Implicit description

So far, I’ve been mostly talking about the standard lump-of-description—the “descriptive paragraph” that many of us got assigned to write in middle school, the sort of thing that Deep Lurker summed up as something that needs cutting back to an amount most people want to read.

Today I’m going to go into the other method, which is personalized or implicit description. In first-person or tight-third person, this is tied to the way the viewpoint character experiences and reacts to the person, place, or thing being described over time.

This means that most of the time, unless the viewpoint character is Sherlock Holmes (consciously noticing and evaluating everything all the time), there aren’t a lot of standard descriptive paragraphs. Implicit description usually takes more words than a lump-of-description, but it’s also often both more memorable and more informative.

It’s easier to show by example.

A standard lump-of-description might be something like this:

“The ballroom door thudded closed behind him. Gregory looked around. The long, narrow room was already occupied by some twenty guests in their finest daywear.  Late afternoon sunlight still shone through the high clerestory windows, but a forest of free-standing candelabras had already been set out and filled with beeswax candles against the coming night. Two large stone fireplaces in the long outer wall barely took the edge off the winter chill. The servants had waxed and polished the marble floor to a high shine, and laid a table at one end of the room with enough glazed fruit, scones, and finger sandwiches to hold the early arrivals until it was time to change for supper.”

As lump-of-descriptions go, the above is readable, but probably not terribly memorable. It also brings everything to a dead stop as Gregory looks around and sees everything, but neither does anything nor reacts to anything he sees. So instead of having him stop just inside the doorway to describe the room, let’s put him in motion:

“The ballroom door thudded closed behind him. Gregory took a step, and slipped on the polished marble. Damn, I forgot to chalk the soles of my shoes! He caught his balance and looked up to see if anyone had noticed.

Fortunately, the other early arrivals were clustered about halfway along the room, watching with ill-concealed eagerness as the servants laid out scones, glazed fruit, and finger sandwiches on a long table. Gregory smiled. He’d been so intent on arriving on time that he hadn’t stopped for lunch. This was no feast, but it would hold them all for a few hours, until it was time to change for supper.

He started carefully forward, concentrating on not slipping. Five steps later, he bumped into one of the free-standing candelabras that had been set out against the coming night. He caught it before it tipped over, but one of the beeswax candles tilted drunkenly, half out of its holder. This is not my day. At least the candles aren’t lit yet.

“Are you all right?”

The quiet question made him whirl, and he almost lost his balance again. When he recovered, he found himself looking down at a dark-haired young woman wearing an enormous red shawl and a skeptical expression. “I am quite well,” he told her in a repressive tone.

The skeptical expression deepened, and she sniffed. “You don’t smell of liquor,” she said. “That leaves two possibilities—you were practicing ice skating in preparation for tomorrow’s party, or you’re just clumsy.” She paused. “Don’t stand under the clerestory windows. Ice collects on their edges in this weather, and the fires have been lit for long enough to melt it. The drips run down the wall and make the floor even slipperier.”

Most of the details about the ballroom are the same in both descriptions. The particular details don’t just paint a picture of the ballroom; they also imply some things about the world (it’s pre-central heating and pre-electric lighting) and the social level of the characters we’re watching (guests at a ball, beeswax candles, and servants setting up food all imply wealth in a pre-electric-lighting era).

But the second version does more than provide details about the ballroom. The viewpoint character is moving through the place that I’m describing; the polished floor and candelabras get mentioned when, and only when, Gregory interacts with them. He doesn’t get to the snack table in this scene, but he reacts when he sees it—he heads toward it because he’s hungry. And in addition to a few key details about the room, we learn more about Gregory (he does seem rather clumsy, he was in a hurry to get here, and now he’s a bit nervous and perhaps a little defensive about being here, meeting these people, and making a good impression).

Furthermore, many of the things and all of the people in the first lump-of-description are static. The guests are in the room, but aren’t doing anything; the candles, candelabras, floor, and snack table all just sit there. It’s a still photograph. In the second version, the guests are waiting and watching; there are servants present and actually doing something (as opposed to having polished the floor, set out the food, and then vanished, long before anyone else arrived); the candelabra gets bumped, wobbles, and nearly loses one of its candles; the table and food are in the middle of being set out. Even the fireplaces and the windows are more active. Gregory, the POV, is much more present (slipping on the floor, bumping the candelabra, eyeing the guests warily and the food hungrily, and stumbling into a conversation with another guest, who is not only interesting but who also provides more details about the room (the warning about the dripping water making the floor slipperier). Note that the guest is getting the same as-it-comes-up description as the ballroom–Gregory hears her “quiet voice” first; looks down at her (she’s shorter than he is); and consciously notices only her three most obvious “descriptive” characteristics: she has dark hair, a huge red shawl, and most important (to Gregory), she’s giving him a skeptical look, which puts him on the defensive. Going into more detail here about her appearance doesn’t make sense. That’ll come later, as Gregory interacts with her more.

Finally, spreading out the descriptive details over a couple of paragraphs allows more room for Gregory’s reactions (I forgot to chalk my shoes, smiling at the food because he forgot to eat lunch, This is not my day), which makes the details easier to absorb and remember. And this method greatly reduces the writerly inclination to spend several dense paragraphs or pages attempting to “paint a picture in words” even if most of the details in the picture are not important to the story’s atmosphere, plot, background, mood, etc.