# Do you like a lot of details or the bare minimum?



## Lordress of Words (Apr 28, 2018)

When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details

I know when reading or writing I can get bored if there are way too many details, but then there are times I like a good amount of details. Which do you prefer? Do you have different preferences when you are writing vs reading?


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 28, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details
> 
> I know when reading or writing I can get bored if there are way too many details, but then there are times I like a good amount of details. Which do you prefer? Do you have different preferences when you are writing vs reading?



Define details? I love emotions and feelings, so you can talk all day about those and I'm in.

Things related to the plot or character? Great.

Extraneous visual details are hard on me. I skip over whole paragraphs that seem like irrelevant details. So I am probably a no for details.


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## Lordress of Words (Apr 28, 2018)

I am the same way when dealing with visual details. Sometimes when reading things of that nature I get overwhelmed by details and forget what was even talked about before. (I am embellishing of course! lol) You get the drift though.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 28, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> I am the same way when dealing with visual details. Sometimes when reading things of that nature I get overwhelmed by details and forget what was even talked about before. (I am embellishing of course! lol) You get the drift though.



How many visual details do you include when you write?


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## andrewclunn (Apr 28, 2018)

I give the bare minimum to keep the action going, but tend to have at least one curious character who (by asking questions or exploring things) reveals details.  Then any "oversharing" is in the context of that character's development and grounded in their perspective.


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## Patrick (Apr 28, 2018)

I like sensory information. Not every passage needs to have the same amount, the tone of the novel should be facilitated by it, and the pacing should also be augmented by good descriptions. All novels and styles are different, and I appreciate a variety of approaches. Regardless of your approach, every writer needs to know how to write good descriptions, because it's just one aspect of mastery of the craft. Many parts of the craft that are difficult to do well are often despised by writers. There is no how-to answer. Just read a lot of fiction, good and bad.


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## Jack of all trades (Apr 28, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details
> 
> I know when reading or writing I can get bored if there are way too many details, but then there are times I like a good amount of details. Which do you prefer? Do you have different preferences when you are writing vs reading?



I'm a bare minimum person who skips over lengthy descriptions as a reader. As a writer, I rely on beta readers to tell me when something isn't clear and more description is needed.


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## Char_M (Apr 28, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details
> 
> I know when reading or writing I can get bored if there are way too many details, but then there are times I like a good amount of details. Which do you prefer? Do you have different preferences when you are writing vs reading?


It all depends on the type of book and your audience. If you're giving details just to fill space your readers may be tempted to put the book down. On the other hand if it adds to the experience if the story, that's definitely something to include. Maybe there's something to be said for moderation. Certain authors I love, and I'll skip whole paragraphs because to be it's pointless detail. I don't care how the room is decked out unless it has a purpose. 

My advice is to write it however you want then in the editing ask yourself what's this detail there for? Can I cut it without changing the "flavor" of the scene? Is this something readers need to know for now or later? Does it move the story forward?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk


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## Tettsuo (Apr 28, 2018)

I enjoy detail when it matters.  If you're describing someone's shoelaces and that information has zero value, it can get tedious for the readers.  But, if it reflects something specific about the character, then I'd enjoy it.


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## PiP (Apr 29, 2018)

> Lordress of Words said:
> 
> 
> > When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details
> ...


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## bdcharles (Apr 29, 2018)

As a fantasy writer I enjoy a good amount of detail. Otherwise, unless the writing underneath it is super-sharp, things can seem anemic and generic and rushed. But how those details are presented, and which of them are cherrypicked for inclusion, matters. Great static lists of “there was a ...” or “near a X stood a Y, reaching to the clouds” or, God forbid, mention of such trivia as a beige sofa in paragraph one (yes, it has happened) don’t work for me; I prefer character interaction, vivid imagery, metaphor, mood, POV and so on with my worldbuild: “X rested against a Y whose details stretched towards the clouds like a mob of beseeching hands...” Et cetera, etc.


