agment gains by stating more than visual
impressions.

The point has been noted in discussing the description of persons, but
is worth enlarging upon. The task to give body to a story is difficult
enough at best, and the writer can afford to neglect no resource. Of
the five senses whereby man grasps his surroundings, that of taste is
probably of the least use to the writer of fiction, but the senses of
sight, hearing, smell, and touch can all be utilized on occasion. A
character at sea can be stated to have seen the waves of a storm, felt
the force of the gale and the sting of driven raindrops, and tasted the
salt spray, also to have smelt the musty fo'c'sle when he went below.
Each touch will give the whole picture added reality for a reader. The
beginning writer is too apt to rely solely upon what a character might
have seen. A deserted house has a smell as characteristic as its look,
and the fragrance of violets is as impressive as their visual beauty.
Night can be told from day by its odor, and the rattle of typewriter
keys in an office is as suggestive of modern industry as a serenade is
of other days and other loves. A hero can feel his sweetheart's soft or
toil-roughened fingers as well as see her expensive silks and furs or
cheap and much worn dress. Life is a complex of many sense-perceptions,
and the more numerous and varied the fleeting impressions a character is
stated to have caught, the more concrete and real the story will be for
a reader.

Description is the usual but not the happiest term to denote the general
process of giving a story a setting and environment of its own. It
is--or should be--more than a process of picturing scenes. All pertinent
and striking sense-impressions received by the characters should be
stated, for only thus can the nearest approach to a just representation
of life be made. The writer's sole object is to give the fiction the
concreteness of life; it cannot be achieved by painting verbal pictures
for a reader, but it can be achieved by stating justly the ways in which
the totality of the environment affected the characters. Just
description of the characters will make them real men and women for a
reader, and just statement of the effects of their environment upon them
will make them real people in a real world.

The strictly executive technique of descriptive writing is not hard to
grasp, however hard it may be to find the desired word. The impression
that the character in