Writing can be hard—especially when you have to describe something you’ve never experienced. I mean, how many sci-fi authors have actually been to space before? As writers, we often write about things we’ve never experienced. So, how do we make those descriptions feel believable?

You could take the time to go out and experience whatever you need to write about, but if you’re like me and can’t afford to go to space for the weekend, what are you supposed to do?

Look no further, for your answers are here. You should write a vignette!

Vignette (Vin-yet) – a brief evocative description, account, or episode.

The emphasis of a vignette is to develop the rich, sensory-type details your story could be missing. If you’re having a hard time adding those gripping physical details that pull your reader in, writing a vignette about the location could help!

A vignette is a scene. It’s not a story with an arch or a plot. It captures a single moment in time. It’s sort of like a poem, except written with regular sentences. It’s not a flashback because it doesn’t move the plot along. It’s an exploration of what’s there, not what it might mean or why.

How do I write a vignette?

When you sit down at your computer to write your vignette, make sure you pay attention to exploring all five senses. Ask yourself these questions.

• What does it look like?
• What does it smell like?
• What does it feel like?
• What does it taste like?
• What does it sound like?
• What is the weather like?
• What time of day is it?

Explore all five senses to create a rich experience, and keep it to less than a thousand words (we’re not writing a whole short story, after all. It’s just a writing exercise to grow your description skills).

Do you have an example?

Last year, we produced an anthology called Lawless, which was inspired by the Book of Judges. It was set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world where technology and food were scarce. Fourteen different authors participated in this project, and we all had to get on the same page on what things looked like.

We wrote not one but two vignettes for Lawless to help our authors get a sense of the feelings of the two different people groups. What would their towns be like? What would they smell, look, and feel like? What about the people in the towns?

None of these things add to the plot of the Lawless stories. They don’t move the narrative along or give you a unique insight into the main character’s tragic backstory. But they are still important because they ground the reader. These details are the small things that bring a story to life.

Sure, you can be in a desert and say, “My character walked through the desert. The sun was hot.”

Or you could write a vignette and discover those juicy details unique to your story!

“My character trudged through the desert, the tiny granules of sand shifting beneath his cracked leather boots. The sun beat against his back. Sweat glistened on the edge of his brow.”

If you’re still unsure how to write a vignette, don’t worry! Here are the two vignettes we wrote for Lawless. Use these as an example of a vignette, then go out, write your own, and let us know how it goes!

Vignette 1

Written as a resource for the Lawless project by Brad Pauquette.

Ichabod scratched under his leather vest, his matted chest hair sticking out in dark tufts below his neck and around his armpits. His beard was unkempt, bits of last night’s dinner and stray tobacco still embedded in the course hair. He chewed on the nub of a cigar, and his keen dark eyes surveyed the dessert as the first purple streaks of sunlight spied over the horizon.

He looked over at the wench, who lay in the dirt beyond the smoking remains of the fire. He stood up, walked over to her, and kicked her foot with his boot.

“Get up,” he said.

She didn’t move.

“Get up,” he barked, louder this time, nudging her thigh with his boot now. She wore only a thin tunic of dirty white, typical of young Journeyman women, stretched tight to her shapely features. Her face was soft in sleep, her dark hair radiating the early light of dawn.

His nostrils flared as he looked down at her. “Rike,” he muttered, “Rudy’s making that stuff too strong again.”

He picked up a glass bottle, one of the many he’d left strewn around the fire. He threw it down at a rock just a foot from her head. The noise of shattering glass rang out and echoed off the canyon wall to his back as shards of glass littered the ground.

The girl woke with a start, her eyes groggy, then wild. She scuttled backward on her butt across the ground, away from him until her hands made contact with the smoldering remains of the fire behind her. She shrieked.

“Where am I?” she shouted. “Who are you?”

