Note #5: Don’t Play With Cylindered Fire

Be careful with description

Description helps readers visualize a story, but it can also be a device for revealing character. Elaborate earrings may connote wealth or taste, while a cluttered home may signal lack of time, high stress, or even genius. A smog-filled, sunless sky may usefully underscore a dark mood. The danger is when a vibrant image becomes too vibrant for its own good, blinding the reader to the clue. A danger I am well acquainted with.

I often catch myself being overly stylistic in a way that leads to a lack of clarity. A while back, I wrote this sentence about a character smoking a cigarette.

“Cylindered fire burns up the cheap brown paper.”

By trying to describe a cigarette in an interesting way, I made it seem like something unique or extraordinary is going on, but all that’s happening is that he’s smoking. In the words of an editor, the description was “oddly innovative,” (my hopes rose) … “in an unhelpful way!” (then fell.)

There’s another crime here, too. I wanted to highlight that the character smokes inexpensive cigarettes because he never stops bragging about being flush with cash. That small detail is a telling clue about his possible deceitfulness, but it’s difficult for the cheap brown paper to compete with the blazing imagery of cylindered fire. The key thing gets lost.

I should’ve just written: “When he lit his cigarette, the cheap brown paper seemed to burn especially quickly.”

The edit improves the clarity while keeping the crucial detail in focus, Meanwhile, cylindered fire is a darling I can kill but still preserve.

Anytime you’re writing, it’s worth asking: is the vivid detailing in your ornate mural, mysterious amulet, or stylish jacket doing a job, or are you just excited about describing it?