Using our rules from yesterday, let’s look at when you need to describe settings. Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz featured the word “gray” six times in the first paragraph. When the famous Hollywood adaptation was done (not like the previous ones which are best left forgotten), the director’s decision to film Oz in color and Kansas in sepia reflects Baum’s vision.
Whether or not Professor Marvel’s jacket turned out to belong to L. Frank Baum or not I can’t verify, but it’s the kind of trivia that actually happens.
Some books dwell on details and descriptives. Genre demands it in certain cases – Noir detective novels have to feature shadows and alleyways, dim lights, carpets with oriental details that always absorb the blood from a murder.
Any kind of time travel novel has to dwell on people’s attire – one drastic way to show the sudden shift from modern times to ancient or future.
Cozy detective novels must always reflect on candles and book cases (trust me, read a couple).
The trick is this – describe only as much as you need to. Read any novel and underline (or write down) all the details describing the room. You’ll find to your surprise how little descriptive is used!
Let’s look at a scene from A Christmas Carol where description is used to excess – important for this novel as it must establish Scrooge’s wealth, his miserliness, and the impact of having just seen his door knocker transform into Jacob Marley’s face.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said ‘Pooh, pooh!’ and closed it with a bang.
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared
to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across
the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.
This is masterfully done. No description of the house is given, save that we know a shoddy job was done in placing the door knocker on (no doubt cheap labor). An impression of the size of the house is given by the description of the door slam. We imagine a dark house, with little in the way of furnishings. Indeed, Scrooge bought the house as a status symbol (large house equals success), but his money grabbing ways are enhanced by a mostly empty house. The word cavernous could have been employed here, but Dickens chose to allow the word echoes to do the work.
Let’s read on. Dickens employs a great deal of description here.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.
A Christmas carol (charles dickens)
Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and
a poker.
The descriptions reflect Scrooge searching each room, eyes roving the rooms, looking at the sparse furniture with a fearful eye.
To show you how little people take in detail, check every movie of “A Christmas Carol” and look to see if any of them show a steam locomotive racing through Scrooge’s house.
You noticed that, right?
There is a reinforcing of an earlier use of darkness in Scrooge’s approach to his house. We have the description of Scrooge’s house, and more, a reinforcing of descriptions to make sure we’ve grasped that Scrooge spends a considerable amount of thought on how to spend as little money as possible while earning the maximum amount of money possible.
What has Dickens omitted?
Where’s the maid? A status symbol of London at this time was that maids were employed by successful people to tend house. Scrooge is inordinately wealthy – that has been established – and Scrooge does just enough to show his wealth. Expensive house, but little in the way of furnishings. Wears fine clothing, but keeps old shoes in case his current ones need cobbling. The old shoes might suggest a lack of money (intolerable), but keep Scrooge from spending money on new ones (more intolerable). Darkness means saving money on tallow, beeswax candles, coal and wood.
Wood?
We know he’s used a room as the wood room. There must be only enough wood in it to allow for fires in case of the coldest nights (”a small fire in the grate”).
We’ve actually learned very little. Does Scrooge have night tables? A bed (we know he does from other mentions of it). Does he own a dining room table? Or a small table with a single chair? Books on the shelves? Newspapers? How many suits in his closet? Mirrors?
Yet your imagination has supplied a host of details of the scene to the point you’d swear the book gave you all that.
And Dickens portrayed all this with a master’s touch, giving you less than a dozen descriptives and your brain supplied the rest. Comparatively, Dickens has given far more detail of Scrooge’s house than most books bother to.
Assignment
Take a novel, and search one chapter for descriptives of rooms and locations. Underline or write down all the descriptives you see. How much does the author supply, and how much does your imagination?
