Salt of Description

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

As I was preparing to sit down last week and write a post on the subject of using all five senses in descriptions, I looked at my blog feed and discovered that Go Teen Writers had just done such an article.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call unfair.  However, I decided I would go ahead and write my own thoughts on the matter, and in the end you can read both posts and compare.

Descriptive passages have never come to me with quite the same ease as dialogue.  Perhaps this is because dialogue tends to follow a more logical procession from point A to point B, or at least from point A to point Q back to point B, while description is more intuitive and emotional.  But difficulties notwithstanding, I do enjoy writing these scenes.  I enjoy them because it is a pleasure to take a step back or forward and examine the world in either broader scope or closer detail - and because, by looking at a scene through the eyes of a character, I see things in a different light.  (That is part of the brilliance of fictional people: not existing, they still manage to be so real.)  While of course still utilizing my own senses, I am at the same time accessing the senses of the character.  Separating those senses into the five common ones, and leaving out the sixth sense of intuition, each one provides rich means of vivifying description.

sight - touch - hearing - smell - taste

We depend very heavily upon our eyes, so it's no wonder that descriptive passages tend to be heavy on this aspect.  I don't know about you, but when I'm reading a description, no matter how well I can smell and feel and hear and even taste the object, I would very much like to know what it looks like.  The man may smell of horse and sweaty leather boot-soles - grand!  The pipe may make music like the wind across the surface of a lake - brilliant!  The decorated cake may taste like the cover of a hardback book - disgusting!  And yet, without a few choice visionary descriptions, it is difficult to bring to the reader's mind exactly the same image that was in the writer's thoughts.  I can imagine a great deal about how the man in question feels about bathing, and even create my own mental image of him; but my imagination is probably quite faulty.

Descriptions based on sight tend to get a bad rap, I find.  This is reasonable, as many take this as the easy course and write off a hasty description about how the man is 5'9" and tanned (or is that dirt?) and has piercing green eyes, which evokes nothing.  However, it is possible to go to far to the other extreme and eliminate all sight-based descriptions.  Strike a good balance!

The next four senses are, I think, the most fun and provide more food for the imagination and for one's originality.  This is especially so if you mix and match them, and do not simply use them in obvious settings.  Of course if you're describing a stew, you'll want to describe its taste - but what about its appearance, or the sound it makes falling into the bowl, or its texture?  If a flower is in question, appearance and smell are obvious.  But how do the petals feel against your skin?  How does the wind sound thrumming over its leaves?

Another good thing to do, and one which is used powerfully by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliff, is to link senses together in descriptions.  Colors can be used beautifully in these descriptions.  Something might taste scarlet - similar, perhaps, to saying it tastes like blood, but far more evocative in the writing setting.  Perhaps the flower smells the way honey tastes on a day in midsummer.  A laugh can sound like silk running through one's fingers.  Oftentimes these sorts of descriptions leap to one's mind and can't be actively sought out, but if you're watching for them, you'll see them more frequently.

Caveat!  (I do tend to have caveats, don't I?)  Descriptions of any one kind ought to be used sparingly, sprinkled rather than dumped into a story.  Too much of a good thing is still too much, as they say.  These are thoughts to keep somewhere in the back of one's mind during difficult descriptive passages, not to have always and obsessively in the forefront of one's thoughts.  I find they're like salt: useful in small doses, not so useful in large.  ...Unless you're Sutcliff, because she pulled it off amazingly.