Description is usually considered as a part of worldbuilding. This makes sense, because everything in a story is part of the story-world (whether that’s Alpha Centauri Three, modern-day Beijing, or a tiny prehistoric fishing village), and every part of the story-world tells the reader more about what that world is like.
For some writers, this encourages over-building—that is, they get so interested in making up (or researching) every little detail about their story-world that they offer many pages of detail about the furnishings in the mentor’s study (not just what that gold-plated feather pen looks like, but a detailed description of the bird it came from, including the bird’s habitat, life cycle, and mating habits; additional description of how tricky it was to gold-plate an actual feather, who invented the technique, and where it’s done; and of course, the entire two-page story of how the mentor came to own the pen and why it’s important to them…and then on to the next item on the desk, the desk itself, and so on).
Other writers aren’t interested in the world-building so much as they are in the accuracy of the mental picture they want the reader to “see”. These are the writers who give a detailed description of the precise color, pattern, shape, size, and location of everything in the room, from the oriental rug to the rusty paperclip under the couch.
And then there are the writers who throw up their hands in despair because they have no idea what the room looks like and they just want to get on with the scene where the heroine has her first interview with her prospective mentor. These folks frequently have no idea how to figure out what the place looks like. This usually seems to happen because they are focused intently on the plot or on the characters’ interactions and interior reactions/emotions, but sometimes it’s just that the writer is on the far end of the “not-visually-oriented” spectrum.
Left to their own devices, each of these writers can produce work that will please a small but rabidly-devoted following of like-minded readers, and for some of them, that’s enough. Most, however, are looking for a larger audience, and their natural instincts incline them to either too much or too little description. One way around this is to back into it.
Backing into description starts with consciously deciding what to describe. For over-describers, this means setting some upper limits on the type and amount of description. For under-describers, it means surfacing from their viewpoint character’s interiority long enough to provide at least the minimum number of details that will set the scene and allow readers to imagine what’s going on.
The bare minimum of description answers two questions. First, “What does the reader need to know is present in this scene?” Need means anything the characters actually interact with in the course of the action—if they come into a room or go into a house, there has to be a doorway and a room/house. If someone sits down, there’s a chair, a stool, a cushion, a rug, a floor…something they are sitting on. If someone writes something, there’s a pen or pencil; carve something, there’s a knife and something (wood, clay) to carve. If someone is listening under the open window, there has to be a window that is open. And so on.
Second, “Who else is around in this scene and what are they doing?” If the main character is having a huge argument with their boyfriend, readers will read and respond differently if it’s just the two characters fighting, if they’re having a loud altercation in a crowded restaurant, or if they’re arguing in front of two or three good friends who are each supporting different sides. Also, audiences react to whatever is happening…and they, too, are part of “characters who interact with things.”
Writers who over-describe can go through an already-written scene and highlight just the bits that cover what the gold-plated feather pen, the door, the chair, the knife, the audience, etc. actually look like, where they are, and what happens to them. Writers who under-describe can make a list of what each character does and then check that they have something to sit on, write with, carve, etc. and add that in.
(And yes, it can take that kind of conscious attention. I once critiqued a scene involving a formal duel between two major characters in which the writer neglected to describe or even mention the weapons or the presence of anyone but the two duelists, right up until shots were fired and the surgeon was hurrying over. The writer was so busy with the viewpoint character angsting over having to duel a friend that everything else got left out—for all I could tell, it could have been either the shootout at the O.K. Corral or a clandestine midnight meeting between just the two principles, until the seconds and the surgeon suddenly started moving.)
What needs to be described (or at least mentioned as being present) in a scene is the bare minimum of description that under-describers can get away with. Those who have severe problems with getting stuck inside a POV character’s head can sometimes get into the open space outside by asking “What would this person notice?” or “What would catch this person’s attention even though they are walking along head down in their cell phone…er, interior emotions?” or “What weird action or visual would distract them at this moment?”
What needs to be described (or at least mentioned as being present) gives over-describers a foundation to branch out from, if the scene hasn’t already been written. Instead of working around the area, trying to force readers to get the “right” picture or the complete history of every object, the writer can focus on the things that are most relevant, and stick all the other information in a “story notes” or “background” file, to be added back or put in somewhere else if they become relevant to the story. If the viewpoint character has a particular interest or expertise in, say, Han dynasty bronzes, an otherwise-irrelevant Han burial urn on the mantelpiece may catch the POV’s interest and result in a bunch of description and backstory as characterization, both for the viewpoint character and for the character who owns/displays the urn.