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## Kebe (Apr 29, 2018)

I don’t like too much details, if it’s not essential to the story. I’m more interested in the action and the characters of the story, than knowing the exact type and color of clothing someone wears or the details of a room, for example. If there is too much irrelevant details, I get bored and my mind starts to wander. I prefer to let my imagination fill in the blanks, rather than having the author doing it for me. This is something that I try to adapt in my own writing, but I find it hard to decide how much to include and leave out from the story.


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## Bloggsworth (Apr 29, 2018)

A lot of detail is good.... when it is pertinent. When it is written in order to showcase the writer's skills then it can become tedious. It also depends what kind of reader one is - I tried reading Virginia Woolf's _Mrs Dolloway_ and half-way through was asking her, out loud, when she was going to get to the point; similarly with Proust - Beautifully written, wonderful sense of time and place, but rather like going to a museum in which one has little interest but are there for the sake of the rest of the group. Jane Austen, on the other hand has a sense of social and group dynamic, so not tedious at all. Robert B Parker and Raymond Chandler are quite different but each emminently readable for me, unlike Barbara Vine, who I find too clever by half - I far prefer her books written as Ruth Rendell. Another example, I prefer Adam Hall to Ellerston Trevor, though they be one and the same.

So - I guess I'm saying "It depends on what you expect/want from a book when you begin to read it..."


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## JJBuchholz (Apr 29, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details



It depends. In terms of setting, I prefer a lot of detail so I can easily visualize the place. When it comes to characters, I don't need as much detail for appearances, happy to extrapolate for myself to a certain degree. Then there is interaction...... could go either way in that respect.

Hard to answer this as a yes or no question.

-JJB


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## Ralph Rotten (Apr 29, 2018)

Lordress of Words said:


> When reading and/or writing which do you prefer? (a) A lot of details or (b) minimum amount of details
> 
> I know when reading or writing I can get bored if there are way too many details, but then there are times I like a good amount of details. Which do you prefer? Do you have different preferences when you are writing vs reading?




Obviously too many details is a bad thing, and too few is also not good.
When adding details, you need to focus on details that speak to the character or paint the scene. No one cares if the hero wears brown pants, but if he wears a kilt then that is noteworthy because it speaks to his character.


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## Ralph Rotten (Apr 29, 2018)

But details should be doled out in moderation.


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## moderan (Apr 29, 2018)

Ralph Rotten said:


> But details should be doled out in moderation.


And only to advance the story. Too many people festoon their pages with sensual delights in lieu of narrative momentum. It's like listening to teenage guitar practice. The skills are there, but the connectedness which makes things really powerful isn't yet formed.


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## Ralph Rotten (May 2, 2018)

moderan said:


> And only to advance the story. Too many people festoon their pages with sensual delights in lieu of narrative momentum. It's like listening to teenage guitar practice. The skills are there, but the connectedness which makes things really powerful isn't yet formed.




_Wow! Thems was some pretty words_. You must be a writer.


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## Theglasshouse (May 2, 2018)

I felt like the above posts when I regretted over-describing. I now let the dialogue introduce the story if I can get away with it.


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## Ralph Rotten (May 2, 2018)

Theglasshouse said:


> I felt like the above posts when I regretted over-describing. I now let the dialogue introduce the story if I can get away with it.




Really it's a combination of both. Sometimes your characters are talking, sometimes they're doing.  You can add a lot of detail to dialog.  I do some of my best painting during fictional conversations.

What's important is that you don't waste words on superfluous details, just add the things that speak to your characters or help to paint the scene.
I have 2 primary ways of adding details:
1) during a general description of a scene or setting, often at the intro of a scene.
2) During dialog I like to pepper the attributions with little details that help to illustrate the character. Just an adverb here and there that speak to the character or the conditions around them.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (May 4, 2018)

For me it depends on the author's voice and skill, and, as mentioned many times before, if it's relevant. Chesterton rambles about a wind for the first five pages of Manalive, but, heck, he rambles beautifully, and anyways that wind turns out to be the inciting incident for the whole book. I don't get bored by a lot of details, I actually love to read passages of description, but, still, no words ought to be wasted.


