Word Mix-Ups: Adorned vs. Dressed

I have seen many authors use the word adorned as a synonym for dressed, usually in this manner:

     He was adorned in a fine silk doublet of the deepest green, so dark it was nearly black.

This is incorrect. Adorn means to enhance the appearance of something (usually with beautiful, individual objects); it is generally paired with the preposition with, not in. For example:

     The Christmas tree was adorned with lights and tinsel.

     The king demanded that a tapestry depicting his victory be woven to adorn his throne room.

     Her paintings adorned the walls of the manor.

The subtle difference here is that adorned implies that an object has been hung or pinned upon something; it is an individual embellishment or series of embellishments. Clothing (and by extension, dressed) is more encompassing—a complete covering instead of a specific embellishment. Adorned is the equivalent of painting your address on the front of your house in fancy calligraphy; dressed is the equivalent of giving the entire house a new coat of paint.

(It is fair to note that while adorned cannot be used to mean dressed, dressed can sometimes be used to mean something close to adorned. This is probably part of what leads to confusion between the two words.)

Usually, this inappropriate use of adorned appears when a writer wants to say that a character was dressed in something fancy, but wants a more impressive word than dressed. Clothed is your best option, or you could say that the character wore or donned the clothing. But don’t let yourself fall into the trap of abandoning the most effective, useful word for what you want to say simply because it seems common! Common is good—it’s understandable, unpretentious, and undistracting. Save your searches for fancy synonyms for something more important than dressed.

Making Movement Meaningful

Pure dialog can get confusing and even boring; it can also fail to convey the many subtleties that people communicate through means like expression and body language. This is the reason that writers often insert small actions into passages of dialog. The actions could be changes in a character’s expression, small movements or gestures, or specific tasks that the character is performing while they talk. For example:

     “I don’t think we should go after her,” Sofia whispered. She shifted in her seat and closed her eyes with a sigh.

     Matilde glanced at Sofia and then looked away. “Why not?”

    “She decided to leave all on her own. No one made her.” Sofia shook her head and bit her lip. “She obviously doesn’t want to be here.”

     “Maybe . . .” Matilde replied, looking down at her feet while she shuffled them back and forth. “But what happens when she decides she wants to be here after all and it’s too late for her to come back? Chiara tends to be pretty impulsive.”

     Sofia stuck out her tongue. “We still can’t force her to do what she doesn’t want to,” she said, waving her hands.

     Matilde looked up with a frown and then turned away again, wringing her hands. “We could. And maybe we should.”

Now, that passage was packed a little too full of actions—every single line of dialog was accompanied by at least one action. That’s partly because I wanted to fit as many examples as I could into one passage, but many people do write their conversation scenes this way.  But why is that too many actions? Am I saying that you should never have an action to accompany every line of dialog? No. The problem isn’t the number of actions so much as it is the lack of purpose behind so many of the actions.

Let’s list the actions from the passage again:

     shifted in her seat

     closed her eyes

     with a sigh

     glanced at Sofia

     and then looked away

     shook her head

     and bit her lip

     looking down at her feet

     shuffled [her feet] back and forth

     stuck out her tongue

     waving her hands

     looked up with a frown

     and then turned away again

     wringing her hands

What are each of these actions supposed to convey? Why is the character performing that particular action at that point in the conversation?  With some of these actions, the purpose is pretty clear. When someone closes their eyes and sighs, for instance, it’s usually a pretty good indication of weariness or irritation. Hand wringing and lip biting are decent ways to indicate nervousness or internal confliction. And frowns are pretty clear indications of unhappiness or severe confusion.

But even those examples could each have more than one meaning. As for the others, they don’t convey anything meaningful. What is the audience supposed to learn from the fact that Sofia “shifted in her seat”? Is the seat uncomfortable? Is she emotionally uncomfortable and the movement is a physical indication of that fact? Was she trying to relax or get a better view of something? There are so many reasons to shift in one’s seat that simply describing the action carries next to no meaning.

Why is it significant that Matilde looked at Sofia and then looked away? What does that mean? What does it mean that she’s looking down at her feet while shuffling them? Is her turning away after looking up with a frown supposed to tell us something about her thoughts? Because it isn’t. It might be vaguely sort-of hinting at some sort of emotional state, but it sure isn’t informing the audience of anything.

