How to write descriptively Nalo Hopkinson
We read fiction for many reasons.
To be entertained,
to find out who done it,
to travel to strange, new planets,
to be scared,
to laugh,
to cry,
to think,
to feel,
to be so absorbed that for a while
we forget where we are.
So, how about writing fiction?
How do you suck your readers
into your stories?
With an exciting plot? Maybe.
Fascinating characters? Probably.
Beautiful language? Perhaps.
“Billie’s legs are noodles. The ends of
her hair are poison needles.
Her tongue is a bristly sponge,
and her eyes are bags of bleach.”
Did that description almost make you feel
as queasy as Billie?
We grasp that Billie’s legs
aren’t actually noodles.
To Billie, they feel
as limp as cooked noodles.
It’s an implied comparison, a metaphor.
So, why not simply write it like this?
“Billie feels nauseated and weak.”
Chances are the second description
wasn’t as vivid to you as the first.
The point of fiction is to cast a spell,
a momentary illusion that you are living
in the world of the story.
Fiction engages the senses,
helps us create vivid mental simulacra
of the experiences
the characters are having.
Stage and screen engage
some of our senses directly.
We see and hear the interactions
of the characters and the setting.
But with prose fiction,
all you have is static symbols
on a contrasting background.
If you describe the story
in matter of fact, non-tactile language,
the spell risks being a weak one.
Your reader may not get much beyond
interpreting the squiggles.
She will understand
what Billie feels like,
but she won’t feel what Billie feels.
She’ll be reading, not immersed
in the world of the story,
discovering the truths of Billie’s life
at the same time that Billie herself does.
Fiction plays with our senses:
taste,
smell,
touch,
hearing,
sight,
and the sense of motion.
It also plays with our ability to abstract
and make complex associations.
Look at the following sentence.
“The world was ghost-quiet,
except for the crack of sails
and the burbling of water against hull.”
The words, “quiet,” “crack,”
and “burbling,”
engage the sense of hearing.
Notice that Buckell doesn’t use
the generic word sound.
Each word he chooses evokes
a particular quality of sound.
Then, like an artist laying
on washes of color
to give the sense
of texture to a painting,
he adds anoter layer, motion,
“the crack of sails,”
and touch,
“the burbling of water against hull.”
Finally, he gives us
an abstract connection
by linking the word quiet
with the word ghost.
Not “quiet as a ghost,”
which would put
a distancing layer of simile
between the reader and the experience.
Instead, Buckell creates
the metaphor “ghost-quiet”
for an implied,
rather than overt, comparison.
Writers are always told to avoid cliches
because there’s very little engagement
for the reader in an overused image,
such as “red as a rose.”
But give them,
“Love…began on a beach.
It began that day when Jacob saw Anette
in her stewed-cherry dress,”
and their brains engage
in the absorbing task
of figuring out what
a stewed-cherry dress is like.
Suddenly, they’re on a beach
about to fall in love.
They’re experiencing the story
at both a visceral and a conceptual level,
meeting the writer halfway
in the imaginative play
of creating a dynamic world
of the senses.
So when you write,
use well-chosen words
to engage sound, sight, taste,
touch, smell, and movement.
Then create unexpected connotations
among your story elements,
and set your readers' brushfire
imaginations alight.