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## Book Cook (May 4, 2018)

A long time ago I was criticised for describing a female character simply as beautiful. It was suggested that I should've included some particular details that made her beautiful. But to this day I disagree. What I find beautiful on a woman the reader may not, and if this segment of the story relies on this woman being beautiful, then providing details may go against my favour. I may like an angular face; the reader may like a round face, etc. Therefore I try to keep such descriptions general. 

As for the environment, there is probably no writer that has ever existed who could transmit an identical copy of environs from his mind to a reader's. So it's better in that regard as well to keep it general. If there is a mountain, say there is a mountain and that a river flows at its feet or something similar. Don't go about crevices and jutting rocks, or in the case of the river, that it flowed southward like the artery of the land. Metaphor is overrated creativity. It's just a river.

And we come to emotions. There is nothing more useless in writing than writing about emotion. Don't get me wrong, emotion is very important, perhaps the most important part of a novel, but writing about it is useless, contrived and more often than not really, really bad. If a man wielding a knife comes out of the dark at your character, what happens next is what matters. Not his curdling blood, or the weakness in his knees, or a five-page flashback about how he spends his time with his son. The reader knows, or at least can imagine by themselves, how it might be when someone comes at them with a knife. So emotion is already there. 
_
A man came out of the dark and stabbed John._

That's life. Uncompromising. And for a bunch of people who are trying so hard to emulate life on a page, we are doing a great job at deviating from it.


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## Sync (May 4, 2018)

I like detail when it is for the story, for me - the reader. Sometimes a rock is just a rock, but other times I like to see its texture. It is probably a hard balance, as each reader has their own preference, but its the writing that helps sway. The more detail, the more work it takes to connect each thing. Is it worth it? Sometimes. Sometimes the reader doesn't care.

Just write the best you can. Find your audience.


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## SueC (May 4, 2018)

I am impatient with a lot of details, especially when it concerns _place._ I get that some details are relevant to a story, and I have often struggled with how much to include and still keep a reader's interest, but unless its crucial to explain something in the story, I don't bother. Like others, I often skip over long, involved descriptions of place - I just want to get back to the story.


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## bdcharles (May 4, 2018)

SueC said:


> I am impatient with a lot of details, especially when it concerns _place._ I get that some details are relevant to a story, and I have often struggled with how much to include and still keep a reader's interest, but unless its crucial to explain something in the story, I don't bother. Like others, I often skip over long, involved descriptions of place - I just want to get back to the story.



As a fantasy writer, sometimes we get carried away with building worlds so it is very easy to dob in great splodges of description but genre aside, I find working in those descriptions alongside story events, even if it is just a person travelling from point A to point B is a handy way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Words - verbs - such as "was" and "had" and their standins like "festooned" and "stood" are giveaways, candidates for reworking, so:

"A large, moss-covered oak stood by a river, its branches festooned in spanish creeper." and a load of other stuff like that can be brought to life by interaction; eg:

"I stepped out of the boat and into the mossy shadow of a broad-branched oak whose festoons of spanish creeper hung down so close to the earthy bank that they near enough snared on my pack."

So there we have the exact same physical stuff, but it's interacting, being perceived and dealt with, making that person's journey that bit more troublesome and mucky, thereby (hopefully) contributing to mood and tension as well as plot movement, voice and physical things.


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## silvafilho (May 4, 2018)

When I see a whole paragraph with descriptions I skip it. If there are any measures, I skip them. As a reader I like descriptions that:

1) set the scene, making me imagine something. When I read a book and then check for fan arts, I always get shocked with how my perceptions are different from mainstream.

2) when they transpose me to the Point of View. For me, this is the secret. As book cook pointed out, perceptions on what is beautiful (or not) are attached to POV. I'm reading a book by Ryu Murakami where the MC remarks that another character makes him feel uneasy because his skin looks like "artificial". This line was enough for me, I painted a picture of the guy and don't need anything else. Doesn't matter his skin color, hair or height. He is weird and he has an artificial looking skin.