Once the writer has decided what to describe, the next step is figuring out how to describe it, which I leave for next week.
One other factor is how much description a story needs. Jane Austen put a lot less description of Regency England in her novels than Georgette Heyer did, because Austen’s (initial) readers were of that time, and could be expected to recognize it.
Raymond Chandler, on the other hand, wrote about contemporary California, with some very telling description to show how such a sunny place could have a dark underbelly.
So, if you’re an under-describer, maybe come up with premises and settings that don’t need a lot of description; for an over-describer, stories on the other end of the scale.
And, in each case, make sure you do the minimum/don’t overdo the maximum.
No one is so non-visually oriented as to not notice being in a sparsely furnished tower room. Etc.
I will also note that the other senses are important in description. How hot/cold is it? Are there any smells?
I note that in “The Eyes of the Sorceress” my heroine was definitely on the non-descriptive side. But I gave enough to set the scene.
In many of my stories, ESP type senses are important.
What I keep worrying about is not making sure that the reader gets it right, but keeping the reader from getting something wrong, and then clinging to the wrong image even after being corrected.
“Ivan is dark-haired, not blond!”
“So who is this dark-haired guy?”
“Ivan!”
“But Ivan is blond…”
or
“Patricia is a captive up high in a castle tower, not below ground in a dungeon!”
“So who is this woman being held captive up in the tower?”
“Patricia!”
“But Patricia is being held below ground in the dungeon…”
Or the May 2, 2018 post on description where the post said:
“I didn’t have to – from what I did say, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn, much later, that one of the regular windows had been replaced with a triangle, or that the door was a hobbit-like round one with a knob in the middle.”
And my immediate response was:
“Er, actually I would be surprised. Without being told that they were different, I’d visualize the door, the window, and the sidewalk as being the same as those of the other houses. I’d count those elements as aspects of the wild house being the “same shape” as the other houses, rather than as part of the decoration that made the wild house different.”
I don’t think of description as being a part of world building, or at least only world building in a sort-of, kind-of way. Describing dragons or horses depends on dragons or horses existing in the world and further on what kind of dragons or horses exist.
But how to describe something, given its existence in the setting, strikes me as an arts and crafts of writing thing, rather than a world building thing.
As Mary alluded to, senses besides sight are importan—and are largely neglected in most modern(?) storytelling. The spicy scent of an old book and the smoky aroma of a campfire, the brush of a gentle breeze and the sting of storm-blown rain, the groan of a settling house timber and the creak of heavy harness… The other senses literally add further dimension and aid in immersion. And they are easy to implement – if one remembers to do so.
There is a scene in my WIP wherein the protagonist goes to sleep in the kitchen of an abandoned ruin and is awakened by the clatter and steamy smells involved in the prepartion of a feast. That was an obvious call to me to use the other senses, but in less-obvious situations I need to forcibly remind myself to use them.
I admit to also finding setting description to be worldbuilding, because if the details included don’t tell us anything about the world (one in which feather pens are actually used and gold-plating them is both feasible and a flex is quite distinct from settings where this is not the case), then I’m certainly not interested in those details.
But I think I mostly find them to be worldbuilding because my chronic issue of ignoring setting description as a thing I ought to have been doing before now led to people having trouble sometimes understanding the world. And interacting with illuminating objects and details of the setting is a much better way to learn about SFF worlds especially without infodumping.
Last time this topic came up, we backed into it via characterization particularly and I found it super helpful to sort out necessary details by what kinds of things does this character notice, especially because I too have a lot of ESP type senses. But even then, favored or unique sense are only one part of the equation: how one presents what is observed, but there’s a chunk of characterization in deciding what the character pays attention to enough to observe.
I tend to ignore scents beyond a handful of really intense ones, simply because I myself can only smell a handful of scents and so tend to forget to mention anything about how something smells. I’m not visually oriented, even though I know just how my characters and settings look. Sometimes it’s really really important to remember to think about stuff through my characters’ eyes, simply because I’m kinesthetic and situationally oblivious much of the time, which doesn’t lend itself well to running on my defaults when it’s time to describe things for other people.
Separately, I find I tend to have to wait a draft or three to sort out what does the reader really need to know to understand the scene (so just write what makes sense to the character on first pass), simply because I write out of order. So if I try to introduce a concept while writing and background it, etc., I frequently end up with that introduction appearing three scenes or chapters after the actual advent of the thing in the final draft. It’s easiest to just layer in explanatory description afterward then speculate on whether this is REALLY going to be the first mention or not.