Into the Fire

This is an excerpt from Tricia Goyer’s recent newsletter written by now freelance editor and creator of Marcher Lord Press, Jeff Gerke. (http://www.marcherlordpress.com/) (http://www.wherethemapends.com/whoisjeff/whoisjeff.htm) His previous credentials include stints at NavPress, Strang Communications, and Multnomah Publishers long before they became Waterbrook/Multnomah.

Description, Part 1-Introduction

With this tip I am beginning a four-part series on description of the locations in which you set your scenes.
One of the most common complaints I have of the fiction written by beginning (and many advanced) novelists is that I just can’t imagine the scene. I don’t know what anything looks like. I can’t picture where I am or what’s going on.
This is the fault of the writer. I mean, as a reader I want to fill in the blanks for the author. If you give me something to go on I’ll help you out with the rest. But you have to give me that something to go on or I’m lost.
And few things frustrate me more than not being able to figure out what’s going on in a scene I’m reading.
Some authors feel that it’s a good idea to ration the description of the setting, doling it out here and there throughout the scene, so that by the end of the scene the reader knows what the place looks like. I hate that.
I think what the author is trying to do is avoid the supposedly dreaded paragraph of nothing but description. Perhaps they feel that such a paragraph is telling and stops the story cold.
I disagree. Describing a place (and, by the way, this whole “tip series” applies to character description, too) is not telling. How else is the reader going to know what the place looks like if you don’t describe it?
Do you give us a weather report? No (unless it’s pertinent). Do you give us a 360 of the place? No, not unless it’s important for us to know right now. But you must describe what the place looks like or we won’t know what we’re seeing. We’ll feel distanced from the story. Our minds will begin to drift.
A scene without a detail-laden description of the setting is like one of those experimental theatrical productions with just gray geometric shapes on the stage. They’re supposed to be suggestive rather than specific. Makes it easier on the set builders, too.
Do you really want your scenes to feel like they’re on a stage filled with gray blobs? Or, worse, to feel like there’s no setting at all, just talking heads?
Because that’s what you get when you have a dialogue scene with insufficient description. The lines of dialogue go back and forth with nothing tying them to the ground. They begin to become detached from their tethers like hot air balloons, floating up into a vague ether of gray nothingness.
Sounds like fun to read, huh?
Stop and give us a paragraph of description. Do it very early in the scene. And every time you change locations, even within the same scene, give us a paragraph of description of the new place.
When a filmmaker turns on the camera, the viewer immediately knows a lot about where the action is, who’s there, what everyone’s doing, and what everyone looks like. That all comes automatic with the director’s tool-kit. The author of fiction is not so lucky. She has to actually spell it all out.
Go, thou, and do likewise.

So, I’ll be posting his Part 2 in the future. (That’s code for maybe tomorrow but who knows when?) Care to weigh in on his opinions?

Father, writing holds so much for all of us. Things we like, things we don’t. Things we must do, things we mustn’t do. Help each of us to write how you have gifted us. To learn your direction. To do our very best for you and for your glory. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

*Please remember to pray for Kristy Dykes.*