One character might walk thru slums and remark on how crowded the place is. Other could remark on how dirty and dangerous the place look.


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## Cephus (May 5, 2018)

It depends on what you mean.  For physical things, I want to know where things are and what's important about them, but I don't want all of the details filled in, my mind can do all of that.  I tend to write very bare bones as far as details and fill things in as I go back through revising.  I never know what feels "empty" until I re-read my first draft.


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## Patrick (May 6, 2018)

The North Water: "Sumner remembers watching the iceberg through the grey veil of flailing snow: many-storeyed and immaculate, moving smoothly and unstoppably forward with the frictionless non-movement of a planet. 'The Hastings could be sunk,' he realises."

It's not a matter of how much or how little for sentences like that. You can analyse it, but at the end of the day, the perfect description of the ineluctable iceberg, the power and indifference of the natural world, threatening the survival of the vulnerable sailing ship with wreckage and the men with Arctic isolation, elicits existential dread and a majesty and beauty all at once. Formulaic writing might achieve some success, but only writing with "soul" will find residence therein. I despise a robotic approach to prose; it has no value to a human being. Readers don't know what they want until the writing seduces them.


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## EmmaSohan (May 6, 2018)

bdcharles said:


> "I stepped out of the boat and into the mossy shadow of a broad-branched oak whose festoons of spanish creeper hung down so close to the earthy bank that they near enough snared on my pack."



I don't think you realize how much I don't get out of this. I don't know what mossy shadow is. A shadow on moss? I can visualize the leaves of an oak, but not the branches. Spindly? I don't know how branches can be broad -- is that the same as wide or thick?

festoon = decorations? (Looking up festoon in the dictionary -- I wasn't quite right.) I don't know what Spanish creeper is.

I can spend 30 seconds trying to visualize that. It takes time for me to visualize things.

I am probably the worst at detail, so I am not criticizing what you wrote, I am just saying I'm not your ideal reader and trying to explain what my experience is like.

I can see now that old oaks can have really thick branches, and that makes them look really spooky. That would be a powerful image, if I had known that.


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## Ralph Rotten (May 6, 2018)

"I stepped out of the boat and into the mossy shadow of a broad-branched oak whose festoons of spanish creeper hung down so close to the earthy bank that they near enough snared on my pack."


That's some bad hat, Harry.


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## Jack of all trades (May 7, 2018)

This : 





> "A large, moss-covered oak stood by a river, its branches festooned in spanish creeper."


is clear. It paints a picture of an oak near a river with moss and vines growing on it. 

This : 





> "I stepped out of the boat and into the mossy shadow of a broad-branched oak whose festoons of spanish creeper hung down so close to the earthy bank that they near enough snared on my pack."


has more words, but is not better, in my opinion, just different. It paints a completely different picture. 

It is the tree that has the moss in the original, but the second makes it seem like the moss is on the ground. The creeper vines in the original clung to the tree, as vines do, but the rewrite has the creeper vines dangling down. A very different image.

Which version do I like? The second is more like walking a path littered with stones, while the first is a smooth path. I like the first better because it is concise. 

[On a side note, I'm not sure if oak trees can grow next to a river (too wet?), I've never seen a living tree covered in moss (a little moss, but not a lot), and a Google search turned up empty for "spanish creeper" (so I assumed it is some kind of vine), but this is not about realism.]


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## Jack of all trades (May 7, 2018)

Book Cook said:


> A long time ago I was criticised for describing a female character simply as beautiful. It was suggested that I should've included some particular details that made her beautiful. But to this day I disagree. What I find beautiful on a woman the reader may not, and if this segment of the story relies on this woman being beautiful, then providing details may go against my favour. I may like an angular face; the reader may like a round face, etc. Therefore I try to keep such descriptions general.
> 
> As for the environment, there is probably no writer that has ever existed who could transmit an identical copy of environs from his mind to a reader's. So it's better in that regard as well to keep it general. If there is a mountain, say there is a mountain and that a river flows at its feet or something similar. Don't go about crevices and jutting rocks, or in the case of the river, that it flowed southward like the artery of the land. Metaphor is overrated creativity. It's just a river.
> 
> ...



