JB Writer Diamonds: Description Spoilers SmF through page 30

[meg_evonne]

We’ve all heard that every paragraph, every sentence, every word should drive the plot.  Yeah, pretty standard rhetoric, right?  So standard, that we forget about it on a regular basis.  :-)

While helping a friend (and myself) on writing projects, it became obvious that our descriptive skills tended to be long winded and all too often they were frankly boring.  Looking for an answer I picked up my copy of SmF and started looking for answers.  These are a few that I found. 

•  Few of Jim’s paragraphs exceed six lines.  When they do, he did so with purpose for a reason revealed later in the book.
•  His descriptions are brief, concise, and serve the purpose of furthering the plot.
•  He employs several basic techniques to keep descriptions interesting and to further the tension of the plot line.

These are a few tricks that he uses routinely and if you find others, I hope you will share them.  You’ll need your SmF close at hands to refer to the right locations.

Break up the description with dialog:
Bob’s description: Top paragraph, page 13  Dialog – Description - Dialog
Use questions rather than statements:
Bob’s description: Bottom, page 15 – Top Page 26  Engages the reader to think by asking four freaking questions that tells us a lot about Bob.
Description laced with action:
Murphy’s description: Chap. 4, pg 19 count ‘em—all in 3 sentences: glanced, snowflakes falling, clung PLUS Dialog to show personality.
Murphy’s description: page 21, top paragraph: in charge, busted, vanishing, during, critical, tell, storming,--all in another freaking question. +adds Stallings as: in charge, running, strained, frayed, often knotted
Speed of dispensing information:
Murphy’s description: skips page 19 to 21 to page 24, bottom paragraph continuing to top 25--revealing personality and the relationship in 3 sentences.
Use of place description via 1. action, 2. scent, 3. touch:
Place description: Top paragraph of page 24, count ‘em in THREE tight sentences:  leaned, frowning, SCENT, stronger, realized, melted, HOT, vaporized, leaving, touched, melted, missing, carried, collapsing

In SmF, Rawlings role is limited, so look at how he packs a powerful description in a short two sentences, updates it, and moves on:
Bottom of page 21:  “Rawlins was a blocky man in his fifties, comfortably overweight, and looked about as soft as a Brinks truck.  He’d grown in a beard frosted with grey, a sharp contrast against his dark skin, and he wore a weather-beaten old winter coat over his off-the-rack suit.”

It’s at this point that I threw up my hands, grabbed a beer, and gave up writing for the night.  Well, maybe for a few nights.  Damn, why do I even try?

[LizW65]

Basically, it all comes down to "show, don't tell."
I am a puppeteer, and one of the most important rules in puppetry is, if you can replace dialogue with action, DO SO.  In writing popular fiction, dialogue packs more of a punch than lengthy description, and I agree that breaking up the narrative helps to hold the reader's interest.
  We all know about avoiding passive voice; most of the writer's groups I've visited online discourage over-dependence on the verb "to be" in ANY form, and suggest replacing "was" or "is" with an action verb whenever possible.  (I don't know if it's possible to write a story without using any form of "to be" whatsoever; it is, after all, the most common verb in the English language, but trying to do so might be an entertaining exercise.)
Another exercise I've found useful is reading your narrative (especially dialogue) aloud, and seeing how easily the words roll off your tongue.  If it has a natural, free-flowing feel to it, you're probably on the right track.
meg-evonne writes:
<<It’s at this point that I threw up my hands, grabbed a beer, and gave up writing for the night.  Well, maybe for a few nights.  Damn, why do I even try?>>
Good writing such as Jim's gives us all something to aspire to.
If I start to feel discouraged and wonder why I even bother, all it takes is for me to pick up a cheesy Harlequin romance or crappy "bestseller" and think, "Hey, I can do better than this!  Hell, I AM doing better than this!" and I start getting my mind back on track.

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

Meg - thanks for this. REALLY useful analysis. Would you mind posting this over on the Dresdenverse under the Professor Jim thread so everybody gets a chance to see it?

[Delarith]

Reminds me of something my high school English teacher pounded into us and reinforced with her mighty red pens.  None of our writing could with passive verbs.  Not only is it hard, but it really, really makes you think about what you are writing.  That was almost 20 years ago and I still remember it.

[Matrix Refugee (formerly Morraeon)]

It’s at this point that I threw up my hands, grabbed a beer, and gave up writing for the night.  Well, maybe for a few nights.  Damn, why do I even try?

