Metaphorically Speaking – or Not

What I'm reading: Seal Team Six, by Howard E. Wasdin

First – a new contest in my Deals & Steals tab. I've got too many books, and would love to find new homes for them.

Next: I'm over at Beth Groundwater's blog today, responding to her interview questions, one of which requires I reveal something I've never posted anywhere else. 

Note: today's post is based on the kind of reading and writing I do--often referred to as "commercial fiction" to distinguish it from "literary fiction." If you're reading or writing literary fiction, feel free to ignore my observations.

I struggle with descriptions. I don't like metaphors. Or similes. At least I don't like having to come up with good ones. And they have to be good, or they're a waste of time.

Things to watch for:

1. Use the vocabulary of your character, not yours.

Here's a snip from DANGER IN DEER RIDGE. Grinch has brought Elizabeth to his private place in the woods.

“I used to sit here and look at the sky. I knew someday I’d be a pilot.”

“Just the sky?” She swept her arm in a broad circle. “What about the way the water sparkles in the sunlight. And how the aspens dance when the breeze passes through their branches. It’s like the trees are wearing sequined evening gowns.”

He smiled. “I admit, I never conjured up that evening gown image. But yeah, this whole place is … serene, I guess.”

Now, Grinch was brought up in the country, became a pilot, and works for a covert ops team. If he'd been the one describing the scene using Elizabeth's words, would it have worked? I don't think so. (Obviously, because I wrote it with Elizabeth speaking them!)

7 Considerations When Writing Descriptions

Thanks to Jenyfer for her post yesterday. Most of us haven't had to pick up stakes without notice, especially not knowing if or when we can get back to what we considered "normal." And don't forget, she's got a prize for one commenter, and you have until Friday to enter. Scroll down and leave a comment under her post if you haven't already.

On Monday, I talked about how descriptions are tied into the depth of POV you're using for your story. I write deep POV, generally 3rd person. I prefer it, so this post is geared toward descriptions using that viewpoint.

Seven things to consider when writing descriptions.

1. What's happening in the story? Is it an action scene? If so, would your character really be noticing what you've spent three paragraphs describing? If bullets are flying, or the bad guys are on the way, or even if they think the bad guys might be on the way, where's their attention going to be focused? They're likely to be listening and watching—but for things 'bad guy' related, not that the sounds of the surf reminds them of that delightful vacation they took five years ago to Hawaii—and, this is definitely not the place to stop and have them remember what they did on that vacation.

2. Who is your character? Would a guy who's idea of a good time is sitting on the couch, thumb on remote, flipping between 3 football games actually notice (or even know) that the woman entering the room at a banquet is wearing a specific designer label? Would he recognize the music playing in the room as Vivaldi? Would he know the painting on the wall is an original (or copy) of a Degas? Would he describe the color of the walls as mauve, taupe or ecru? Does he know what those colors are?

3. Where is your character? Often, you'll see a character mentioning that the character entering the room is wearing a "grey wool suit" or a "red silk blouse" or something to that effect. I don't know about you, but I can't recognize fabrics from a distance—heck, I probably wouldn't recognize them if I touched them. Can you spot the difference between 'silk' and 'silky'? These sorts of observations, while adding to description, can slow the pace if it's not something that would be logical for the character to recognize. Those sorts of details put the author on the page.

Scenes, Descriptions and POV

What I'm reading: Snake Skin by C.J. Lyons, Wicked Becomes You, by Meredith Duran

Want to win 21 mystery books? Check the Deals and Steals tab.

One of the "perks" to getting the rights back to a previously published book, especially one you wrote years ago—and ever more especially, your very first published book—is that you can make changes. I've already talked—at length—about updating the book to make it more current. But what about just making a better book?

So, as I await getting the rights back to my first book, I'm working on improving it. I've gone back and looked at some early drafts, and parts I cut before submitting. The first draft of the book was 143,000 words long. The published version: just under 90,000. So there were a LOT of cuts.

I went back to some very early drafts. One scene showed my hero and heroine in a restaurant. In my efforts to paint clear pictures for readers, I'd spent several paragraphs on the waiter coming to the table, taking orders, and the usual "mundane" stuff that accompanies eating out.

I was tempted to include some of that scene. After all, aren't we supposed to include descriptions, involve the senses, and make things realistic for the reader? And I thought I'd done a halfway decent job, trying to Show, not Tell.

