Description

          Description is a writing strategy, and like all such strategies, it abides by principles.

  1. It uses SPECIFIC, CONCRETE DETAILS which lead
  2. to a SINGLE, DOMINANT IMPRESSION.

          Perhaps you've heard past composition teachers tell you, "Ah, you need more concrete detail." Have you ever wondered, "Fine, but just what is a 'concrete detail'?"

          A detail is a word that appeals to your senses. That is, you can see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it. And details are what distinguish fine writing from mediocre writing. Mark Twain said something like, "The difference between the wrong word and the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning."

          Still unclear? Think of it this way: a word will fall on a continuum between two extremes:

specific

general
concrete

abstract

Examples:

Specific/Concrete

 General/Abstract

1976, sky-blue Ford Mustang convertible

car

a firm handshake and a smile

trust

          Here is a piece of fine description from the writer, Annie Dillard.  Notice how she creates a single dominant impression with concrete detail.

          Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair.  Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield.  The dessert dishes were still on the table.  My sisters were nowhere in evidence.  It was a warm evening; the big dining room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons.

          Dad's got his legs "stretched out," and Mom's got her "knees crossed," obviously sitting down. The dessert dishes haven't been cleared. The windows are flung open to flowers blooming...

          Dillard doesn't write, "My parents were very relaxed." "Being relaxed" is an abstraction.  Instead, Dillard provides you, the reader, with specific, concrete details that SHOW her parents relaxing, which, in turn, allow you to "see" the scene.

          Again, such details are the essence of the best writing.

          Now consider Dillard's description again and imagine all the details she could have used but left out. We really don't know how big the room is, what color, whether there was any dust in the corners, whether the furniture is brown or red, modern or antique, worn or new... She could have spent a lifetime describing all the detail available to the eye, to the ear, to the nose, to the... But she selected her father's stretched out legs, the dishes, the cigarette, the window, and the flowers. Can you figure out what it was that limited the potential gush of detail?

          She was after the SINGLE, DOMINANT IMPRESSION of her parents relaxing.

          The dust in the corners, the color of the furniture, etc., might have made the picture fuller, sure, but they would have distracted from what Dillard wanted us to know about the moment: relaxed parents.

          Now, if you're thinking ahead, you might have already figured out the kind of work you need to do to come up with such a description. Suppose you wanted to describe your room to a friend. If you're like me, you'd probably start wrong: you'd just start writing sentences: "There's a computer, some books, some this, some that..."  And you'd have to go back and rewrite. This, I can assure you, is a wild waste of time.

          Better to begin with a list. Have fun, go crazy, just start listing the things in your room. Put a time limit on it -- say, ten or fifteen minutes. But otherwise, no restrictions: no worry about grammar, no concern with spelling, no sweating about the "best" word -- at least, not yet.

          Then, once you've got your list, decide what kind of impression you want to create. If it's neat, you might want to point out the ordered books on the shelves, the way the chair back is parallel to the desk, the way the files stand like centurions...

          Then, once you've chosen your four or five specific and concrete details from your list, you put those in sentences. (Notice how simple Dillard's sentences are in that paragraph, but how effective her prose is:  it's the details...) And voila! A paragraph.

          Key points:

  • All writing seeks to convince.

  • Descriptions use specific, concrete detail (and avoid generalizations and abstraction)

  • to yield a single, dominant impression.