Description

Description. It’s one of the most important parts of good writing, to be able to describe something in a way that lets your readers see, hear, taste, smell and feel it.

Did you notice that I used all our senses in that last sentence? That’s because we perceive the world with all our senses, not just our sight. So good descriptions don’t simply rely on what something looks like; when other senses matter, and they often do, a good description uses those, too.

Take an object from your desk, maybe a pencil, a piece of paper, or a book. Perhaps glue, a ruler, or a stick of gum you have stashed away. Look at it. Smell it. Feel it. Bang it or crumple it or see what other kind of sound you can make with it. Taste it.

Now, write about that object, using as many senses as fit. Use words to give someone else a sensory experience of that object. Maybe your book didn’t taste like anything, so you’ll leave taste out. But books have a smell as well as color and size. They have weight, too, and the covers are smooth and satiny or some covers are a bit rough. The pages are rough or smooth, too. Some books, especially old books, have a musty smell. Write about all that.

Now go back through your description. Have you used lots and lots of adjectives? When adjectives are piled on, they begin to lose their power. See if you can choose no more than one adjective for each noun in your sentence and still give us a clear, strong picture of the object you are describing. If sometimes you find you are certain that more than one adjective is necessary, that’s fine. But weigh each one to see if you are just piling on or if each one tells us something important, something that we need to know to experience the object you are holding.

Finally, hold the object and ask yourself, if this object were in a story I was writing, what is the most important thing I would want the reader to know about it? That the pencil is very sharp, so sharp it could hurt someone? That the ruler makes a loud sound when it slaps against the desk? That the stick of gum, though it’s old and brittle, still has a spicy smell?

Describe your object again, but this time choose just one sense, the one that seems most important for your readers to be able to experience this object, and describe it with that one sense.

If you were reading a story and came across your description of your pencil, your ruler, your stick of gum, would you pay attention? Would the object seem real to you?

That’s what writers do. Using only words, we make the world on the page come alive.