light seeped around the edges of yellowed window shades and at first he couldn’t make out anything. Then details swam into focus — an old coiled bed frame heaped with dirty blankets. And suspended above the bed, hundreds of slips of paper. No, not just paper. Little paper Christmas trees. No, not…then he recognized the pine smell. It was coming from the air fresheners, those things people hung on their rearview mirrors. The heap of blankets on the bed…he moved closer. It was a body. Or what was left of one.

How long should descriptive passages be?

As short as possible. I know, that’s a cop-out answer. But it goes to pacing and somewhat to style. If you are in a quiet moment, your reader won’t mind slowing down and letting you give them the lay of the land or show what a character looks like. But the tighter you can make it and still convey enough info, the better you will be. Be brief, memorable and then get out. (Which is a good advice for a lot things in real life.)

But…every writer is working in their own genre and, most important, every writer has their own style. I got my start in romance, some of it historical, and man, I revelled in description. But when I turned to crime fiction, I reeled in those instincts. My descriptive style is, even now, more lavish than many in our genre. But I never forget: Description should always be in the service of plot and character development. It is the Bordeaux, bay leaf, garlic and thyme – the lovely additions that turn plain old beef into boeuf bourguignon.

Are there common mistakes and pitfalls authors should avoid?

1. Not enough description to place us in time and space early in the story. Yes, you need a spiffy opening and you never want to lard on too much description too early. But a few well chosen sentences whet our appetite.
2. Look, I know description is hard. Because it has to be fresh. I don’t subscribe to the idea that you can’t use weather, but boy, it better be original. Metaphors are lovely, but they have to feel easy – even if you kill yourself coming up with one.
3. Not filtering description through the point of view of your narrator. ALWAYS consider the emotional and experience prism of WHO the description is coming through. If your narrator is a teenager, you must limit your descrption through his limited consciousness. If your narrator is an elderly woman, her way of seeing the world will be different from that of a hardened homicide detective. You MUST get in the brain and emotions of your POV person. And here’s the thing: That narrator is NOT you. There is nothing that pulls a reader out of a scene faster than you, the writer, telling us what you are describing. And there is nothing that bonds a reader more tightly with a story than experiencing (describing) what is happening through your character’s frame of reference.
4. Using only the sense of sight. What do you think of when you remember someone? I remember the scent of my mom’s Evening in Paris perfume and the candy-cane smell of her dime-store red lipstick. Smell is so powerful. And sound? Any one of you can remember what song was playing at a certain special moment of your life. Or what a seagull’s screech sounds like. Dig deeper when you try to evoke an image in your reader’s mind.
5. Not describing logically. This is hard to explain but important. Example: Your character is entering a long-closed room in an old mansion where her sick grandmother recently died, sitting in her favorite chair by the fireplace. The girl opens the door. You must describe it in LOGICAL ORDER of how it hits all of her senses. It’s probably dark. I think she first smells something. Mustiness? The soot of the dead fireplace? A dank smell of unchanged bedding? A lingering disinfectant-medicine smell? What does she hear? The tap-tap-tap of a wintery branch on a window? A murmur of voices somewhere else in the house, maybe her grandmother’s viewing? What she SEES would logically come last. Unless you, as the writer, were foolish enough to turn on the light first and leach out all tension. Okay, she finally turns on a light. What is next, LOGICALLY, in your description? I’d give a quick overview of the room that suggests it hasn’t changed since the granddaughter was last there twenty years ago. Why is that important? It establishes a plot point and says something about the characters’ relationship without you TELLING US that Joan hadn’t visited her grandma in twenty years. Through description: Show don’t tell. The girl advances into the room and you logically reveal more details. The last thing she sees is the chair. Why? Because it’s emotionally connective. The chair still bears the imprint of her grandmother’s small body. And there is a footstool off to the side, the very one where the girl sat when her grandmother read to her when she was six. Always save your best descriptive item for last.

Can you give us examples of descriptions you admire?

Oh geez, I can’t think of any off the top of my noggin. It does make me think of another point though. Always look for the “telling detail.” This is a small but important descriptive element that uniquely and quickly speaks volumes about a person or place. I can’t recall which book but I remember Michael Connelly’s use of this. One of his cops is very laconic, always laid back and seemingly unflappable. Yet Connelly has someone notice that the tips of his glasses stems are gnawed down to nubs. Inner turmoil. The man is trying to devour his demons.

