In your first draft, use as many clichés as you need to, just get the story down. In your revision, however, treat every single cliché as an opportunity for brilliance. Ask yourself how you can describe this in an entirely new way. For instance, in her story "Edge," Melia McClure could have written "My heart started pounding" to describe a character being surprised, and instead she wrote, "My heart paused, and then bloomed large in my chest. I thought someone was in the room." The language is original and contributes to the tone of her story, whereas a cliché would have detracted from that tone.
Part of being specific in description is also being original, avoiding the usual path. But there may be times when you use a mix of vague and specific details to highlight certain qualities in your characters. For instance, in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald devotes several paragraphs to Daisy's voice:
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.Not every element in the description is specific. "Low, thrilling voice" says very little: lots of people might have voices described this way. The phrase "bright things" is even more vague, but to a purpose: It subordinates all of Daisy's other qualities to her voice; and the importance of her voice is the effect it has on men.
This description of Daisy's voice reverberates later:
"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of--"It's a shocking line when read for the first time. Part of that shock comes from the blatantness of it: it's such a bald statement about what Daisy symbolizes to Gatsby. But it wouldn't work if it weren't also so original. No one had ever described a voice that way before, and no one ever legitimately can again. It belongs wholly to this particular character and this story.
"It's full of money," [Gatsby] said.
As readers, we have the sense that the narrator has been groping toward this conclusion all along, in all his descriptions of her voice. The shock comes in the crudeness of it: that all of that description should come down to this one soiled thing, and that it should come from Gatsby, who has moved heaven and earth to be with her there.
Return to the list of description tips.
