Intermingle Action With Description

We’ve all read novels where description is overdone. Some authors believe it’s crucial that readers know exactly what every piece of furniture in a room looks like, from color and shape to each little nick, and sometimes its age and history. They will go on and on, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, describing every nook and cranny in a room, to the point where you just want to scream, “Enough already! Get to the action!”

We’ve also read novels where description is underdone. Written in a “just the facts, ma’am” style, these books gloss over the appearance of characters and settings to the point where readers must paint the entire scene with their imaginations. Readers shouldn’t have to work that hard to form a mental picture of what’s happening.

The key is striking a happy medium. Give readers enough description so they can “see” what you’re creating, but not so much that they become bogged down and exhausted from the minutiae. Readers don’t need to know that the paint on one of the 36 black keys on a piano has a tiny chip in it, unless that fact is important to the storyline.

Once you believe you’ve reached that happy medium, mingle description with action. When you want to describe a person’s physical appearance, don’t always spend a paragraph or two doing that prior to getting into an action she’s taking or a conversation he’s having.

Instead, spend one paragraph describing some of her physical characteristics, then move into the action or conversation in the second paragraph. As part of that next paragraph, you can include the remaining description of her.

Here's an example of what I’d suggest: “I never realized how much my love for him was dependent on his willingness to do what I asked,” Caroline said while running her long, slender fingers through her short, dark brown hair. Her bright blue eyes seemed larger than usual as she looked up at him without blinking. “I assumed I was trying to lead him in the right direction, but I suppose I was actually being selfish.”

OK, I’m sure you can do better than that. But the point is, intermingling description with action or conversation makes your copy flow more smoothly than when you compartmentalize these components in separate paragraphs.

Also, I’ve found that the more physically different your characters are – especially key characters – the easier it is for readers to visualize them and remember their appearances when they’re mentioned later in the novel. If you have two main female characters, give them very different physical attributes. The same with males.

And while you’re at it, make sure your key characters’ names start with different letters. As a reader, I don’t want to confuse Justin with either Jason or Jacob when they could have been named Justin, William, and Samuel.