In nonfiction writing, it is sometimes necessary to write an extended passage of description. A paragraph or more of description will contain many details. The most important characteristic of these details is that they must create a dominant impression. Otherwise, the extended description risks becoming a list of unrelated details that will bore and confuse readers.
Here’s an example. A passage of description may depict a place, a person, an object, an event, an action, etc., so let’s imagine a writer describing the high school building I work in. Built in 1953, our current high school building projects the solid image of its era. Before describing this building, our hypothetical student writer must decide what she wants to say about the building. Like (I fear) some students, perhaps she views high school as a prison sentence culminating a 13-year course of reluctant compulsory education. In that case, perhaps she focuses on details that project a fortress-like, dreary quality about the high school -- it’s stone walls and drab colors. Conversely (and more optimistically), perhaps our imaginary student writer views school as a venerable temple of learning, a place that encourages creativity and critical thinking. In that case, she will focus on more colorful, exciting details about the building -- perhaps music emanating from the chorus room or brightly colored bulletin boards.
The following passage, the opening paragraph from James Dickey’s novel Deliverance, exhibits masterful control of description. Dickey writes:
It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose. The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on its corners and laid the river out to run for us through the mountains 150 miles north. Lewis’ hand took a pencil and marked out a small strong X in a place where some of the green bled away and the paper changed with high ground, and began to work downstream, northeast to southwest through the printed woods. I watched the hand rather than the location, for it seemed to have power over the terrain, and when it stopped for Lewis’ voice to explain something, it was as though all streams everywhere quit running, hanging silently where they were to let the point be made. The pencil turned over and pretended to sketch in with the eraser an area that must have been around fifty miles long, through which the river hooked and cramped.
This paragraph describes two separate but related things -- a map of wild river country, and a self-assured man named Lewis -- both described through the lens of a narrator. Deliverance is a contemporary horror novel of sorts (later made into one of the scariest movies ever filmed) about four "suburban cowboys" rafting down untamed rapids in rural north Georgia before the river is dammed to create a sedate reservoir. During the course of the novel, these men run into trouble, lots of it. The first object the paragraph describes is a map of the wild country. Notice the way Dickey describes the rolled-up map curling and snapping like a viper. The map (and, more importantly, the remote river country the map traces) seems ominous because of this description and others. The man Lewis, the second subject of description, is depicted only via his hand and voice. Lewis projects an air of supreme confidence, but something in the passage suggests that even he will have his hands full in this mysterious river country.
Now consider all the details Dickey left out. The size of the map, its creases, its scale, and other information about Lewis like his hair color and age and height. None of these details are relevant to the dominant impression, and ominous mood, Dickey intends to create with this passage.
When you write description, decide what dominant impression you wish to convey and choose your details carefully to deliver it. Remember, the devil (and the delight) is in the details.
© 2014 Bob Dial. All rights reserved.
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