What Can Your Character See

I've talked about this before, but it's been a while. You have to be careful how you paint your scene. Most of the time, as you make your way through your book, someone is seeing this or noticing that along the way, but really, unless you're head-hopping (I hope not), one person might not notice all the details of their surroundings unless they're actively trying to.

Different kinds of characters will concentrate on different things. There's the painfully shy girl who probably couldn't tell you what anyone wore, ever, and could never identify a killer if their life depended on it, even if they were in the room and ostensibly witnessed the killing. She might be able to tell you if the floor had been swept though, or what color socks she wore yesterday, probably every day of the week. This kind of character might not even notice what color the walls were painted or whether the curtains were open or closed.

There is the guy who might notice a coat only if it could conceal a gun, like Bourne in Bourne Identity. He might be able to tell you such things as how many men are in the room and if any of them might be inclined toward fighting, if they were ever challenged and not given the chance to run away.

Police officers are trained to notice a lot in a short period of time. They notice people, colors, and environment. Don't get me wrong; I'm no cop, but don't make your cops supernatural in their visual acuity.

With these variations in mind, you now need to consider your character's setting. The instance I have in mind came from the book I'm reading at the moment. This guy, a police detective, was strapped to a bed. He had been drugged, and though I suppose it's possible, waking to instant alertness seems a little off to me. I'm not questioning that though. The first thing he did was look around. That's fine, but if you're strapped to a full sized bed (specified in the book) I'm thinking you're not going to notice anything about the floor. Also, since he was tarazed and then drugged prior to being brought here, taking note of the decor might not be at the top of his to-do list, but he's a cop and he was looking around. He noticed wall color, ceiling color, the fact that the overhead light was hooked up oddly. Now, the floor was also described, but really, strapped flat on your back, the floor can't be seen and a cop might not bother with the floor, even if he was standing on it. His concern with the floor would revolve around traction. You might be surprised at how few people really take note of floors.

Another thing he noticed, that the writer was trying to clue us into early (maybe too early), was that at least one wall was curved. Now unless that wall was VERY curved, meaning the dome was rather small, such an anomaly wouldn't have been noticed in that first look-around. There were other details that were there for the writer's benefit, that probably wouldn't have attracted a second thought, not right off the bat. I mean, he has other things far more pressing to worry about right in that moment. There were strange people in the room. He didn't know where he was. Not to mention the fact that they had him strapped down. Not exactly the circumstances where one mulls over the decor.

In this description of a curved wall, one wrong word turned the whole thing topsy-tervy. The wall was said to be the 'back' wall. Now, go back to the orientation of your character, flat on a bed. Where would this 'back' wall be? Where is the door? Where is the bed in relation to the door? Did he need to look down past his left foot to see the door? Was the 'back' wall, the wall behind his head? No, there wasn't any window, but he made no mention of that little detail. How many rooms have you been in that didn't have a window? Would you notice the lack if you found yourself waking up in such a room? Would you think 'basement' first and maybe test the air to see if it smelled like one?

So, just remember when describing your scene. Remember what you can see, and remember what isn't there as well. Remember what is within his range of view and filter it by importance to the moment. In the case of this book, there was plenty of time to reinforce the roundness of the location and why there was no windows. Just beyond the door was culvert-shaped halls leading to and from divided and undivided domes the place was made of. He got a tour pretty much first off, so telling us in the first scene that one wall was not flat was a bit of overkill in the wrong place.You have the whole book to cover all the bits and pieces of scene surrounding your character; you don't need to crowd it all in all at once.

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Descriptions - What do You See?

Stop and think for a moment - How do you see the world around you, and how do you go about noticing it? Then comes the fun part - how do you translate that into words?

There are several levels of seeing, and remember, you can only see what is in front of your eyeballs, though peripheral vision counts too.

First would be the casual notice. If you're walking down the street, consider all that you notice and why you notice them. You see cars and fellow sidewalk walkers, and you see them primarily because they are moving. On some level you make sure their motion will not intersect with your motion. You notice those objects and people who are not in motion only in so much so you don't run into them. Now tell me, could you describe them? Guys might notice a cool car and therefor be able to describe it, and girls might notice a nice shirt, dress or perhaps hairstyle. This extra interest would be the next level of seeing. So there's this red-hot red Ferrari stuck in traffic, or this woman wearing the shortest skirt you'd ever seen just walked by, or whatever oddity comes to mind, I'm sure you can recall some. Now tell me, what do you hardly notice at all? Do you notice the sidewalk or the street? How about the buildings you're walking by? Could you tell me what shop or building was three away from the one you were headed to? How about parking meters or light poles? What other things clutter the street to your favorite coffee shop. Next time you go, pause a moment and make a list of all the things you see along the way. I'd be surprised if your list was short, and don't cheat by driving there and parking out front - it's not the same. haha

The next level of seeing would be in looking for some place, you might notice differences along the way. Lets say you drove to your home town or neighborhood for the first time in say ten years. After a lifetime of familiar this or that, differences would be glaring. New storefronts, new houses where old ones used to be, empty buildings where something favored used to be. There are different levels here to. You are looking for the familiar and finding them or not, but don't forget all the other things.

The next level, and perhaps the hardest to deal with, is the scrutiny. When you or your character stops for a moment to consider their surroundings carefully. You need to remember that you can only see what is in front of your eyes, and only what is in view. It's tempting to map out the immediate area, and that's fine for use somewhere along the line, but if your character hasn't seen first hand, or heard of some portion on that map, he can't know of it. There might be twenty men hung from the branches of the trees in a picturesque orchard, but if they aren't visible from the house, unless your character takes a stroll down into that orchard or catches a whiff of death and decay on the wind, he's not going to know anything is amiss in it's depths.

Now that I've got you thinking about what and how you see, now comes the fun part - putting it into words. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that's probably true. Take that stroll to the coffee shop, by the time you devoted say one to five words to each thing you noticed along your walk, you might have near a thousand by the time you reached your destination. And the trip to your home town, since the view and the details are different, still you'd likely have roughly a thousand words chocked up from the time you entered the city limits to the time you reached your old house. Even the scrutiny is the same; how many words would it take to describe the view from your front door?

Descriptions are difficult to handle, especially if you want to avoid the information dump. However, thought can go a long way toward accomplishing that. Small-talk with a friend can too. Be careful with this; endless smalltalk can have your audience walking away bored. Trickle you descriptions in one step at a time. Talk about that one thing only if and when it catches our attention, only if it moves, or if we need to avoid it. Stop to scrutinize your environment only when it applies directly to your plot or to distract you from it for a much needed moment of escape.

Learn to consider your story as a tapestry. There's the warp, the design and color, which would be the main point of your story. Then there is the weft of the tapestry - all the threads that hold the warp together, that would be the environment, the background, all the little details that gives your story its life and reality.