Even Sofia sticking out her tongue is confusing. There are so many ways and reasons that people stick out their tongues:

Each of these images conveys a different emotion, and yet they could all be described as someone “sticking out his or her tongue.” From the context, we could probably narrow down Sofia’s gesture to two or three of these, but it still wouldn’t be clear. Is she disgusted? Petulant? Nauseated? We just don’t know.  Remember—most expressions and movements can indicate more than one emotion, thought, or state of mind. Just because you know which meaning you were trying to convey doesn’t mean that your readers will get it.

“Looks” are probably the worst category of offenders on this front. Throughout the conversations I read, characters are “looking” all over the place. They look at one another, they look at their feet, at the wall, at the table, into the distance, into the sky, at their hands, at their clothes. And most of it doesn’t have any meaning whatsoever. Beware the meaningless look!

This usually happens when a writer can tell that the conversation needs a beat or a brief lull to break up the dialog, but they don’t have anything for the characters to do to provide that break. If you need a beat but you can’t think of a meaningful movement or expression for your character, then give them something to do! In our example above, Sofia could have been trying to finish some (plot-related) paperwork while they conversed or Matilde could have already begun packing to go after Chiara. The possibilities are endless.

Give your manuscript to a friend and ask them to highlight any point where the purpose of movements or expressions was unclear or confusing. If you can’t come up with a meaningful movement to replace the vague one, then don’t be afraid to cut it out entirely.

Perspective Errors: Matching Description and Viewpoint

One of the most important aspects of writing is getting out of your own head and into the heads of your perspective characters. Some characters might be quite a lot like you, but many of them will view the world much differently—and it’s important that you keep your perspective (or the perspective of other characters) from bleeding into the heads of your protagonists, especially when you’re describing the world around them.

In this post, we discussed one way that such perspective bleed can happen—when an author is an expert on a certain topic, it can pop up in their writing even when it shouldn’t. For instance, I’m pretty well-trained in English grammar and editing. If I were writing from the point of view of a well-educated librarian, I might have her note that the text on a sign misused a present-continuous participle and left a modifier dangling. However, if I were writing from the perspective of a largely-illiterate street thug walking past the same sign, describing the sentence using those detailed terms would be completely out of place.

This problem—describing things in ways your perspective character wouldn’t—is probably most common when a perspective character is of a different nationality, race, or gender from the author. For instance, here is the single most common and jarring example that I have come across (and I have come across versions of it many, many times):

     Diana frowned at Detective Mullens. “My husband didn’t keep secrets from me, detective. If he had been involved in something illegal, he would have told me.”

     Detective Mullens raised his hands in a placating manner. “I’m not trying to cast aspersions on your husband, ma’am. I just have to follow every lead and possibility I come across. Do you recognize these ledgers?”

     The detective handed her a three-ring binder. She did recognize it—it held their family finances. It usually sat on a shelf in her and her husband’s bedroom. She hadn’t even realized it was missing. “Where did you find this?” she asked.

     Before the detective could answer, the front door opened and Diana’s twenty-three year old daughter Stefanie walked in. She’d clearly been jogging—her bronze skin was glistening with sweat, her body firm and lean but still curvy. Her dark hair was pulled up in a simple ponytail, though a few strands had fallen loose to dangle in front of her vivid brown eyes and her full, red lips. Her ample breasts were outlined clearly through the tight sports bra she wore, moving up and down as her heavy breathing slowed to normal. She bent down almost sensuously to brush some dirt from her tight red leggings, and Diana frowned when she noticed that Detective Mullens was watching appreciatively.

     Diana cleared her throat, and Stefanie looked up in surprise. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I didn’t see you there. What’s going on?”

Now, I sincerely hope that you all can see the problem in this passage. We’re in Diana’s head—that’s clear from the fact that we’ve been given her thoughts and no one else’s. Therefore, everything we see should come through the filter of Diana’s mind. Everything should be described as she would describe it—and if that is how she would describe her own daughter, there’s something seriously wrong with this family.

These particular scenes usually happen for one of two reasons. First, the (probably male) author is describing the daughter as he, the author, pictures her without any regard to viewpoint. This is poor writing—if your viewpoint doesn’t allow you to describe something in the way you’d like, either change your viewpoint to one compatible with your description or change your description to one compatible with the viewpoint.

The second possibility is that the author wants to convey how Detective Mullens sees Stefanie, because he’s the actual protagonist and we’ve only temporarily leapt to Diana’s perspective. If that’s the case, then why are we in Diana’s perspective? Very few stories are well served by multiple viewpoints—you might as well keep the point of view with Detective Mullens.