I wouldn't try comparing yourself to another writer while you're working on something else. I imagine the rough draft of SmF looked pretty spotty until Jim sat down to revise it later on. When you're first/rough-drafting something, you pretty much have to put the little critics in your head in an empty mason jar and stick the lid on tight.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

We’ve all heard that every paragraph, every sentence, every word should drive the plot.  Yeah, pretty standard rhetoric, right?  So standard, that we forget about it on a regular basis.  :-)

Well, it depends on how you scale things.

Every scene should be doing something.  C.J. Cherryh says she cuts every scene that's not doing at least three different things, which makes for rather dense prose.  Worrying over every word at haiku-type levels of weight is unlikely to ever get a novel finished.

•  Few of Jim’s paragraphs exceed six lines.  When they do, he did so with purpose for a reason revealed later in the book.
•  His descriptions are brief, concise, and serve the purpose of furthering the plot.
•  He employs several basic techniques to keep descriptions interesting and to further the tension of the plot line.

All fine and well for the voice and sort of stories Jim is telling.  There are other ways of doing first-person gumshoe, from steel-taut Dashiel Hammett to Raymond Chandler's notably overblown metaphors [ blondes who could make bishops kick holes in stained-glass windows and so forth. ]

If one were to read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, or Steven Brust's Khaavren romances, at this sort of level, one could come up with advice going exactly the other way.  The paragraphs in the Khaaveren romances tend to be long and meandering and not directly to the point of furthering the plot; what they achieve is setting up background and character things to come together later.

Do what your story needs.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Reminds me of something my high school English teacher pounded into us and reinforced with her mighty red pens.  None of our writing could with passive verbs.  Not only is it hard, but it really, really makes you think about what you are writing.  That was almost 20 years ago and I still remember it.

I disagree with this one profoundly, fwiw.  I disagree with pretty much any restriction of that sort.  passive verbs are like anything else; they are a tool to generate a given effect.  Not using them without knowing what that effect is and wanting to get it, fine, but not using them ever; feh.

I think that advice comes from the notion that passive verbs are more distancing than active ones (arguably true) and that distancing is always bad for the story (totally false).

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I wouldn't try comparing yourself to another writer while you're working on something else. I imagine the rough draft of SmF looked pretty spotty until Jim sat down to revise it later on. When you're first/rough-drafting something, you pretty much have to put the little critics in your head in an empty mason jar and stick the lid on tight.

Note; this does not work for authors who can't draft and revise and have to get it right first time.  There are several successful ones in the field.

[Delarith]

I won't say I slavishly follow the no passive verb rule, but it does make me think more about what I write.  While I tend to think in passive verbs, once I realize what I have written, it makes me go back and think is there a better way of writing this.  Normally, there is and it makes me use more of an active voice.

[Shecky]

The passive voice isn't automatically bad. The slavish devotion to the active voice, on the other hand, is the sign of a crutch used by an author with a lack of confidence. It all depends on how well it's said, regardless of whether it's active or passive voice.

[Kiriath]

Note; this does not work for authors who can't draft and revise and have to get it right first time.  There are several successful ones in the field.

Anyone you can mention? I'm a bit this way, as rereading is never my thing, and I'm curious.

And in reply to the thread: those are really interesting observations! Like Neurovore said, it's probably partly because of the get-things-moving-now voice of the DFs. But it's still intriguing, as a person whose descriptions are the key problem.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Anyone you can mention?

Not really, I'm afraid; I'm pretty strictly enjoined to secrecy with regards to the books I second-read and crit before publication.  (NY Times bestsellers they're not, but Hugo and Nebula nominees I can count on that list, and winners of a couple of other awards.)

[Shecky]

Not really, I'm afraid; I'm pretty strictly enjoined to secrecy with regards to the books I second-read and crit before publication.  (NY Times bestsellers they're not, but Hugo and Nebula nominees I can count on that list, and winners of a couple of other awards.)

Is that a job or a vocation?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Is that a job or a vocation?

It's a vocation; thought I'd said that my day-job is bioinformatics web databases ? Though if I could sell fiction and support myself and my family thereby I'd do that like a shot.

[Shecky]

It's a vocation; thought I'd said that my day-job is bioinformatics web databases ? Though if I could sell fiction and support myself and my family thereby I'd do that like a shot.

It's likely that you did and I simply forgot; life has been excessively fatiguing lately. And I'm forgetful even when well-rested. Anyway, what I was talking about wasn't selling fiction as much as it was reading it professionally. Now THAT is MY dream job.