To celebrate the release of Love on the Boil, my newest M/M romance from Loose Id, I went over the manuscript to look
for some good examples of description.
I’m lucky that I was able to head down to
South Beach to do some observation, and a couple of the people I saw ended up
in the book. In this case I’m trying to showcase the character’s attitude while
describing:
“A skinny man in his forties walked by, wearing
a T-shirt with one of those motivational slogans and a ball cap turned backwards,
as if he didn’t know that it made him look like a douche rather than a young
guy.”
I read The
Goldfinch by Donna Tartt a while ago and noticed that she always used three
things when describing, layering on those details. It's a technique I use now
and then-- that business of the power of three, you know, from fairy tales and
elsewhere.
“Eddie and I stepped out onto Lincoln Road,
past a beauty store specializing in mascara, concealer, and beehive wigs for
drag queens.”
Description can be more than just what
something looks like. I hope that this sentence conveys some sense of the
melting pot on South Beach:
“Next door was a restaurant run by
Argentine immigrants featuring kosher vegan cuisine for Orthodox Jewish women
pushing strollers and trailed by little boys with curls hanging in front of
their ears.”
And this description of food shows the
history between my two protagonists, former lovers who now have to work
together to make a business succeed. Once again, I’ve named three things on the
platter, and used the verb “jumped” to convey action at the same time.
“The antipasto platter arrived, laden with
roasted tomatoes, tiny bites of salami, and wedges of focaccia. As I expected,
Eddie jumped on the marinated artichoke hearts. I was happy to let him have
them as long as I could eat the prosciutto and melon.”
And I often use comparison as a way to get
the looks of the first person narrator in-- at six foot, he was almost as tall
as I was, and though our hair was originally the same dull brown, his was threaded
with more silver than mine.
Or a more general view. “I was the stud,
after all. The butch one nobody suspected was gay. I worked out, I tended bar
in the evenings. Darren was the queen who made a big deal out of everything.”
 |
| Tio Eduardo |
Sometimes I look for images on line, like the dapper gentleman to the left, who epitomizes Eddie's Tio Eduardo, and then I just have to describe what the picture looks like.
And finally, an example of how their
different living spaces reflect their personalities.
“The more I thought about it, the more his
business seemed to suit Darren. He was fussy that way, an elderly man in a
young guy’s body. Everything had to be just so. As I looked around his apartment
I saw his Japanese fixation clearly. A single futon in the living room, with a
Hokusai reproduction positioned exactly above it. His glass-fronted kitchen
cabinets were neatly organized and everything was sparkling clean.
“Not the way I lived at all. My studio was
jammed with souvenirs, and the posters on my walls hung haphazardly. My kitchen
was clean, sure, but not immaculate like Darren’s. And while I did have a
couple of different teapots and infusers, they were all jumbled together in one
cabinet.”
If you like these examples I hope you’ll
check out Love on the Boil.
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