How to use Psychology to Write Better Descriptions
Everyone wants to write memorable descriptions. But is that a good idea? Quick, what’s the last descriptive paragraph you read. What were the details? If you’re like most people, you don’t remember the descriptive words, but you do remember the emotion you felt, even if it was neutral. Writing memorable descriptions is good, but there’s more to it. In this article we’ll discuss how the brain encodes memory and emotion as well as how attention is allotted to various tasks and how you can use that to write great descriptions.
First up: attention. Attention is a limited resource. Watch this youtube video for a demonstration. It’s only a minute and a half, and well worth the time.
Back yet? Ok, spoilers ahead if you didn’t watch. The task was to count the number of times the people in white passed the ball. About halfway through a person in a gorilla costume marches past, but most viewers miss it. If you didn’t, congratulations, you’re about as perceptive as 75% of the human population. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature. Your brain is trained to look for things but has a limited bandwidth. Think of it like a download speed. Try to cram too much in, and things get corrupted. In this case, you miss what’s right in front of you.
One of the purposes of description is to draw or divert attention. Masterful authors use this to their advantage, playing up some aspects of a scene and downplaying others. This can slip foreshadowing past the reader. Most descriptions are seamless, unnoticeable except for the mental image they form. The reader is never taken out of the story, realizing that they are reading a description. This is known as cognitive fluency. The smoother something reads, the less attention it uses. Short is easier than long.
Emotional Coloring - Descriptions need to convey emotion and as well as other details (such as character, plot, or setting, ideally all three). But how do you do this in a way that leaves a lasting impression without drawing attention to your vivid sunsets and autumn leaves?
Use emotional themes. Not Theme, with a capital T at the novel level. These are smaller. Each scene should have a starting and finishing emotion. These should be different, and ideally polar opposites. This insight comes from Scene/Sequel format, and I suggest reading up on it. If you think of your scene as a spectrum of emotions, starting at one place (say, happiness) and ending at another (sadness), then you can use description to convey that in addition to your dialogue.
Happy thoughts are warm, comforting, and uplifting. So descriptions in a happy portion of a scene should include imagery consistent with happy thoughts. Someone in a joyous mood doesn’t see gray, rainy days. They notice the parent/child pair playing in the puddles, or think about falling asleep to the sound of raindrops. These are the descriptive details you use to evoke the given emotion. As things transition, your descriptions change, focusing on the drab even on a sunny day. It’s not bright, it’s blinding, hot, oppressive. The colors are washed out, and happy events are interpreted through a sad lens: that child playing in the rain is just making work for the parent. There, look at that sad smile. Bonus points if your description doesn’t use direct emotional words like sad or happy.
Drawing Attention - So what draws attention and sticks in our memory?
Primacy - These are the first things you read in a list. For paragraphs, its the first couple sentences. You may notice that you remember the beginning of a list better than the middle. This is because the brain prioritizes information that comes first, assuming it is more important. So put the most important details of your scene first if you want them remembered for the long term. Put them in the middle if you want to bury them.
Recency - These are the final portions of the list. Like primacy, our brain remembers things they hear last. It’s thought that this is because it stays in our short-term memory longer (an outdated term, but not enough people are familiar with working memory). So if you want something to stick in a reader’s mind as they start the next paragraph, put it at the end.
Surprise - Anything out of the ordinary draws attention to itself and away from the things that surround it. This is relative to the surrounding items. Take a list of terms about sleep. If the word pineapple appeared in the list you would sit up and take notice because it has nothing to do with all the other words. But in a list of tropical fruit? Completely normal. You can use this to your advantage. When you want the reader to pay special attention to a detail, mention it in a piece of description it has no place being. Beware: go too far and this will take your reader out of the story. This can also be used to wipe away memory of that foreshadowed plot point two sentences ago. A knife in a knife drawer is invisible when there’s a big bouquet on the table next to it. One draws the attention away, the other does not.
Critical Thinking/Decision Making - Whenever something requires more than a passing thought, it uses up attention. The gorilla fooled you because you didn’t have attention to spare; you were too focused on the ball-passing. If you watch similar videos but don’t follow the instructions, you will almost always pick out the weird occurrence. Reading is one of those tasks, unless you set the reader to work. When you use unfamiliar terminology (like with a magic system), another language, or contradictory description, the reader starts to think. Normally you want to avoid this. It’s dangerously close to knocking the reader out of the story. But done well, it distracts them from the plot point hiding in plain sight. They just don’t have the attention span to contemplate the political web you wove and the fact that someone is walking up to the protagonist. Whatever you give more weight to (description) gets the lion’s share of attention.
Remember, these things take effect on multiple levels simultaneously. The first sentences of a paragraph are more memorable and attention-grabbing than the middle sentences. But if that paragraph is in the middle of a page, it loses some of its punch. And if that page is in the middle of a chapter, ditto. Chapter in the middle of a book, and so on. So write description taking that into account.
For example. Say you need to plant a red herring in the middle of your murder mystery. Early on in a middle chapter, lavish description on the red herring for a couple paragraphs. Come back to it over the first few pages of the chapter. Then somewhere in the middle, bury the clue that disproves the red herring. Make it a single line if you can, and make it as unobtrusive linguistically as possible. Make the reader’s eyes pass right over it without a second thought. Then more red herring. Then hit them with an inconsistency to get them thinking about the solution. If you do it right, they go back and re-read the section and miss the clue all over again because they’re too focused on the contradiction and beginning and end pieces. It must be Colonel Mustard. Never mind that he isn’t in the room for that brief sentence.
But what about emotional punch? How do you write descriptions that set your reader’s heart soaring or plummeting? Oddly enough, this goes back to the above four concepts. But center stage goes to surprise. The thing that makes us stand in awe of poetry is the strangeness of the description. Tear-stained, now a cliché, used to be an extremely evocative description, because tears don’t stain in the usual sense of the word, but it makes perfect sense once you think about it. The same goes for a sunrise bleeding over the horizon.
If you want a description to have a powerful emotional effect, reach for the strange. That’s easy to say from where I’m sitting. But if I read these words in an article I’d be screaming, “How!?”
There are a couple ways. First, write some poetry. It’s not my favorite thing, but it gets the creative juices flowing. Keep your scene in mind and write haiku, iambic pentameter, acrostics, whatever you like. The search for rhymes and bizarre imagery will usually spark something. Structured poetry helps the most because the requirements force you to search for words or make up interesting contractions to fit things in.
Alternatively, get into the head of your perspective character for the scene. What is their profession, their background? What kind of things would they notice? For example, a blacksmith notices things made of metal, maybe they even consider the skill of the craftsman. But if you go one level deeper, that same blacksmith will think of things in terms of what they’re familiar with. They might describe the sunrise as hammering them with light, or speak of the forge-heat of a noon-day sun.
Combine that with the bit on emotional coloring above to craft scenes with absurd emotional punch.
How much description - This is a topic in its own right. I’ll cover it quickly as it goes naturally with the above material, but I recommend reading up on it or listening to some experts wherever possible.
Most experienced authors say you need three well-defined things. That could be three sentences or twenty, depending on the needs of the scene and where you want to draw the reader’s attention. This makes sense when you consider the average person can only keep track of seven things at once (give or take two) and the average paragraph is five to seven sentences. They remember the first and last couple, and forget the middle. So don’t overdo it. Remember that every scene needs to serve multiple purposes, and description within a scene should do the same. You’re describing more than the place where events happen. You’re setting a tone, drawing the reader’s attention to pertinent facts, exploring character through their focus and perspective. You’re describing setting and advancing plot.
That’s all for this one. Let me know if you have any questions. Now, get back to writing.