(By the way, this particular problem—sexualizing a character while in the viewpoint of a character who wouldn’t sexualize them—is much more common from male authors than female writers. But female writers are definitely not immune to this error, so be on guard!)

These two people should not describe things in the same way. Don't describe what he sees in a way she would describe it, or vice versa.

Always remember that description should match the perspective of the character—don’t let your personal viewpoint or the view of a non-viewpoint character influence description, unless you want to make some unfortunate implications about the perspective character!

For more on this topic, check out this post.

Writing Spicy Description

Last time, we discussed the need to keep your descriptions to the minimum needed amount. Here are a few tips for doing so.

Determine how much description you need: Here’s some useful questions for figuring out how much description to give the reader.

What genre are you writing? If you’re writing a long epic like War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings, then you’ll be able to take a bit more time on description than you would be able to for, say, a fast-paced thriller like The Sum of All Fears or Carrie. Short stories should generally give less time to description than novels. If you’re writing romance, you’ll probably describe character appearance more than you will in, say, a murder mystery; if you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, you’ll probably spend more time describing the fantastic settings than you would in a comedy.

How familiar will the setting or character be to the reader? Some things don’t need description (if a character is buttering toast while they talk to someone, you don’t need to describe the butter knife); some things don’t have to be described but could definitely benefit from some brief description; while other things absolutely have to be described. You can’t just say “the policeman dragged a plangle into the room” without telling me what a plangle looks like.

If your scene features a police officer on the streets of New York City, then the odds are good that your reader will be able to picture the scene clearly with very little description. If the scene focuses on an alien flying a spaceship into a tear in spacetime, then you might need to give a larger amount of description.

How important is the description to the story? If this is a brief scene in a setting that the story won’t return to with a character that won’t be important later, then it’s not that important that the reader picture everything absolutely perfectly. If the setting or character are central to the story, then you’ll want to spend more time on the description.  Again, what is important will depend on the story: if your protagonist is going to recognize a disguised character later because of a scar on their neck, then you’ll probably want to describe the scar when we first meet the character. And for all that people have complained about the nigh-excruciating detail with which Stephanie Meyer described Edward Cullen, let’s face it: those descriptions were important to her audience.

If your reason for describing something in detail is that you really like the amazing and vivid metaphor you’ve concocted, well, too bad. That is not sufficient reason for spending a whole paragraph describing a woman’s hairstyle (or whatever). Now, that doesn’t mean you have to cut the description; give it to some friends, and let them tell you if it’s too much. Try at least ten readers with different tastes; if four or more of them tell you that it’s too much, then cut it down, no matter how much it hurts. Listen to Spock:

Focus on a few strong details: Generally, I recommend focusing on two or three details that give a clear picture of whatever you’re describing. For a very expansive scene or a completely alien and unfamiliar creature, a little more could be allowed. So for an old woman, I might focus on her long white braid, the deep creases in her dark skin, and the slight hunch in her back. Bam: three details, and you’re now picturing something close to what I am. Strong, vivid details often enable the reader to fill in the rest on their own.

Use multiple senses: When writing description, most writers tend to focus on the visual elements of a scene or a character. However, describing the sounds, smells, feel, or even taste of something can often convey a setting more quickly or more vividly than visuals. Let’s say your character wakes up in a white room that smells strongly of blood and antiseptics—your mind probably immediately jumped to a hospital or operating room, right? And the smells are probably giving you a more vivid image than if I’d simply said “your character wakes up in a hospital room.”

This can be especially effective when combined with the two-or-three-strong-details rule: the protagonist is tied to a chair in a dark and windowless room. It is cold and drafty and smells of mouse droppings. That’s three things: the lighting, the feel, and the smell of the room. I could spend more time on each of them, to make things more vivid, but the bulk of the description has been accomplished.

Don’t use two words where one will suffice: I once edited a story where a character approached a sea where “along the shore was a row of several straight wooden walkways that jutted out into the ocean, held up by thick pylons sticking up out of the water.” I edited this to say, “Along the shore was a row of wooden docks.” So that you don’t have to count for yourself, that’s nineteen fewer words. Everyone does this, at some point—I’ve done it myself. Always look for the shortest, most descriptive word possible. A white dog with extremely curly hair should be shortened to a white poodle. He didn’t swing the long black bar with a curved end, he swung the crowbar.

