Writing Descriptions

Descriptions are an important part of the story. They help to create the atmosphere and, especially in fantasy and science fiction, they add to the world building. But how much should a writer describe and how much should be left to the imagination of the reader? 

This is a difficult question and there really is no right answer for it. Some readers love a lot of description while others get easily bored by it and rather skip it. For me, it all depends on the skill of the writer. Yet I do not want page after page full of descriptions. I often forget it anyway. Some writers describe their characters in elaborate detail, but the most I tend to remember is their hair colour, eye colour and their build or other remarkable details such as a scar or a tattoo. The shape of their eyes, their nose, his large feet or their unusually small ears vanishes from my mind quite quickly, unless it has been repeated a couple of times or the writer put an emphasis on it. I create my own image of a character, building, place, etc. in my mind on the basis of the information I can remember. 

For me, the most important role of description is that it helps to get to know the characters. If you give description from the point of view of one of your characters, you should focus on what the character will see, hear, feel and smell. A character that has not eaten for quite a while, will notice the smell of food before (s)he sees the expensive tableware and the painting of an alien on the wall. The character who loves art will most likely see the painting of the alien first and (s)he shall look at it in more detail than the hungry character. 

Description can also bring your story alive. Often small details have a major impact on convincing the read that the story you are telling is real. In Harry Potter we do not get to see every detail of the shops in Diagon Alley, but J.K. Rowling describes just enough to let the whole street come to life. The best way to make your world come to life, whether if it is a world you build yourself or our word, is to make use of every sense. Too often smell and sound is left out and then you get a flat image. If there is a fire, describe the sounds. How it roars as it destroys everything in its wake or how a dungeon smells of death and decay besides describing how dark and cold it is. You want to make your readers shiver as they plough through the snow with your characters; you want them to smell and taste the freshly baked bread and feel how soft the fur of your monster is. 

Create the atmosphere, point out how expensive his clothes look and how the tiger’s coat looks in the setting sun, but do not describe every drop of rain, every wrinkle in his clothes or every stripe on the tiger’s coat. Leave some room to let the reader build the world in his head. I like to think of the descriptions in stories as the foundations of the reader’s imagination.