OK, stop laughing, this is not going to be an entry in the “How many clauses can one fit in an English sentence” contest. Instead, I want you to think about what a stormy night looks, sounds, feels, smells, and perhaps even tastes like, if you have ever tasted rain, or very fresh snow, or sucked on a bit of fresh hail.

Then write it.

“The distant rumbling warned that they’d better finish up and get everything under cover soon. The light turned from clear gold to soft hazy yellow, then green. Green meant hail. Overhead, wisps of clouds wandered northwards, spindrift and rags not far above the trees. Above them, ripples and lumps hung below the edge of the storm. The afternoon wind dropped into stillness, another sign of heavy weather coming. Humidity made his shirt stick to him, and brought scents from the culvert up at the road.

“A whoosh of cold air flowed from the west, and the first flickering tongue of white licked down from the storm. They ducked into the barn, the one with a cellar under it, just in case. Ping, ping, ping, rain began on the metal roof, followed by the roar of rain. Outside the open door, a wall of water hid the trees and garden. Darkness swallowed the afternoon, and the air thickened. Pounding so loud it drowned out thought came from overhead as hail came with the rain. Little white peas bounced and danced outside the door, cooling the air until he shivered. “

So, how did I approach writing the description?

1. Big picture of what is in the distance, then 2) the sky and light draw the reader closer to the watcher. I follow that with 3) the air around the PoV character and finally 4) the scent.
2. Then comes the storm, with temperature and sound and light. If the character was out in it, the stinging of hail, quick soaking and discomfort, fear and trying to get low because of the lightning, the scent of the rain—or lack of scent as the water washed everything out of the air— and ozone from the storm strikes, perhaps the painfully loud sound of a lightning strike close to the character …

That’s how I do description. Granted, a storm or a piece of land is “easy,” because I am used to describing the physical environment and settings for students, non-fiction readers, and others. I tend to write “slow” stories, where having a lot of description is OK.

Thrillers and other fast-paced genres have to sketch more, or find other ways to let readers know what the place and people are like. Some lean on readers’ imaginations a lot more, as Anne Bishop does in the original Dark Jewels trilogy. SaDiablo Hall is never truly described, and each reader has a different idea of what it looks like. Some rooms are very clear, and others are hinted at. She is character focused, not setting so much.

Now, you might have a PoV character who isn’t all that interested in parts of his/her/its/whatever’s surroundings. Then you need to focus on what IS important. In Peaks of Grace, one of the two PoV characters is blind. Aural and tactile cues are much, much stronger for description, and knowing from memory where things are. She was sighted for a few years, so she remembers vaguely what “table” looked like, but now she can only hear, touch, smell, and taste. I had to keep catching myself and taking out references to things she could not know, because they would be seen, not heard/felt/smelled.

Description comes easily to me, but I grew up in a family of story tellers, reading books with lots of description in them, and my academic field leans on description since photos of, oh, a river in the 1500s, or end of the Ice Age, are not available. You may have to work at it. Start with something simple, and build out from there.

Now, go describe rain coming in, and how a character notices and senses it.