Ichabod laughed. “Don’t matter, darlin’,” he said without moving his jaw, the words a condescending drawl. “Just get up and get on.” He raised his chin towards his motorbike, a long, fat piece of stolen and scavenged machinery, scrappily welded together and parked fifteen feet away.

She wrapped her arms around her, her eyes narrow but heavy, a cocktail of fear, anger, and resignation. She stood unsteadily and walked to the bike.

He followed her, throwing his leg over the machine, and hit the ignition. The motor fired up with a dull whine and the bike raised off the ground.

“Now hang on,” he told the girl, grabbing her hands behind him and putting them around his waist, clasped in the front like a seat belt. “Daddy’s gon’be worried a’ready,” he turned his head back towards her, “ain’t no reason to bruise up that pretty face n’more you fall off.”

Ichabod leaned forward and checked the two lite-pistols stored in the holsters he kept mounted by his knees, then he straightened and accelerated. The roar of the bike echoed off the canyon wall like the sound of fire and plunder as he accelerated into the first real rays of the morning sun.

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You can see how this vignette doesn’t really have a plot, but it does capture a lot of the emotion, mood, and sensory details of the scene. Because you don’t have to worry about plot, a vignette like this one is a great tool to deeply envision the environment of your story.

Vignette 2

Written as a resource for the Lawless project by Alli Prince.

Two men sat drinking at a worn table in the middle of the tavern. A warm, frothy brown liquid sloshed over the sides of their metal mugs as they rammed their glasses together. Rust clung to everything in the tavern—the mugs, the chairs, the blades concealed in their clothing.

Dust and dirt mingled with the putrid-smelling beverage as it dripped to the creaky wooden floorboards of the tavern, creating a thick sludge that clung to the bottom of their leather boots.

The men wore rough leather clothing, assembled from so many dead bodies, friend and foe alike. One had a rebreather-air filtration mask sitting next to him at the table, while a clothe bandana hung loosely around the neck of the other.

A long-jagged dagger adorned one of their hips. Rust crept up the edge of the blade, the handle tied with fabric. The other man wore a holster that held a lite-pistol nabbed from an unfortunate Journeyman.

A woman danced on the stage, her eyes closed, and her head tilted to the side. She wore a deep red halter top, with strips of fabric twisted around each slender arm. As she lifted her hands to the sky, the edge of the shirt followed, revealing her stomach. The skirt, long and flowy, sat low on her body and hugged her hips. The sparkles along the edge of the fabric glimmered in the beams of light centered on the stage. The patrons in the bar cheered and hollered, their noses and cheeks tinted red, and their pupils dilated.

Outside, as the sun set on the rocky desert terrain, a gunshot rang out among the sounds of roaring laughter and shrieks that came with nightfall.

In the alley, a woman sobbed and held the rags of her dress in her hand as a man stumbled away from her, pushing a green bottle to his lips. 

On the street, a boy raced past the houses, his footsteps kicking up clouds of dust from the dirt roads. A group of men chased him with hand-made whips, long metal swords, and lite-rifles.

A cat scurried from a box of rotting food, a single piece of meat clutched in its mouth as it dashed into the darkened spaces between the shops and homes.

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As you can see, the two different vignettes each brought a unique twist to the world in which Lawless takes place. Each brought different details and emotions to the page. You never know what you’ll discover about your story when you sit down and write a vignette.

To see how these vignettes brought life to the stories of Lawless, grab your own copy on Amazon here. You can also find a couple of free sample stories to get you started at LawlessBook.com.

Even if writing descriptions isn’t something you struggle with, a vignette can bring wonderful insight into the story you’re writing!

Challenge time:

Write a vignette about your current WIP and tell us how it goes in the comments below!

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This article is contributed by Alli Prince.

Alli Prince is a 2024 graduate of The Three, The Company’s full-time apprenticeship program. She is the editor of Lawless, and her YA steampunk adventure novel, Copper Lies, will hit bookstores on December 12.

Learn more about Alli and subscribe to her newsletter at AlliPrince.com