Making Your Descriptions Vivid and Memorable

Let's pretend you wrote this sentence:

She was 5'6" and had red hair and green eyes.

That's a perfectly fine description. Leave it there. You did good. Have a sticker. *Hands you a sticker* 

*Takes back sticker* Psych! That is a terrible description. Can you see her? I can't. Try this description instead:

She was tall for her age, and her red hair came to her waist. Her green eyes sparkled with mischief. 

This is a little better. It gives a little insight into her personality, and does a better job of showing rather than telling. But I think we can do a little better. This time, let's add some action to our description.

Her green eyes sparkled with mischief as she slipped the principal's wallet into her purse. She turned to me, with a flip of her long red hair, and pressed a finger to her lips. As the principal turned around, she slipped into the crowd of cheerleaders and disappeared with a laugh. 

Can you see her now? 

You may be asking, what is the point of this exercise? Well, I'll tell you. I was demonstrating the three principles of good description. I will describe each of these in detail.

• Action. A good description isn't static or motionless: the thing you're describing has to either be doing something or be acted upon. It doesn't have to be moving, just doing something rather than being something  For example: "Three palm trees stood guard over the little house," is better than "The little house had three palm trees in the front yard."
• Specificity. You have to be specific in your descriptions. Not too specific, as in: "she was 5'11"," but specific enough to paint a picture. In the above example, her red hair was long, her eyes sparkled with mischief, and the crowd she disappeared into was made up of cheerleaders. These details make the image you want to plant in your reader's mind a little bit clearer. In the first example, we don't see her hair or eyes, and the description of her height is an annoying distraction.
• Last but not least: Leaving some to the imagination. Even though I didn't tell you whether her skin was ghostly pale or orange from a bad spray tan, but you still saw it, didn't you? Even though I didn't say whether she was wearing a Daft Punk t-shirt and gages in her ears or a pink miniskirt and crop top, you saw her clothes anyway, right? The reader wants to see her their own way, and will no matter how much description you use to try and force-feed them an image of this wallet thief. If you have friends, and those friends read this blog, ask them to tell you what picture they had in their mind of the girl. Then tell them what you saw. You should have differing opinions, but you should see the fundamental elements I showed you, which are:
• She's a thief.
• The narrator probably thinks she's hot and/or crazy.
• Her hair is long and red.
• Her eyes are green and show mischief.
• She's happy about stealing the wallet and probably about not getting caught.
• She's probably stolen before.
• She probably doesn't need the money in the wallet. In fact, she's probably pretty rich.

If you didn't see all of that, I have failed as a teacher. My example stank, and I invite you to write your own description of the wallet thief. 

Happy describing!