I totally agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder! 

I tend to avoid descriptions of my characters so the reader can envision them as they like. There are a few exceptions, but they are rare.

Location descriptions can be important, or so I've been told by beta readers. I had an office scene that caused readers to faulter because I didn't describe it very much. So I added in the description.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 8, 2018)

I'm not very good at visualization, so while I read any description in a book, it's often meaningless to me.  My writing is similarly sparse - usually because I don't actually know how the things in my story look, so I can't really describe them.  I know their function and their purpose to the story, and I give the details that matter to that end.


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## Patrick (May 8, 2018)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> I'm not very good at visualization, so while I read any description in a book, it's often meaningless to me.  My writing is similarly sparse - usually because I don't actually know how the things in my story look, so I can't really describe them.  I know their function and their purpose to the story, and I give the details that matter to that end.



That's interesting. I tend to know how everything looks while I am playing the scene in my mind. I can identify the scenes where I haven't imagined a setting or a character very well and it's those I have to spend a lot of time rewriting until I feel the reader can navigate the dream sufficiently. I don't know how much of that is learnt or innate. I had very strong nightmares as a child, and I have rich, symbolic dreams which I journal to this day. I often have the imagery playing in my mind before I write anything. I am interested to know how it works for you, how you make a scene work without being able to hold it in your mind's eye.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 8, 2018)

Patrick said:


> That's interesting. I tend to know how everything looks while I am playing the scene in my mind. I can identify the scenes where I haven't imagined a setting or a character very well and it's those I have to spend a lot of time rewriting until I feel the reader can navigate the dream sufficiently. I don't know how much of that is learnt or innate. I had very strong nightmares as a child, and I have rich, symbolic dreams which I journal to this day. I often have the imagery playing in my mind before I write anything. I am interested to know how it works for you, how you make a scene work without being able to hold it in your mind's eye.



I guess I "view" scenes the same way I remember things that happened in my past.  I never, ever have had a memory that is like a smooth video playback; instead, I recall individual elements and their order in the timeline.  Let's say I'm trying to remember a walk I took.  I certainly wouldn't be able to follow the entire path, but I might recall an unusual tree, or saying hello to someone walking past, or that I had to shake a rock out of my shoe.  If I was writing that memory as a scene in a story, I would say something like this: 

_Bob Jones went for a walk.  As he passed his favorite oak tree, he noticed with regret that it had been struck by lightning in the previous night's storm.  The top of the tree had sheared away from the trunk, leaving a blackened scar behind.

"Shame about that tree," remarked a woman passing by.  "My grandpa planted it decades ago, and I always thought of him when I saw it."_

You'll notice that even though I clearly state what the situation is, I don't have any details, because I didn't envision any.  If I had actually written that based on personal experience, I might have been able to add more specifics, but in this particular scene, it wasn't important which branch broke off, or how large the burned area was, or what the woman looked like.  The scene is composed instead of common-sense elements: no one can really say "the way you described it is illogical," and the reader is free to fill in the details however he or she likes.  Maybe the woman is in her 20s; maybe she's in her 80s.  Maybe she has an overcoat on; maybe she's in shorts and a tank top.  It doesn't matter one bit for the scene, and I don't have the natural inclination to imagine those elements if I don't have to.


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## Patrick (May 8, 2018)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> I guess I "view" scenes the same way I remember things that happened in my past.  I never, ever have had a memory that is like a smooth video playback; instead, I recall individual elements and their order in the timeline.  Let's say I'm trying to remember a walk I took.  I certainly wouldn't be able to follow the entire path, but I might recall an unusual tree, or saying hello to someone walking past, or that I had to shake a rock out of my shoe.  If I was writing that memory as a scene in a story, I would say something like this:
> 
> _Bob Jones went for a walk.  As he passed his favorite oak tree, he noticed with regret that it had been struck by lightning in the previous night's storm.  The top of the tree had sheared away from the trunk, leaving a blackened scar behind.
> 
> ...



