17 Ways to Improve Your Descriptions
By Deanna Carlyle 2002
Need to create some story texture? Here are seventeen ways to do it.
1) Movement through space helps the reader take in description:
Example: We crossed the bridge and wandered through opened iron gates into the deserted courtyard of a blue palace. (Truman Capote)
2) The sense of sound can be a spatial organizer:
Example: The corridors of the hotel echoed with those pealing, terrified cries. They poured over the balcony beyond my room and filled the courtyard beneath. (Gerffrey Moorhouse)
Example: The river grew louder in the darkness. Something hooted. Something screamed in earnest further off. (Redmond O'Hanlon)
3) A room is also a personality:
Example: You don't so much walk into O'Hanlon's study as wade in, clearing a path through books, manuscripts, charts, maps, and other assorted detritus. (Bill Bryson)
4) The environment can take action verbs:
Example: The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose... (Stephen Crane)
5) The senses of smell and touch create great weather:
Example: The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo. (James Lee Burke)
6) For suspense and impact save the best for last:
Example: A black leather couch faced the TV and stereo; scattered around were a scale, a blue bong and a glass case holding a pair of pet pythons. (Adam Miller)
7) Metaphor can condense description:
Example: ...the stadium, rising as sheer as a cliff, is one quivering mass of color out of which there comes continually, like music from a monstrous kaleidoscope, the unending roar of the crowd. (Frederick Exley)
8) No need to describe common settings such as bars, train stations, airports. The reader has a ready-made image in mind. Focus on setting as a stage for the character:
Example: The dog slumped on the stool beside him like a tired little buddy, only raising his head occasionally for a taste of beer from the dirty ashtray set on the bar. (James Crumley)
9) Summary helps you quickly cover a lot of territory:
Example: They avert their gaze from the flat monotony of the central Florida landscape, the palmettos and citrus groves and truck farms. (Russell Banks)
10) Research the right technical or historical term:
Example: Hunched up and partly blinded, he pulled on his canvas gloves and tightened the stay with the hydraulic jack. (Robert Stone)
Example: Cortes rode in the lead in his burnished breastplate, gold chain and black feathered cap. (Oakley Hall)
11) What a character does shows who she is:
Example: Mrs. Gardner didn't drink tea; she drank beer. She adored it, she said. She didn't go sleigh-riding; instead, she went walking down Tremont Street with a lion named Rex on a leash. (Cleveland Amory)
12) Temporal transitions quickly cover ground:
Example: A moment later she was in the darkened corridor (Amanda Quick)
13) Show signs that something has just occurred, or time has passed:
Example: A half-eaten crumpet lay on the sideboard. The teacup was cold to the touch. (Deanna Carlyle)
Example: The pistol skittered across the floorboards. (Deanna Carlyle)
Example: She wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. (Gustave Flaubert)
14) Use details in motion whenever possible:
Example: Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. (Gustave Flaubert)
15) Use a clincher sensory detail to bring your point home:
Example: At the general's invitation I had seated myself on the edge of the cot, a few inches from him. The warmth of the bed penetrated through my clothes to my flesh. (Martin Luis Guzman)
16) You can embed description in the dialog:
Example: "My God, this place looks like an opium den!" (Deanna Carlyle)
Example: "It's not exactly the Ritz." (Deanna Carlyle)
17) Dashes and lists keep up the pace:
Example: She boarded the plane and scanned the faces in first class -- a wizened man in a suit, a tanned fortyish woman, a child traveling alone. None looked familiar. (Deanna Carlyle) 
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