Work in details through action: We’ve already discussed blending action and description a bit in these posts. Paragraphs of pure description can grow tedious very quickly, but purposeful action almost never does. So if your character walks into a kitchen, you might give a brief overview of what the kitchen looks like and who is in it. Then, when your character begins conversing with one of the people in the room, you can use the conversation to give more details about the person—maybe she scrunches her nose when she’s thinking, or perhaps the scar along her arm seems to pain her as she kneads dough. Maybe she tucks a strand of brown hair out of her eye, leaving a smudge of flour on her tan forehead. The protagonist can help her cut vegetables, and you can use this action as an opportunity to describe more details—the appearance of the countertop, the vegetables, or the cutlery; the lighting, the smells. Since the details are smoothly blended into action and dialog, they don’t grow tiring.

Think of description as a spice—it adds delicious flavor and depth when added to more substantial dishes, but can be overwhelming when eaten in large doses on its own.

Description: How Much Is Too Much?

Without turning your head, take a quick inventory of everything that you can see right now. Then do the same for everything you can hear, smell, taste, and feel. It’s a lot, isn’t it?

At this moment, I can see myself—my shirt, my jeans, the brim of my hat, my hair hanging into my eyes, my nose, my hands, and my wedding ring. I can see my computer tower and monitors, keyboard, mouse, a mess of cables, my desk phone, cell phone, notepad, water bottle, and headphones. There’s a sticky note, a plastic cup, and a paper bowl with a plastic spoon on my desk. Beside the desk on my right is a set of shelves and drawers with my satchel on top. Beyond my desk, I can see my trashcan, three walls, a window with raised blinds, a thermostat, fire alarm, lightswitch, and a doorway into another room. For now, I won’t bother describing the other room and its contents, or the yet third room and its contents which I can see beyond that, or the group of people that just walked past me.

You get the point—that was already a lot of information, and I didn’t even go into color or visible textures of any of those things, let alone any of what I can hear, smell, feel, or taste. Plus, I’m already noticing things I didn’t think to mention in my list—the carpeted floor or the ceiling and ceiling lights, among other things.

Describing Scenes

If I were describing this scene in a story—a character sitting at a desk writing—I obviously could not describe every sight, sound, and other sense of the scene. There’s just too much. Our job as writers is to narrow down that vast list of information into just enough description for the reader to picture the scene. How much description is that? The answer depends on the scene, the genre, and your personal preferences. But the general rule of thumb is this: the proper amount of scene description is the absolute minimum amount that you can get away with.

Most writers instinctively put far more description into their story than is needed. Always try to remember: no matter how beautiful, breathtaking, or mind-blowing the scene is, description tends to be boring. Small amounts can be interesting, but any more and it becomes tedious or even purple prose. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your powers of description are so mesmerizing that you are an exception to the rule. 

Pare down your descriptions and then ask some friends to read it. If they still have a clear description of the scene, then cut it down again. Ask some new friends to read it, and keep doing this until people start to say that they can’t picture the scene. Then take it back to the last version and leave it there.

If you’re one of those somewhat rarer writers that tend to put too little description into your story, then do the reverse—add a bit of description here and there until your readers say they can picture the scene, and then go no further.

Next time, we’ll discuss some tips for fitting maximum amounts of description into the fewest possible sentences.

The Figure Problem: Part Two

Last time, we discussed the Figure Problem—what it is, and why it is a problem. We specifically examined situations in which a writer introduces their first character as a nameless “figure” in the distance. But the Figure Problem doesn’t only crop up at the beginning of a story or chapter. Take a look at this example:

     Jaimee moved through the subway station, careful not to jostle anyone or attract attention to herself in any way. Fortunately, most of the busy commuters were too distracted to notice some drably-dressed teenager. She moved into the crowd waiting for the train’s doors to open, and allowed the press of bodies to push her up against the people nearest the train. Those people pushed her back absentmindedly, not noticing when her hands slipped into their pockets and purses. When the doors opened, Jaimee let the crowd carry her onto the train and then slipped out the doors on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder with a smirk; no one had noticed a thing.

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood by the stairs that led up to the street—a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair and skin so tanned that it was beginning to look like a crumpled, damp brown paper bag. The woman wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled up to Jaimee with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

The format of the Figure Problem is here—first, we see a “figure,” and then we’re given a progressively-increasing amount of detail about its appearance and behavior before we finally find out who the figure is. The major difference between this example and last time’s example is the perspective.

