The Best Way to Approach Descriptions

Welcome to the Write for a Reason podcast. My name is Janet Wilson; I'm a publisher of Christian fiction for young people with Dernier Publishing. If you are a Christian, and new to writing stories for kids and teens, stay tuned for encouragement, creative writing tips and actionable strategies you can implement immediately to become a better writer, and get your books out into the world.

The best way to approach descriptions

When setting a scene, it's good to begin with a description of the general panorama before getting to the details. For example, if we have a scene in our novel where our characters are on a beach, we should begin our description with the sky, the cliffs behind, and any background noises and smells (e.g. the salty smell of the sea, the cry of the seagulls).

Once our readers have the big picture in their mind, it's time to bring them in a bit closer; people laughing and splashing in the waves, children building sandcastles, a boy throwing a stick for his dog . . .

Finally we need to zoom right in to show the details of our character and the action that takes place in this scene.

If we go straight to our characters and their actions without first giving a broad picture of the scene, readers might have to revise their mental picture, and that's annoying!

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