I also admire Joyce Carol Oates. Sometimes she really goes short on description. Other times she, well, goes to town. I like how she uses smell to open her description of the one-room schoolhouse she attended as a child in rural New York:

Inside, the school smelled smartly of varnish and wood smoke from the potbellied stove. On gloomy days, not unknown in upstate New York in this region south of Lake Ontario and east of Lake Erie, the windows emitted a vague, gauzy light, not much reinforced by ceiling lights. We squinted at the blackboard, that seemed far away since it was on a small platform, where Mrs. Dietz’s desk was also positioned, at the front, left of the room. We sat in rows of seats, smallest at the front, largest at the rear, attached at their bases by metal runners, like a toboggan; the wood of these desks seemed beautiful to me, smooth and of the red-burnished hue of horse chestnuts. The floor was bare wooden planks. An American flag hung limply at the far left of the blackboard and above the blackboard, running across the front of the room, designed to draw our eyes to it avidly, worshipfully, were paper squares showing that beautifully shaped script known as Parker Penmanship.

So, Oates is leading the reader into the room. Note the PROGRESSION of senses: First, you smell varnish and wood smoke. Next, you become aware of the quality of the light — gauzy from the windows and ceiling lights. Only then does Oates move to sight, and even then we have to squint to bring the scene into focus. Take note, too, of the small telling details she uses that make us build an image-painting of this room in our imaginations — desks in a row like a toboggan, old wood like horse chestnuts, and the one I love because I can remember it — paper squares of perfect Parker.

Can you share an excerpt from one of your books?

It is from Paint It Black. The set up: An FBI agent has been kidnapped and held by the killer:

Blackness. She was floating up from the blackness to consciousness. She opened her eyes. Dark. She gave a terrified jerk.

The thing — it was the thing covering her face. The cloth was still there. She could smell its musky odor, and when she drew in a breath, the roughness touched her lips.

She became aware of a sharp throbbing in her head, and a faint nausea boiling in her stomach. Her heart was pounding.

Think…think! Calm down. Use your head, use your senses.

She tried to move her arms. They were bound at the wrist, palms up. She could feel the hard wood of the chair. She strained to hear something or someone.

Nothing. Just water lapping and a soft groaning sound. Pilings? The air was still and smelled of mildew and fish. And old building of some kind near the docks? Was she still near the wharf? Something kicked on…like a motor, faint.

She tried to stay calm, tried to quiet the pounding of the blood in her ears so she could hear better. Nothing. No cars, no voices. Just the droning motor sound. It stopped and it was quiet again, except for the lapping water.

The floor creaked. She jumped.

I tried with this, not to tell you she was tied up with a bag over her head and left in a fishing hut. It is all filtered through her senses and revealed in logical order of awareness.

What authors do you think handle description very well?

Again, so many. But nothing that jumps out at me at this moment. And all my books are down in my Tallahassee house, so I can’t even cheat.

I do remember this one from Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Mainly because it splendidly makes the last point I want to stress.

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Description isn’t something you add to slow the pace, or God forbid, to show off and try to be writerly. If you’re not James Lee Burke, don’t try to be. Be yourself. But remember that all good description is deeply intwined with character. (Doesn’t it always come down to character?)  When you think of Wuthering Heights — or Emily Brontë for that matter — you always think of the moors. That wild, desolate landscape. That brooding darkness and expansive seductive freedom. The moors – as Brontë so vividly described – are Heathcliff.

Where can we find out more about you and your writing?

Well, we’re semi-retired from novel writing now, but all our books, with excerpts and such can still be found at our website PJPARRISH.COM.

But of course, you can find me, along with Kay and my thriller writers, at KillZoneblog.com where we talk about description and all other fun craft things. Thanks for having me, Kay. And thanks for dropping by, crime dogs.

Thank you, Kristy, for being with us today.

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Meet Kristy Montee (P.J. Parrish)

P.J. Parrish is actually two sisters, Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols. Their books have appeared on both the New York Times and USA Today best seller lists. The series has garnered 11 major crime-fiction awards, and an Edgar® nomination. Parrish has won two Shamus awards, one Anthony and one International Thriller competition. Her books have been published throughout Europe and Asia. Parrish’s short stories have also appeared in many anthologies, including two published by Mystery Writers of America, edited by Harlan Coben and the late Stuart Kaminsky. Their stories have also appeared in Akashic Books acclaimed Detroit Noir, and in Ellery Queen Magazine. Most recently, they contributed an essay to a special edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s works edited by Michael Connelly.