Last time, our example started in a vague, third-person omniscient perspective and then eventually jumped into the point of view of the “figure.” This time, we’re in the perspective of another character viewing the figure. Since we’re already in third-person limited from Jaimee’s point of view, we don’t jump to the mother’s point of view at the end.

This perspective change actually solves many of the problems from last time. We avoid the slow, drawn-out beginning and the awkwardness of not being inside the head of the “figure” when there was no reason not to be. However, the new problem that is introduced is a perspective error.

Perspective Errors with the Figure Problem

Remember how third-person limited perspective works? Everything the audience sees should come through Jaimee; we should essentially be riding in her head and seeing what she experiences and thinks. Jaimee wouldn’t look at her own mother, whom she obviously recognizes, and think, “Huh, there’s a woman with bleached-blonde hair, etc.” She would look at the woman and think, “There’s my mother.” Describing the appearance of some “figure” without identifying the person's relationship to the perspective character implies that the character doesn’t have a relationship with the person.

The only reasons to not give the name of a person your perspective character meets are these:

1. If they don’t know one another and your perspective character doesn’t have a name to assign to the person.

2. If the perspective character cannot see, hear, etc., well enough to identify the other person as someone they know.

These rules also apply to other perspectives. In first-person, we're also in the character's head, so we should see things as they see. In third-person omniscient, you can give even more information than the characters have, but you certainly shouldn't be giving less except in rare circumstances.

However, there’s another perspective error to watch out for here. Let’s take our example from before and adapt it to fit the second reason to not give a character’s name:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

With some shadows added to the scene, forcing Jaimee to squint in order to make out details, it now makes sense that she wouldn’t recognize her mother right away. This gives us justification to describe other details of the mother’s appearance before actually identifying her as Jaimee’s mother. So what’s the problem?

We were told that Jaimee couldn’t make out who the figure was, and then a moment later, she calls the woman “mother.” But when did she identify the mysterious woman as her mother? It wasn’t at the moment she spoke—she’d obviously already discerned the figure’s identity at that point. At some point, Jaimee realized that this woman was her mother, and we didn’t see it happen; but we should have, because we’re in her head.

This usually happens because the author doesn’t want to spoil the reveal; an author writing this section probably feels like the line “Hello, mother” has a certain oomph to it that would be lost if the reader already knew that the figure was Jaimee’s mother, even if they only found out a moment before. As in yesterday’s example, however, this is unnecessary. Not every bit of information has to be “revealed.” There’s no real reason to hide that this is Jaimee’s mother for the sake of that line.

Or the writer could be trying to cut out superfluous lines and didn’t feel it was necessary to tell us that Jaimee recognized her mother. In some situations, that might be permissible, but I wouldn’t recommend it in this instance (or most instances, for that matter). Jaimee was specifically trying to figure out who the woman in the shadows was—skipping over the moment of realization isn’t a good idea.

A perspective-error-free version of our original example might look like this:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Jaimee winced. It was her mom.

     Her mom toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mom hissed.

A Final Note

Before you go, there is one more element of the Figure Problem that I should mention: 

The word “figure” is extremely vague and nondescript. It gives the reader almost no useful information. Think about it: how often can you see a “figure” without being able to identify more descriptive characteristics? You could probably tell a figure’s gender from a distance; at the very least, you could tell that it was a human, a person. You might be able to tell their relative age—whether they’re a child or an adult. If you can be more descriptive, then do it! Only resort to something as vague as “figure” if you absolutely must.

The Figure Problem: Part One

     The scene begins. Wind blows across a harsh desert, or maybe rain is falling on a dreary city alleyway, or perhaps sun is shining through gaps in the leaves of a peaceful green forest. Wherever the story is taking place, a figure appears in the distance. The figure is stumbling, or hurrying, or strolling; maybe we’re told that the figure is lost, or avoiding being seen, or is relaxing. They could be panting, or mumbling, or whistling. Slowly, the view dials in on the figure. It looks to be male, or female, or perhaps neither. We’re told the figure has a ragged beard, or a dark hat and trenchcoat, or metallic skin. Gradually, we get more and more details about the appearance and behavior of the figure. Perhaps we’re expressly told that the figure has survived a plane crash, or is a cat burglar on the way to a job, or is an oddly-built android; after this point, the “figure” might begin to be referred to as the survivor, the thief, or the android. Whoever they are, the figure keeps moving, and more details of their appearance and what they’re doing are gradually revealed.

