Writing descriptions has never come naturally to me. My first drafts are very scant on any sort of description, and I have to work hard in edits to fill in those gaps.

Stephen King has a great quote about description: “The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.”

The advice is simple, but it’s not easy.

How do we clearly see so we can clearly describe? I’m going to go about it backward and start with a few principles for clear writing as it relates to description.

Know what kind of writer you are.

In the 12 years that I’ve been running GoTeenWriters.com, I’ve had a lot of exposure to untrained writers, and I’ve noticed they tend to fall into one of two categories in regards to description:

Description bog: The prose has way too much description. The story pacing is slow because the writer keeps pausing to describe everything.

Green screen: This is me! Green screen writers tend to have lots of dialogue or action beats, but the characters are like talking heads in front of a green screen. The reader has no clue where these conversations are taking place.

There’s nothing wrong with having description bogs or green screens in a first draft, but our goal in edits should be to get our prose to that balance, where our readers can see the scene but we keep up the pacing.

Consider your genre.

This is obvious, but a blog article or flash fiction piece has different description needs than epic fantasy or a meaty biography. Readers come into those various mediums with different expectations and needs.

But not all genres are as obviously different as epic fantasy and a blog post. What about a contemporary piece versus a historical? Or a middle grade book versus a young adult book? It’s not always obvious how much you “should” describe. And the level of description necessary also depends on where you are in the book. Chapter one likely requires more world building details than chapter seventeen.

I can’t really offer you rules on how to do this. There’s no “always use two sentences to describe new characters after chapter ten” type of advice that I can hand out. (Wouldn’t it be great if there was?) The best way to get a feel for this is to read a lot in your genre and pay attention to feedback from your critique partners.

Ask, “What matters most?”

We always want to be intentional with the details we give our readers. I love how much description is packed into this one sentence from Susan May Warren’s Finding Stefanie. 

“…the entire two-bedroom house had become accidentally retro, with its green shag carpet and yellow cupboards and counters.”

That’s a great description, isn’t it? The phrase “accidentally retro” tells us so much. And then Warren gives us a sprinkling of intentional details without slowing the pacing to describe the whole house. Maybe the author imagines avocado appliances while we see goldenrod, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that she gives us enough concrete details to cause more to bloom in our mind.

Use specific nouns and verbs.

While there’s nothing wrong with sentences like, “I stepped outside. The warm air smelled like summer.” It’s much more interesting to write, “I stepped onto my front porch, into heavy air scented with chlorine and fresh grass clippings.”

Even though in that example, getting specific meant adding words, that’s not always true. Instead of walking quickly to the door, your character can race or scurry. Instead of picking a pretty flower, your character can pick a daisy. 

Adjectives and adverbs definitely have their roles to fill, but pushing ourselves to use specific nouns and verbs is a great way to elevate a description without adding a lot of fluff. 

Be mindful of the tone you want.

Descriptions set a tone, so it’s important to pay attention to how you’re describing actions. Let’s take something basic like a door opening and light coming into a room. 

If I’m describing something scary or suspenseful, I could write, “The door creaked open and light stabbed the darkness.” That has a more suspenseful feel to it than, “The door eased open and sunlight filtered into the room.” I’m describing the same basic action—door opens, light turns on— but with a very different tone.

The nonfiction book, Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee, opens like this:

“In the late fall of 2000, a crew of painters covered a historic building in Tirana, Albania with vibrant orange paint. A shade between tangerine and Tang swallowed up the old facade, spreading over stone and cement indiscriminately, sparing only windows. The painting began in the morning, and by midday a crowd of onlookers had massed, gaping in the street.”

This chapter is about the principle of energy in the context of decorating, and I think she nails the tone. There are so many energetic words in these sentences: the description of the color as vibrant, the image of the paint swallowing up the old building, and a crowd of gaping onlookers.

Be picky about descriptive pauses.

There are definitely times when the reader needs the action to pause so they can get a big sweeping description of something, as if we’re writing an establishing shot in a movie. But it’s not that often. We only want to write in descriptive pauses when it’s something really important for the reader to see.

Again, it goes back to what matters most and relying on a few interesting details to do the heavy lifting for you. Here is a longer form, pause-the-story type description from The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater that’s exceptionally well done:

And then I see him. A dark-haired boy who is made of all corners. He is standing next in line by the counter, silent and still in his blue-black jacket, his arms folded across his chest. He looks out of place and wild in here: expression sharp, collar turned up against the back of his neck, hair still windblown from the beach. He is not looking at anyone or away from anyone; he’s just standing there looking at the ground, his mind obviously far, far away from the butcher’s. Everyone else is being crowded or jostled, but no one crowds or jostles him, though they don’t seem to avoid him, either. It’s like he’s just not in the same place as the rest of us.

This is a great use of a pause and describe. This is a character who’s very important and the time Stiefvater takes to describe him signals that to us. Also, the details she picks teach us about both the character who is being described and the setting. We don’t get eye color, build, or much about his wardrobe, but we’re still getting a mental picture of this boy who is made up of all corners.

Lastly, use ALL senses when you describe.

In my first drafts, the senses I describe are largely what my character can see or hear.

When I edit, I have to really slow myself down and think about the other senses. This is when I work on clearly seeing, like Stephen King describes. I close my eyes. I imagine myself in the scene, and I think through, “What can I see? What can I feel? What can I hear? What can I taste? What can I smell?”

Sometimes I will make a literal list or find pictures online. We experience the world through our senses and that’s how our readers engage with our stories too.

Do you enjoy writing description?

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.