Description can make or break a story, so it's a major area of concern for most writers. Too much describing will bog down your plot. Too few details will leave your readers feeling unfulfilled or even confused. Since you don't want your story to be either vague or overwhelming, it's your job as the writer to find that perfect balance in your description. You want to set the scene appropriately and to do it in a meaningful way.
Instructions
1. Identify what's relevant. While the reader may not know if the description you're providing is meaningful, you should always know. Use description as a tool to reveal important details about the characters in your story or to foreshadow an upcoming conflict in the plot. For example, make your readers wonder if a character is lazy or poor by describing the mess in the kitchen and the unpaid bills on the table. Good description is in the details.
2. Focus on sensory details. Once you know what's important to describe, you need to find the best way to do so. Sensory details come from our five senses-hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching. Focusing on these areas will add a realistic quality to your writing that makes for especially effective description. While you don't want to touch on every sense for every item you describe, hitting on each one at least once to describe an entire scene is always a good idea.
3. Establish tone or mood. Describe in a way that shows your reader how they should feel about the situation. Use the sensory details that will evoke the emotion you want, be it fear, interest, disgust or nostalgia. Your description should speak to the overall feeling of the passage. Remember, everything needs to serve the ultimate purpose of the piece.
4. Remember your point of view. Depending on who is narrating the story, different details will be significant. If the main character is narrating and she has an intense fear of spiders, cobwebs are going to stand out to her in every building she enters. Allow your readers to step into the shoes of that character and see things accurately from his or her point of view.
5. Use verbs that reveal details. Don't let adjectives do all your work. Replace weak, vague verbs with stronger, more specific ones. For instance, "He walked from his car to the grocery store" is not nearly as vivid as, "He hobbled through the parking lot to the grocery store." The verb is doing the describing work of how the character walks in this sentence. If you used something like, "He sauntered through the parking lot to the grocery store," you're setting up the mood and personality of the character.
6. Edit and trim. Like all good writing, description needs to be refined. When you review your work, cut out unnecessary details that add nothing to the meaning of your story. Remember that just becomes something sounds pretty or clever doesn't necessarily mean that it's adding to your story. Keep the big picture in mind as you decide what needs to stay and what needs to go.
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