     Finally, after anywhere from several paragraphs to several pages, we find out the name of the figure—maybe they meet someone else who calls them by name, or maybe the writer simply felt that this would be a good point to reveal it. From this point on, they cease to be the “figure,” the “survivor,” the “thief,” or the “android.” They are called by name for the rest of the story, whether they’re the protagonist, a side character, or a temporary, otherwise-unimportant vessel to carry us to the actual plot.

If you have been writing for any length of time, then you’ve probably written some variation of this scene. Everyone does, at some point or another, and I do mean everyone. It’s almost always a bad idea.

Why is this a problem?

Because it is slow, distant from the character, and usually distant from the plot; put those together, and you’ve got a whole basket of boring. And being boring is the worst sin a piece of purported entertainment can commit.

Slow: Usually, not much is happening while the “figure” walks across the screen for us to admire. Why? Because it is difficult to blend description and action, so the writer is getting all of that pesky description out of the way before they actually get to the action. That’s an adequate workaround, but it would be a better idea to start closer to the action and learn to work in shorter, quicker bits of description along the way. We’ll go over tips for doing that well at a later date.

Distant from the character: Why don’t we know the character’s name? There is almost never a good reason—new writers simply withhold information out of habit, trying to give every bit of info through some sort of “reveal.” This isn’t a movie; we don’t need to zoom in from an establishing shot, drawing closer and closer to the figure until we suddenly get their name and jump inside their head to start finding out what they’re thinking about what they’re doing and the things around them. That just doubles up on the slowness of the piece—first, we spend pages setting the scene, and then we have to sit through the character thinking about everything that we’ve just seen, forcing us to go over it all again? Just put us in their head and give us their name right from the start. Help us know them through their actions and how they perceive their surroundings, and it will be more interesting.

Distant from the plot: All of this scene-setting isn’t the plot, it’s a gradual meander toward the plot. But your readers already approached the story—they bought your book or borrowed it from a friend or looked up your story where it’s available online. Don’t languish in non-action because you’re so impressed with your breathtaking powers of description. Your readers picked up a story, so just get to it.

As I mentioned before, almost every writer has done this at some early point of their career, usually well before they got published. I did this on multiple occasions before someone pointed out to me why it was a problem. Ask an author sometime; they’ll probably know about the Figure Problem (though not necessarily by that name) and will be able to remember when they did it themselves. So don’t feel bad if your current masterpiece begins this way—you’re in good company.

In this post, we discuss how the Figure Problem can become even worse.

"Looking With Eyes"—Avoiding Redundant Description

Here are some sample sentences from works I've edited:

1. Derek surveyed their surroundings with his cloudy gray eyes.
2. She kissed the envelope with her full lips, leaving a bright red lipstick mark behind.
3. He grasped the sword hilt in his shaking hands.

What's the problem here? Take a moment to look again.

The problem is that each of these sentences contains an awkward, redundant phrase. In example one, the phrase "with his cloudy eyes" is unneeded—how else would someone survey their surroundings, after all? In the second example, of course she kissed "with her full lips." That's the body part that kisses. In example three, we already know that he's grasping with his hands, so telling us that is redundant and unnatural.

So why do writers do this? If you'll look at our example sentences, you'll notice that each of the named body parts is preceded by an adjective: cloudy eyes, full lips, and shaking hands. These adjectives are the reason the authors included the redundant phrase. 

In example one, for instance, Derek is being introduced to the audience for the first time. The author wanted the readers to know that his eyes were a cloudy gray, but didn't simply want to say "Derek's eyes were a cloudy gray."  And that was a good goal—this is a more interesting way to find out what the character looks like—but you can usually do better than an otherwise-redundant phrase.

Here are some examples of how these sentences could be reworked.

Make the body part the subject of the sentence: Just about every sentence needs a subject, after all, so it's unlikely to be redundant.

1. Derek's cloudy gray eyes surveyed the surroundings.
2. Her full lips kissed the envelope, leaving a bright red lipstick mark behind.
3. His shaking hands grasped the sword hilt.

Give the body part something else to do: Add a phrase or sentence that further describes the action of the original sentence.

1. Derek surveyed their surroundings; the blinding light made his cloudy gray eyes water.
2. She kissed the envelope. Her full lips left a bright red lipstick mark behind.
3. His hands shook uncontrollably as he grasped the sword hilt.

