hello description my old friend
shall I compare thee to a summer’s day....something something
I think that writing is a lot like dreaming. To describe, then, is to make it real to the other person.
If you’re here, reading this, hi! I know it’s been two months, so shoutout to Nicole for encouraging me and also pointing out that my newsletter name would literally be inaccurate if I never came out with another note.
Coincidentally, as my unfinished newsletter swirled in substack’s Version history hell, Brandon Taylor came out with ‘against character vapor’, an issue from his newsletter which truly delves into description and character (amongst other things) beautifully, so I highly recommend reading his for an in-depth exploration of such things.
In the spirit of ‘notes from gab’ and the fact that this has been rotting in my tabs for weeks now, here are a few quick thoughts on prose from a card-carrying prose lover (don’t tell dialogue).
Shoutout to every English teacher that gave me a worksheet with poetry terms and literary devices: you will always be famous. As I write and edit more consistently (who am I?), I start to notice patterns. Like how much I tend toward metaphor, how I list things in threes, how I slip in consonance or alliteration whenever I miss those poetry units.
Now, every author has their own taste in regards to both reading prose and writing it. Some like long streams of sentences, river-like and crafted with a particular prettiness. Others like it short. I am not the first to say this nor will I be the last, but I hope it is comforting to know that while your writing style (which I think of as a combination of doing prose + dialogue) won’t be to everyone’s taste, it will be to some. Seriously. The people who do eat it up, will love it deeply and enduringly (one only need read five star reviews or pull up a crying Booktube vlog), and that is what matters.
My point is, I am trying to spend less time satisfying imaginary readers by altering my descriptions based on readers that will never, in this universe or the next, enjoy my endless sentences. Again, shoutout to Nicole for this next point, which is that what I will strive for, is consistency. So that it reads like one person’s voicemail and not several jammed together in Audition—unless of course, that is the purpose or point that I want to make (ex: they are going through emotional changes, are an unreliable narrator, etc.)
What helps me is to establish voice/tone/vibe/whatever word you want to use. 1/2 of this decision stems from character and POV. When I write 3rd POV, I lean heavily on what I want the overall narration to sound like. Do I want quick and quirky, or whimsical and fairy-like? If so, what word choices, sentence-lengths and word order do I need to use in order to achieve that?
When I write first person, I think more about balancing my personal voice as a writer and the character’s personality. Ex: if I was writing from Bruce Wayne’s POV, I probably would not add in several witty jokes that I, as a person, would, if I was writing an Op-Ed on the state of Gotham.
When that light hits the sky, it’s a warning to them. Fear is a tool. They think I'm hiding in the shadows. But I am the shadows. I wish I could say I'm making a difference, but I don't know. Murder, robberies, assault—2 years later, they're all up. And now this. This city's eating itself.
Based on selections from RPatz Batman (<3) monologue, I see a pattern in length for the sentences: long-short-long-short-long-short-break-short-short. Through this deliberate repetition and plainness of speech, you can feel Batman’s character through the cadence. There is a plainness in the way that he describes Gotham, as though each observation, though coloured by his own position and perspective, is fact. Murder is up. He is the shadows. There is no dressing of words, though the last sentence in particular gives me a subtler sense of poetry. And every detail leads up to this: the city’s eating itself.
If I was writing it as myself, I would want to spend time going over the way that the rainwater accumulates, a metaphor for the cesspool of crime and inequity in the city. I would probably not say ‘fear is a tool’ so directly, but ‘fear snakes around their necks like a leash’. But if I was asked to do so as Batman, I would say ‘the rain poured; so did the blood.’
There are so, so many ways to say the same thing, and the fun part about prose, about description, is making these choices.
Now I don’t solely make descriptive choices from the character’s POV, because then I wouldn’t be able to deliver things to the reader in a way that I want, as the writer. My inner monologue is not nearly as sophisticated or thoughtful as my MC, so I am not trying to write ‘realistically’ in that sense. I am trying to tell an engaging story. But keeping character in mind helps me to keep myself from getting overwhelmed and also losing control/track of what I’m writing.
I also pick and choose my devices. Like, that sheet was helpful, but I’m not going to use all of them, all the time. I don’t actually count. On the other hand, metaphor and personification are two that I will literally never let go of. Rather than simply dropping it in a sentence, I use them more as a technique to shape my story-telling, and therefore description.
Description is, at its heart, language, and not just in a literal sense. When I was doing my German minor, our department head often told us that language-learning teaches us how cultures construct the world. When you describe, you are constructing your story-world, and teaching the reader how to live through it. Ex: as a Filipino, all of my stories have strong familial influences in them. This ties into using honorifics, into the way that I describe closeness and distance between characters and their kin. The way that my MC, who was not born where she settled, describes home is different from another character, who feels more familiar to one place over the other.
There is a difference between ‘it was sunny’ and ‘the sun scowled’. There is a difference in whether that will change over the book, when they meet their love interest/best friend/family, or remain a fixed star in their narration.
The fun is in discovering what that will be.
MINI PLAYLIST
No Thinking Over the Weekend, Carly Rae Jepsen (a relaxed bop from an absolutely underrated queen of pop)
Unan, Leanne & Naara (Poppy and also a little jazzy? They’re literally so good, seriously just listen to them. I’m begging. The chorus particularly has my heart.)
Trees, Maude Latour (Maude is such an atmospheric singer and I love how her songs feel so genuine and catchy at the same time. Also, this really hit for my ‘early 20s figuring life out’ current state of being.)
As per usual, if you made it this far, I am sending you virtual crinkles and rooting for you! I hope you have a restful weekend (I guess Friday will be the release dates now??) and that all goes well with writing and life.
@gabriellewrite
Loved this post!!!
SUCH a good newsletter and absolutely worth the wait <3333