Purposeful Prose Advice Column: Depth of Description

Dear Purposeful Prose, 

For as long as I’ve been writing, I haven’t always given much thought to character descriptions. I feel like they’re never as important to my stories, so I allow the character’s actions to do the describing for me. Is this the wrong approach? Should I be doing something else?

There should be balance between descriptions and story progression. They impact one another and, sometimes, coexist. One approach isn’t necessarily “wrong”. An evocative description can be meditative, grounding, immersive, and necessary.

The following excerpt is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse:

“She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!”

For further context, this book follows, mostly, the inner lives of our characters. This passage focuses on Mrs. Ramsay, a nurturing figure whose objective is to maintain James’ (a young boy whose request to visit a lighthouse is denied) sense of wonder and hope. They’d have to visit the lighthouse someday. 

The description that Woolf provides is not physical. It’s the movement of what’s happening around Mrs. Ramsey. Think of it as a character description. Your character projects happiness, sorrow, every emotion into a vast body of water. It’s clean and cold, and it proves through its constant waves that time will not stay still. They give themselves permission to feel everything. 

Even though we don’t get a physical description of the character at this moment, there is still a lot to visualize. We get to spend time with Mrs. Ramsay and, possibly, feel with her. 

Returning to your question, there will be points in the story where description of characters, to some extent, might be warranted. If, for example, a character’s physicality determines how people interact with them, and that’s key to understanding the story, some level of description might be warranted. 

However, that’s not the only reason why you might want more of a description. Sometimes, it’s important for readers to get to know certain characters. Maybe they’re central to the story or you want to signal their importance. 

In my first article for this blog, I wrote about Roy Peter Clark’s journalistic tool, “Get the Name of the Dog”, and I described it as an ideal relationship between a writer and their characters. If there is a dog in the story, and we call them “a dog” in passing, we signal that this dog can be overlooked. When the dog is called Webster, we signal that there is importance tied to this dog, and we should be fond of it. 

Taking this tool further, for your own purposes, look at one of your characters. See how well you can describe them from their hair color to the shape of their nails, their likes and pet peeves. Is their hair usually a little messy? Why? Do they have a favorite spoon for their cereal? What happens in their mind when they need to break their routine? Making these decisions, getting to know your characters better, can benefit your writing process even if you do not use them in your story. You can drop details to signal to your reader that a character has importance. You can use them to contribute to a scene or to make your world feel more real. 

To answer your question more directly, I don’t feel as though your approach is “wrong” if it works for you, but I believe that there can be utility in detailed descriptions if you eventually decide to take a different approach or experiment with them. You can also do some character development work on your own, and that will only help you. I have a lot of different exercises in this blog that you can try or I can send one that’s personalized to you!

If you have a writing or editing-focused question, I would be more than happy to dedicate a post to you. Contact us with any questions you might have or to schedule a free consultation with yours truly!

All submissions will remain anonymous unless you explicitly request for me to include your name.