Try to work the adjective in somewhere or somehow else: This can be the trickiest solution, but also often the most subtle and graceful.

1. Derek surveyed their surroundings. Lina studied his eyes; they were intense and focused as he searched, the same cloudy grey as the water beneath the boat.
2. She kissed the envelope, leaving behind full red lipstick marks.
3. He grasped the sword, trying to keep the point from wavering. It didn't work.

P.S.

Remember that specifying that a character performed an action "with" something is fine if it wasn't clear how the action was performed. For instance:

He sliced the steak with a worn shark-tooth knife.

This is a fine way to describe the knife. It's not redundant because there is more than one tool for slicing steak, so it's natural to explain what the character is using to slice.

Overview: First-Person Perspective

I discussed here the most common perspectives and tenses that are seen in fiction writing. Over the next few weeks, we'll delve into each of these modes of writing with a little more specificity and discuss some of the strengths and foibles of each.  Today we'll look at first-person perspective.

A story told in first-person perspective is being told by one of the characters in the story, usually the central protagonist. Here's an example:

     I closed my eyes and jumped off of the roof, silently praying that Dall was as good a pilot as he claimed. The duke shouted in alarm, screaming for his men to stop me, and then his voice was drowned out in an angry rush of wind.
     I had been determined to keep my eyes closed as I fell, in hopes that I would be less afraid if I couldn't see the ground approaching. But it turns out that not knowing how far away the ground is was far more frightening than knowing. My eyes popped open after only a few seconds of falling.
    The ground wasn't nearly as far away as I would have liked, and for a brief moment I panicked; then Dall's skimcar appeared from around the side of the building. Dall waved at me from the cockpit as he pulled up alongside me, matching my pace. I reached out and grabbed the top of the car, my fingers clenching so hard that I thought they might actually bend the di-steel.
     Dall slowly maneuvered the skimcar beneath me and then slowed our descent. He slowed more abruptly than I would have liked, and I thudded into the cockpit with a grunt, spread-eagled. It wasn't bad enough that it hurt, but it did knock the wind from me.
     "Sorry, Joan" Dall said with that irritating grin of his, his voice muffled by the glasstic between us.
     "Just let me in!" I shouted.
     He shook his head. "Not until we come to a complete stop. Too dangerous otherwise."
     "Too dangerous?" I shrieked. "I just jumped off a three-hundred story building without knowing for sure that you were down here, and you think that would be too dangerous?"
      I should take a moment to mention that I'd had a little problem with heights ever since I was six years old, and Dall knew that perfectly well. He was just being a jerk.
     "You'll be fine out there for a minute or two," Dall replied, still grinning.
     "Two minutes?"

In the case of this example, one of the characters—Joan—is telling the story, as though she were sitting in front of us speaking. She uses "I" to refer to herself, marking this as first-person perspective.

So, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of first-person perspective?

Advantages

Intimate: Because the character is relating the story themselves, first-person perspective often creates a more close, intense, and intimate feel than other perspectives, and the action often feels more immediate.

Strong Personality: When a character is relating a story "in their own words," so to speak, it can often be much easier to get their personality across than it might have been in another perspective.

Unreliability: If you want to tell a story with an unreliable narrator, first-person perspective is often the way to go. Since the perspective character is telling the story, their opinions and prejudices can color the narrative, or they can even outright lie to the reader. This can make for some very interesting stories.

Info Dump: It's easier in first-person for your narrator to step away from the story for a moment to explain something that the reader needs to know; Joan did it near the end of our example.

Simplicity: First-person can often be one of the easiest perspectives to write without making perspective errors.

Disadvantages

Most limited perspective: Since one of the characters is telling the story, the author cannot relate anything that the main character cannot see. If you want your audience to know something, then your main character has to know. You can't just jump to someone else's head for a bit and then come back. (There are stories with multiple first-person perspectives, but these can be very tricky to write well.)
Difficult to explain character appearance:   After all, if I were sitting and telling you a story, I wouldn't need to explain what I look like, would I?  Look back over our example; there's not any information there on what Joan looks like, and it would be very awkward to try to fit in a description of her anywhere.
Difficult to make the audience worry for the character: Since first-person perspective requires the main character to be alive and well to tell the story, it is difficult to get your audience to worry about the safety of the narrator. How would the story be told, after all, if the main character weren't around to finish it?  This is particularly true of first-person stories told in the past tense.