I am trying to understand what you mean by that. Is the woman in this example an abstract or do you in fact have an image of her in your mind that you choose not to pay much attention to because it's unimportant, in your estimation? I can see the latter as valid, although we would not write the scene in the same way. My concern would be if you allow the 'woman' to remain an abstract that is there purely to push the narrative forward, I think I could detect the pattern quite quickly in your writing, and that would become a stumbling block to my enjoyment of what might otherwise be good writing. A reader seems to get by osmosis pictures and details that haven't even been included within the text because the writer imagined them so thoroughly, and I think that's because what has been included, the warp and woof, is good enough to create something living and authentic, even though every reader's version of it will be slightly different to the writer's. The difference between the two might not seem obvious, but I'd argue it's the difference between hanging one's hat on nothing and hanging one's hat on a concealed peg.


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## Albo Ari (May 8, 2018)

I am more into the vagueness of the scene in my mind, unless relating to the condition of the character. I focus heavily on the emotions, ex I saw a red tree, it reminded me of the fall and how many falls I missed while focusing on my emptiness. It could of been the most descriptive detailed tree and where it was located, yet it is the vagueness which allows me to give meaning to the tree.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 9, 2018)

Patrick said:


> I am trying to understand what you mean by that. Is the woman in this example an abstract or do you in fact have an image of her in your mind that you choose not to pay much attention to because it's unimportant, in your estimation? I can see the latter as valid, although we would not write the scene in the same way. My concern would be if you allow the 'woman' to remain an abstract that is there purely to push the narrative forward, I think I could detect the pattern quite quickly in your writing, and that would become a stumbling block to my enjoyment of what might otherwise be good writing. A reader seems to get by osmosis pictures and details that haven't even been included within the text because the writer imagined them so thoroughly, and I think that's because what has been included, the warp and woof, is good enough to create something living and authentic, even though every reader's version of it will be slightly different to the writer's. The difference between the two might not seem obvious, but I'd argue it's the difference between hanging one's hat on nothing and hanging one's hat on a concealed peg.



As with all things writing, it depends.  For this scene, she was truly an abstract; she could have been a man or a child or even a sign that said "Smith Family Oak, planted in 1923."  I had mentioned saying hello to someone prior to the writing, and "woman" was just what ended up in the example.  For a character I intend to use throughout a story, I'll put as much thought in as I consider appropriate, but that's usually limited to personality traits.  I wrote a 200,000 word novel with a protagonist who didn't get any physical description at all beyond being a male teen, and any further description for secondary characters (since the protagonist can see them, after all) is usually limited to hair color and build.  For some, I don't even go that far.  But that's a symptom of how I read - to me, what a character does is far more important than how they look.  I can pick up personality far better than appearance, and therefore I write characters personality first, appearance second.

All that being said, though, I fully agree that there needs to be a depth beyond what's written, and that depth is implicitly obvious to the reader.  Someone once said that something like 5% of all your planning should actually make it into the story, and I agree with that.  It's why the Lord of the Rings feels like such a complete world, after all: Tolkien had envisioned a vast world complete with mythology and language, and the glimpse we get into it in the three main books seems very real.  For me, however, that depth is in events and purpose, not appearance.  I'll give another example, this one from the novel I mentioned before.

_As they entered the Dead Zone, Markus was struck by how wild everything around them looked.  Roads and smaller buildings were overgrown with plants, and the larger buildings were slowly succumbing as well.  Skeletons abounded, the remains of corpses picked clean by the wildlife.  Crashed vehicles littered the roads, collected in pileups or buried in the sides of buildings and other structures.  Several areas were burned out: scorched ruins resulting from fires with no one to extinguish them.

