One of the many great tools in a writer’s belt is the ability to describe your character’s surroundings. Your characters may be the most well thought out, in depth, complex characters to ever exist in the endless literary universes, but their stories can go flat quicker than roadkill if there isn’t a decent description of where they’re located.
I like to practice location description from time to time and write about what surrounds me at that moment. Sometimes it would be my childhood bedroom when I was growing up and muddling through high school. Or it could be the tall silent Maples and Birches that would surround me while I was on a hike in the misty Maine trails. The harder it was to describe the area, the better the challenge to expand on descriptions.
Here’s one I did a while back when I started my Customer Service job:
The ‘Cube’, as everyone called it, wasn’t the greatest cube of all time – but it was satisfying enough. The speckled white linoleum desks were lined around the four flimsy dusty-maroon walls like countertops. Each corner had its own personality, much like the women who sat there day after day, taking orders for items they didn’t know how to make, how to use, nor how to put together. Mine was cluttered with a half-drunk cup of black tea – straight – a matching black pair of a stapler and tape dispenser, a fushia-pink hand-held pencil sharpener (which was really the only decent sharpener at the store, much to my chagrin), a silver mesh pencil/pen holder, and coasters that stuck to the desks like half dried glue. In the corner was a wide black computer screen that hid the computer console from view. Snacks plunkered down in a corner next to a vibrant green Cool Gear tumbler filled with water. Sticky notes galore hung precariously from the warm fluorescent light beneath the small shelf attached to the walls. Sitting on top of a large Proma monthly calendar that took up almost half the desk space, was a giant rainbow eraser that was the envy of everyone in the building. A stack of papers with scribblings for a fantasy novel sat just beneath a smaller calendar hanging from an impressive thumbtack. Papers of all sorts and sizes were attached to the walls: Contract names and numbers, emergency response contacts, Wednesday truck cut-offs for goods heading out on Thursday mornings, and procedures to follow on random scenarios. To the untrained eye, this corner looked like a cat high on nip had been let loose and unsheathed their claws on anything and everything. But to me, this was an organized chaos.
And more importantly, this was mine.
L.J. LaBree 