Con­tin­u­ing with recaps from the Mys­tery Writ­ers of Amer­ica Uni­ver­sity pre­sen­ta­tions, I’m shar­ing Rex Burns’ les­son on Set­ting and Description.

In his open­ing remarks, he told us “Story is num­ber one. It’s how you tell it.”

First, he defines set­ting as “the time and loca­tion of an action” and descrip­tion includes the means of pic­tur­ing that set­ting for the reader. He also stressed the impor­tance of set­ting in a mys­tery because, “that’s where the clues are.”

Uses of descrip­tion include sup­port­ing the theme of the story, which may include symbolism.

(My aside is that I’ve never con­sciously thought of sym­bol­ism in my work, and this usage takes me back to my high school teacher, Mr. Holtby. We were always tasked with find­ing the mean­ing behind the story, and one stu­dent finally asked him if authors actu­ally tried to write that way. His answer, which has stuck with me and kept me from despair when I’m try­ing to think of my work as any­thing but shal­low dreck, was “Prob­a­bly not, but when he’s look­ing for the right word for a sen­tence, that’s going to be the one that fits.”)  End of my take. Back to Mr. Burns.

Burns went on to men­tion other uses of descrip­tion – to fur­ther the action, to pace the action, to mod­u­late the story’s mood, and to reveal char­ac­ter. The world fic­tion authors are writ­ing about it a fic­tional one, yet it’s their job to make that world real to the reader for the dura­tion of the story. Descrip­tion is one of the most com­pelling devices to this end.

Another aside – Mr. Burns is a pro­fes­sor of cre­ative writ­ing and Eng­lish, so his talk was filled with “def­i­n­i­tions” of things. Whether we give it a label or not, the tech­nique is there.

He sug­gests the use of “imag­is­tic com­pres­sion” and gave exam­ples of keep­ing imagery short, espe­cially in mys­tery, to leave room for action and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. As Chekov said, ” Don’t tell me the moon is shin­ing; show me the glint of light on bro­ken glass.”

When more detail and descrip­tion is war­ranted, he sug­gested mov­ing from the gen­eral vista, or a broad view, to a par­tic­u­lar image that empha­sizes a key qual­ity of the scene. The author’s job is to ori­ent read­ers with­out being obtrusive.

In a mys­tery novel, descrip­tion can fur­ther the action by plac­ing clues in the set­ting. A fin­ger­print, a pud­dle of water, or a book out of place. He also sug­gests the use of metaphor and sim­ile, although he warns to use them sparingly.

Pac­ing can be any­thing from where you place chap­ter breaks to how long your para­graphs are. Short descrip­tive pas­sages can also pace the story’s flow. You don’t want to divert the reader’s atten­tion, but rather broaden it.