Even so close to the edge of the Dead Zone, the tremors had caused some damage, but no earthquake could account for the totality of death here.  Stranger still, the human remains were rarely mangled; in many cases, it was as though time had stopped entirely.  Skeletons sat slumped in benches.  Groups of gutted corpses rested at crosswalks or bus stops.  Restaurants and cafes still contained deceased patrons, often with uneaten – but well-rotted – food still on the table.

Marching through a single ghost town was unsettling enough, but as the days passed and the platoon encountered one overgrown, lifeless city after another, it gradually became apparent just how widespread the devastation was.  This was no local catastrophe.  They were going through an apocalyptic wasteland, hundreds of miles thick.  Millions had died, and their civilization was returning to the earth, slowly being erased by the unstoppable creep of nature._

Now, some people might like more detail than that, but for me, it suited my purpose, and it matched my vision for the scene.  As with the tree example earlier, I wrote what made sense to me - not because it was a clear, vivid picture in my head, but because it was details one could reasonably expect from such an area.  And if I read such a scene and was treated to dense depictions of building materials, specific colors and sounds, car models, and long-abandoned food orders, it would quickly wear on me, especially if I made the futile effort to envision every detail of the writing.  For me, the "feel" is enough, so that's how I write.


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## scerys (May 14, 2018)

I like a really good medium between the two. I like enough detail to set the scene and to give me an image, but not so much that I've read two pages of description for one thing or one character. It's all about balance for me when reading and when writing.


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## FireofDarkness (May 15, 2018)

I personally want enough details to keep a concept of where my character is and the weather or season if it affects them. 
I also like to have a general concept of what people look like... But it's difficult to balance out details without bogging down a story, I'm still trying to balance it all in my story too 
*show, don't tell*

+Joe wiped the sweat from his neck and tugged his sleeves down. "Why on earth are you still wearing long-sleeves?" Makayla asked fanning herself. He mindlessly rubbed the ridges of scars he could feel through the shirt sleeves. "Mind your own business," he mumbled.+
instead of: even in the summer heat Joe would wear long sleeves to hide the ugly scars on his arms.


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## FireofDarkness (May 15, 2018)

Just remember to show your details instead of tell. I'm currently working on trying to balance out my details too, I don't want to bog down my story...

_Joe wiped the sweat from his neck and pulled down his sleeves down again. "Why on earth are you still wearing long-sleeves?" Makayla asked fanning herself. He unconsciously rubbed his arms, feeling the hard ridges through the soft shift fabric. "Mind your own business." he mumbled._
don't say: _Joe is self-conscious of his ugly scars and even wears long-sleeves through the summer heat to hide them._


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## addie (May 16, 2018)

You need a fine line between the two to make it work.  Give more details for important things (but try to show rather than tell) and give less description for minor parts that you can assume the reader will imply on their own.


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## moderan (May 17, 2018)

...


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## Ralph Rotten (May 17, 2018)

....


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## bdcharles (May 17, 2018)

FireofDarkness said:


> Just remember to show your details instead of tell. I'm currently working on trying to balance out my details too, I don't want to bog down my story...
> 
> _Joe wiped the sweat from his neck and pulled down his sleeves down again. "Why on earth are you still wearing long-sleeves?" Makayla asked fanning herself. He unconsciously rubbed his arms, feeling the hard ridges through the soft shift fabric. "Mind your own business." he mumbled._
> don't say: _Joe is self-conscious of his ugly scars and even wears long-sleeves through the summer heat to hide them._



I think a lot of it is about depicting details versus not depicting them rather than showing and telling. So in the example you give, the opposite would be more like:



> Joe sweltered.
> "Why on earth are you still wearing long sleeves?" Makayla asked. So hot. Sweat.
> "Mind your own business." The scars still hurt.



That's not a very good example, I know  but hopefully illustrates what I mean.


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## CrimsonAngel223 (May 17, 2018)

I personally hate showing alot of detail in my work, I basically try to conjure a fine line and even less dialogue which is useless and boring when its dragged on for too long. But to the op its simply a balance.


