Must you describe everything to the ‘nth’ degree? Charles Dickens did. So have a lot of other authors. A description is important. It sets the place of the events in the story. It develops characters and their actions. It’s the filling that provides details to make the story sound real, to help readers feel like they’re an active part of the fictional world you’ve created. Without description, stories lie flat – a mere this happened when and where and by whom type of deal. It's always good to start with the bare bones of the story, and then fill in the descriptive details later. I do that some of the time, but mostly I find a need to set the stage as I go along, so that I, too, can feel the story vibe within me. I enjoy writing the descriptive parts of the story. I can feel the power of creation as I write. I don’t always use all that I describe, but it feels good to write it down anyway.

When I was writing my second novel of The Four Seasons series (Summer), I had so much fun describing the totem village of Ksan in northern British Columbia. I was able to weave into the story the scenes of rows of longhouses and totem poles and the main character, Hope’s reverence for the place where her music merged with her ancestry:

“Hope had to crane her neck to look up at the wolf image. As she serenaded the pole with her music, the wolf’s proud face seemed to look down on her with its wise, all-knowing eyes. It was a very wily creature, both physically and spiritually. Its very survival in the wild depended on it. Hope absorbed the feeling of security the wolf gave her. She played her music to the wolf with great reverence, serenading the spirits. This was her music. It was her unique composition. She had improvised on what had already been written and performed. The music was all a part of her spirit. Just as the wolf was a part of her.”

I went into considerable detail describing the scene and Hope, too. Then I concluded with the simple lines: “The space soothed her soul and calmed her nerves. It challenged her thought patterns and placed great demands on her creative energies. It soaked her spirit in reverence and peace. Here was a good place to be.” This raised some serious questions for the main character and the plot moved on from there.

I did edit out several paragraphs of description, realizing that I was getting a little carried away. I had to keep reminding myself that I wanted my readers to imagine the scene, not be bogged down with so much detail that they feel overwhelmed and sense a dissertation rather than a work of fiction. Too much description would only slow down my readers and I wanted them to push forward to the end. Was I successful? I like to think so. I might not be Charles Dickens, but I think I can write a good descriptive paragraph now and then. So can you.