This was what I had (and I've not edited it at all—it's here for content only; this was written in 2003, so be kind with your thoughts.)

How Light is it?

What I'm reading: Husband for Hire, by Susan Wiggs

The clocks fell back Saturday night. Since we've moved a bit farther north and a lot higher up, I've noticed much greater variations in sunrise and sunset hours. Although it's nothing like our trip to Alaska, where it didn't seem to get dark at all in Fairbanks, there are more differences here. In Orlando, it was barely noticeable. But here, when we moved into our house in mid-Spring, we noticed the sunlight waking us up hours earlier than it ever did in Florida. One of my first purchase requirements was window treatments that would block out the pre-five a.m. wake up call. And since I don't drive at night, daylight until after 9 pm made life easier. Of course, the flip side is that winter days will be much shorter. But we're not so far north that we'll be living in darkness for the better part of the day.

Light is important when we're writing—and I'm not talking about having enough light to work by. I'm talking about how much we can describe in our scenes. One of my critique partners questioned a scene I'd written:

Decking the Walls

In addition to getting some of our furniture delivered, we had about a week off from contractor action. In other words, our home was ours for a while.

We've got the installation date for our countertops at last. And, as I feared, this was indeed the one item that fell well outside the window the company had given us when we ordered the materials. So, instead of today, it's one week from today before we have a kitchen that looks like a kitchen. It'll still be a few more days before everything else is hooked up and usable, but I'm looking forward to having a sink. And a stove. And a dishwasher that isn't in the middle of the living area.

But the place is beginning to look and feel like home, and I think it's because I finally got out the hammer, ladder and picture hangers and decked the walls with our personal (and familiar) belongings.

Reality in characters?

What I'm reading: Bones, by Jonathan Kellerman

Following through on yesterday's post about things that can 'date' novels, I recall my first writing mentor chastising me for describing a scene where a group of volunteers was repairing a house to "the barn raising scene in Witness." She called it 'cheating' to use someone else's description. Given how long it's been since Witness came out now, it would have also dated the book, although I suppose it's on television often enough that people who weren't even born when it hit the theaters have seen it several times.

What about character descriptions? One question that crops up in blog interviews is, "Who would play your characters if they made your book into a movie?" (Sorry, hubby, but it's probably not going to happen in this lifetime, but hang in there). I'm not a movie-going person, and don't watch a lot of television. I'd be hard-pressed to conjure up images of the latest celebrities if an author used them to describe a character. So, not only would they date the book, they might be lost on readers.

I prefer to paint my characters with much broader strokes, and let the readers fill in the details with their own images. Diana Gabaldon says the same thing: she refuses to answer the question because she wants readers to keep whatever images they've got of Jamie and Claire.

I'm not much into paranormal or YA books, so the Twilight phenomenon has passed me by. However it's buzzing around the blog circuit now that the movie is out, and it's interesting to follow the threads where people have been 'disappointed' because the characters didn't match the visions they brought into the theater with them.

When I started writing, I wrote Highlander fan fiction, and the characters were already defined. When I adapted one of my short story ideas into What's in a Name?, the hero, Blake Windsor, bore an uncanny resemblance to Duncan MacLeod. However, I had to go in and describe him in more detail, because the novel was not a Highlander story, and readers needed to see Blake. But the first time we see Blake, I don't bother with a lot of detail. Partly because Kelli, the heroine, is trying to get rid of him, so she's not going to spend a lot of time analyzing every facial feature, and partly because I didn't want to stop the progress of the story and make the reader remember a lot of details. So, this is all we see:

She inched the door open. Swallowed. Twice. A man waited on her porch, wearing jeans and a windbreaker over a black turtleneck, holding an olive-green duffel bag. He stood at least six-two, with black hair that hung almost to his shoulders. Even the fact that his face and a razor hadn’t kept company in several days didn’t detract from his raw good looks.

“I’m Kelli.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. Dark chocolate brown, they grabbed and wouldn’t let go.

I'd rather the reader fill in the blanks for what constitutes "raw good looks."

Today's Gratitude List:
1. Nit-picky crit partners who make me think.
2. No school this week, so no traffic on the way to the Y
3. Richard, my hairdresser, who is one of my best promoters.