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## MzSnowleopard (May 18, 2018)

I'm one of those who's trying to find a happy medium. On the one hand, I like description- especially with regards to romance- no, not bodice ripping, going horizontal details- I'm talking the emotional part. On the other hand, when it comes to description- I think it's enough to say something like 'she lounged on her bed, disturbing some of the stuffed animals, maybe she grabs one- that one might be described" but describing the various types of stuffed animals- not happening.

I have this one book that I can't bring myself to finish reading. The author spent an entire page devoted to describing what was for breakfast.


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## bdcharles (May 18, 2018)

EmmaSohan said:


> I don't think you realize how much I don't get out of this. I don't know what mossy shadow is. A shadow on moss? I can visualize the leaves of an oak, but not the branches. Spindly? I don't know how branches can be broad -- is that the same as wide or thick?
> 
> festoon = decorations? (Looking up festoon in the dictionary -- I wasn't quite right.) I don't know what Spanish creeper is.
> 
> ...



Sure. I don't suppose it was the best example. What I wanted to illustrate was simply describing things, whatever it was, in relation to the story/characters/their actions, etc rather than things just existing by themselves. The same could be said for "She rested in the shadow of a church" versus "There was a church and some shade.". Too much "there was" slows the pace imo.


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## EmmaSohan (May 19, 2018)

bdcharles said:


> Sure. I don't suppose it was the best example. What I wanted to illustrate was simply describing things, whatever it was, in relation to the story/characters/their actions, etc rather than things just existing by themselves. The same could be said for "She rested in the shadow of a church" versus "There was a church and some shade.". Too much "there was" slows the pace imo.



I didn't think about how the detail is presented. I think I prefer straightforward -- "Eduardo was a distinguished looking gentleman,..."

To me, the other ways are like encoding information, then I have to decode it. "Eduardo, a distinguished looking gentleman, ..." or "A distinguished looking gentleman names Eduardo..." I'm not sure, but that's like the information isn't essential to the story. So I don't work hard to understand it.


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## EmmaSohan (May 19, 2018)

bdcharles said:


> Sure. I don't suppose it was the best example. What I wanted to illustrate was simply describing things, whatever it was, in relation to the story/characters/their actions, etc rather than things just existing by themselves. The same could be said for "She rested in the shadow of a church" versus "There was a church and some shade.". Too much "there was" slows the pace imo.



Then what do you think of details that are hard to understand? (Or am I the only one who has trouble with them?) From a published book:

"A cloud of worry grows behind Clancy's eyes. When he speaks, every part of his face joins in: His eyebrows punch up, down; his mouth flattens, puckers, and the skin trembles over his jawline."

I have trouble knowing what any of that means. (How can he see the worry if it's behind Clancy's eyes? How is a cloud of worry different from regular worry? How does a mouth flatten? I understand how a mouth could become dry, or lips suck in so they do not protrude. I understand trembling skin over a jawline but I can't imagine it.)


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## addie (May 19, 2018)

CrimsonAngel223 said:


> I personally hate showing alot of detail in my work, I basically try to conjure a fine line and even less dialogue which is useless and boring when its dragged on for too long. But to the op its simply a balance.


You can show a lot of detail through dialogue.

Instead of dragging out dialogue, have the characters convene back and forth so it's not all chunked together.


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## Ralph Rotten (May 19, 2018)

I try to only add detail that paints the scene or speaks to the nature of my characters.  
Really you are programming the reader's brain to render the content in their own brain.


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## EmmaSohan (May 20, 2018)

Ralph Rotten said:


> I try to only add detail that paints the scene or speaks to the nature of my characters.
> Really you are programming the reader's brain to render the content in their own brain.



Of course, anything in the setting that relates to the rest of the story needs to be described. The issue is how much you (well, me, really) need to simply "paint the scene." Like to say what they're eating. Or in yours, do we really need to know that the living room was white? I mean, how much of your story are you going to have to change if the color is beige? Is it part of the story that the living room is all one color, or where you just saving time and energy?


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