[Tipster] How to Write Memorable Descriptions

In this Tipster, we instruct you on how to write memorable descriptions.

Every form of writing includes at least some form of description.

Too much description - and you slow down and bore the reader. There's nothing worse as a reader than slogging through lengthy and dreary descriptions of people, places, or things.

Too little description, though, and your story has no context. Your characters are flat, one dimensional, lifeless.

Descriptive writing paints a picture for the reader.

Two Examples of Description

In an article for Time magazine, John McPhee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, once described Woody Allen, the American filmmaker, actor, and comedian as:

" ... a flatheaded, redheaded lemur with closely bitten fingernails and a sports jacket."

What makes McPhee's description so powerful is that it shows his disdain for him.

Here's another from Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm. She has just observed a moth fly into a candle:

"A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled, and fried in a second."

How to Write Memorable Descriptions

To write descriptions like John McPhee and Annie Dillard requires at least two distinct processes:

1. Observation.

Writers see what others don't or can't.

McPhee took in everything about Woody Allen on the day of the interview. My guess is that his notes from the interview had simple descriptions: the color of his hair, his stature, the color of his pants and sports coat, etc.

By the way, McPhee is a stickler about taking meticulous notes - and never trusting your memory from an interview.

Observation is first, but it's not enough.

2. Tinkering

This is the hardest work.

You have to enter the struggle for a fresh way to describe something. It's so easy to default to clichés or what immediately comes to mind.

I doubt Dillard came up with "flamed, frazzled, and fried" in her first draft.

My bet is that she fiddled with that sentence for hours. For merely one sentence. She tinkered.

Great writing is often painstakingly slow writing. Tinkering is the craft of writing, if you want to be original.

Your Assignment

Identify one or two sentences that describes a character or scene in one of your chapters.

And then begin to tinker with it.

Google synonyms and antonyms of some of the words. Rewrite it. And fiddle with the sentence for a while. Invert it. Shorten it. Lengthen it. Add to it. Delete from it.

Maybe even attempt three "f" adjectives like Dillard's "flamed, frazzled, and fried."

Now, buckle up and tinker!