Don’t ignore the elephant in the room – a law of description

by Roz Morris @ Dirty White Candy

A common problem in novel manuscripts is that writers don’t use physical description enough. We don’t know what it’s like to stand next to a particular character.

Not just their eye or hair colour, which actually makes little difference. I’m talking about how they make the other characters feel. That’s one of the things that makes a character real.

For some reason, this descriptive shortfall is particularly noticeable if there are scenes with animals.

In real life, animals are usually a startlingly physical presence. Think of being in a room when a dog bounds in. You see a wet muzzle that’s going straight for your crotch. Think of the showbiz adage about not working with children and four-footed things. They grab attention. They don’t obey normal etiquette rules. They fidget, fart, chew and dribble or look at you with disconcerting eyes.

In real life, if there’s an animal in your vicinity, you know it.

In novels, though, they are often invisible until they’re spoken to, or they have something to contribute to the plot.

If writers have given their characters pets and children, they usually want them to be real presences. But often they are not.

And usually there is something missing from the rest of their descriptions too – because they have not become totally immersed in the story’s physicality.

Part of the problem is that many novel writers learn from the screen. Movies don’t do the emotion of ‘being there’ very well. Novels do – this is one of the great strengths of prose.

It’s not just the raw unpublished who fall foul here. I well remember reading a novel by Minette Walters, where the hero stops to chat to a lady on a horse.

Before I explain what was wrong with the scene, let me describe what it is like to stand next to a horse in real life. Its head tugs at the restraining bridle, and is obviously big enough to knock you over. Even if it is being patient, it is never totally still. It will be watching you out of a big brown eye while you natter to its rider, or it will be flicking an ear to the distance wondering when it can continue on its way. Even the best groomed horse is not a neutral piece of upholstery; it is a big warm body with a skin that flickers and twitches and smells of animal. Its mouth may be oozing white or green foam which you might fear could end up on your sleeve. If you take something out of your pocket that big-footed animal may jump sideways and you may fear for your toes.

But to read Ms Walters’s description you would think the scene took place around something inanimate and silent like a bicycle.

Then there’s eye level. Talk to someone on a horse and your eye level corresponds to the height of the rider’s waist or knee. Any body language expert will tell you that a conversation with someone towering over you is not an equal conversation. It’s the same as if you’re talking to someone in a wheelchair, or you’re the one in the wheelchair. Improvisational drama coaches and assertiveness trainers know all about this – your emotional state and your status in the conversation change according to whether you’re sitting down or standing up.

Ms Walters, though, gave the impression that the questioner was eye to eye with the rider, not standing with his neck cricked upwards.

The lack of those physical details left the scene flat. It read like a script – directions and dialogue, but no life.

Contrast this with Gavin Maxwell and Gerald Durrell. They are known primarily because they wrote about animals and the natural world. Not because they made these creatures cute and lovable – but because they made them complex, intriguing individuals.

And – even better – when they turned their writerly eye to human characters these were just as compelling.

This is what I’m really getting at. Humans are animals too. We react to physicality and to body language – from animals and from other people. We respond to being watched, to being close to someone who may be afraid of us, or clumsy with us, or dangerous. Or someone we are repelled by. Or fancy. Or are bored by. Or who might fire us. Or who might bite our neck.

Descriptions need to use all the senses, including – very important – what a scene feels like. Physicality is a kind of truth and a writer who can describe animals with truth can describe humans with truth too. Writers who ignore this are missing something important.

Take-home point

Think like a Buddhist. Every living thing in your novel has to have life.

And your reward is that your story will live too.