What’s description for? I’ve been working with an author and one of her issues was her use of description.

Is the purpose of description to show the reader what something looks like? The setting, for instance?

Yes, partly. But there’s a lot more it can do.

My author wrote detailed paragraphs about a cafe the characters visited, the food they ordered. When the characters went for a bike ride in the country, there were long paragraphs about the scenery. We were definitely ‘there’ – a guidebook couldn’t have done it better. But the descriptions were flat. Something was missing.

The reader of a novel doesn’t want a guidebook. In a novel, description can perform another important function, besides showing us around. A novel is an experience, usually through a character’s consciousness, and description is one of the ways to involve us in their internal world.

Good description isn’t simply a…