Description

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

-- E.L. Doctorow

When describing a world, Swain asks us to remember three things: Your reader has never been here before, this is a sensory world, and this is a subjective world.

Step 1 - Choosing interesting details

The trick is either to make the ordinary fresh and unique or to make the extreme seem ordinary. Concrete details, and they don't all have to be sight. You have a whole range of senses to play with. Be as specific as possible. Believe it or not, specifics are more universal than vague generalizations. You want universal so that the reader can relate. John Gardner says that details about the setting convince the readers into believing that the story is true.

Here's some advice from Anton Chekhov...

You don't need to describe every little thing in the scene, especially not by piling up adjectives. Instead, choose one very unique and sensual thing in the scene that readers will remember after they've put the book down. When describing an object, the readers should be able to feel it in their hands.

Here's two descriptions of my bedroom. You decide which you like better.

Posters and magazine cut-outs stuck to the powder blue walls. In one corner, someone had painted a white smiling moon and some clouds. This matched the two cloud window-coverings. The carpet was blue too, but a little darker. An orange tapestry hung from the ceiling above the queen-sized bed. Various art projects hung on walls and doors. There were four book shelves, each crammed with books. The bulletin board in the back corner displayed photos of places she'd been and people she'd met.

The moon and clouds painted on one wall were remnants of the original owners who had tried to make the room look like a McDonalds commercial. Despite insisting that the paintings were too sentimental to paint over, most of the clouds were plastered over with posters from concerts and magazine cut-outs of movies she'd seen. She'd gotten the orange tapestry above her bed from Camden Market in London shortly before it burned down. It was tacked up on both ends, like a hammock. When she left for long periods of time, she would take it down in case a spider decided to make its web up there. Thirteen paper mache masks hung above the window and closet door, the product of the summer after visiting Venice whose masks were too expensive and delicate to transport home. They'd grown creepier since their shapes warped on a rainy Halloween in the woods. She had four bookshelves: one for non-fiction, two for miscellaneous fiction, and one exclusively for Terry Pratchett novels.

Step 2 - Filtering details through protagonist's perception

Here are two descriptions of the same room by the same person in different moods.

The room was quiet, save for the light ticking of the duck clock next to the door. The painted moon smiled down at her from his perch in the corner. The mock Venetian masks above the window gave the room an exotic flavor, the flavor of someone who's traveled. And indeed, the photos of her and her flatmates smiling from London, from Venice, from Rome on her bulletin board confirmed it. The books on the shelves stacked worlds together, providing hundreds of possibilities for escapism. Dante for some adventure, Pratchett for a laugh, Thoreau for some inspiration. Why ever leave this place?

It was eerie the way the masks peered down at her, especially the ones that had warped in the Halloween rain. They reminded her of taxidermy, like she'd carved the faces off paper and acrylic monsters and tacked them to her walls. As beautiful as the orange tapestry was, something inside her stirred every time she saw it because she knew she could never go back to that place, back to Camden Market, which had been destroyed in a fire last year. Her favorite spot in her favorite city. But that was life, wasn't it? They say you can never go back, even to the places that haven't been burned down. The books nagged at her, reminding her of her ever-growing list of books to read. She couldn't possibly finish them all before she died, could she? She had her own books to write. But they'd never be as good as the ones on the shelf. They had it easy. People still bought books in Thoreau's day. They didn't have any of this silly e-book or alternative media to distract them.

Step 3 - Feeding description into the scene

Details about the setting should not only be significant and essential, but also a part of the action of the scene. The momentum of the plot should not come to a halt so that you can show us where we are.

Compare the description from above to one that happens within the action of the scene.

The moon and clouds painted on one wall were remnants of the original owners who had tried to make the room look like a McDonalds commercial. Despite insisting that the paintings were too sentimental to paint over, most of the clouds were plastered over with posters from concerts and magazine cut-outs of movies she'd seen. She'd gotten the orange tapestry above her bed from Camden Market in London shortly before it burned down. It was tacked up on both ends, like a hammock. When she left for long periods of time, she would take it down in case a spider decided to make its web up there. Thirteen paper mache masks hung above the window and closet door, the product of the summer after visiting Venice whose masks were too expensive and delicate to transport home. They'd grown creepier since their shapes warped on a rainy Halloween in the woods. She had four bookshelves: one for non-fiction, two for miscellaneous fiction, and one exclusively for Terry Pratchett novels.

She threw her door open and swung her backpack onto the queen-sized bed, setting a draft to sway the orange tapestry overhead back and forth. "One more day of this and I'm quitting." She noticed one of her paper mache masks above the window glaring at her. It was the one that looked like a cross between Guy Faux and a bunny, slightly warped from Halloween rain two years ago. "I mean it this time!" she told it. Really. She meant it. She wouldn't stand being an underling forever. She knelt on her bed and ran her thumb across spines of books until she located "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail." She yanked it out and pulled out the crinkly notebook paper shoved between the cover and dedication page. She unfolded it and plopped down in her desk chair, sending the cheap plastic arm rests rattling. She flipped open her laptop and waited for it to boot. The letter on the notebook paper had some mistakes in it, having been written in a frenzy the last time she was passed up for promotion. She had some better worded phrases now, and she couldn't wait for her wireless to connect up so she could give those jerks a piece of her mind.