How many flowers?

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp First let me thank you and this site for all the interesting information that is shared. It’s been a real blessing.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Strunk/White stress the importance of telling it like it is….without all the flowery words and/or descriptions. I myself enjoy reading less descriptive books and will many times ‘run’ over those parts to get to the meat and potatoes of a story.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp The work I am putting together right now is a fiction/crime book. I have kept to the facts with out much in the way of ‘gardening’. I had a professor friend of mine look over my work and his comments back were along the lines of ‘fleshing out’ my work.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp He took the first page and did a rewrite of it for me and now it sounds like one of the Masters. (For lack of a better term) My question is this, just how far should a writer go to what appears to me just to make the ‘word count’ go higher?
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Example…what could be said in three lines he turned into an eleven lined paragraph. Yes it is very descriptive, but for what purpose? How does a writer know what is too much or ‘overkill’?
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Thank you for your time and any input you might like to share.
8)

I'm no master, but I'll tell you from what I've seen, its a matter of taste to a great deal. Some people like flowers, others don't. So, in effect, you can try your best to come down somewhere in between.

I hated, hated, hated the Scarlet Letter. Others loved it, but it was just too descriptive for my tastes. Every single sentence was more than I wanted to know.

Sam walked to Fred's house. He went down the street. (Too cold)

Sam walked the long winding path to Fred's House, passing the array of white clapboard cookie-cutter row houses.... (enough)

Sam walked down the winding, breezy, bush-laden path, passing an array of eight inch wide, white clapboard-sided houses that were all shapped exactly the same like they were cut with a cookie cutter (Way too much for my tastes)

Telling Detail

I think that we all need to incorporate some detail to keep our work from becoming cold and detached. What seems to work best is including not just whatever detail you can dream up but telling detail that contributes to the setting or the tone.

Nate's example of the cookie-cutter houses contributed in a meaningful way, letting the reader envision the neighborhood. Nice work!

Maryn

Get a copy of Gardner's Art of Fiction. He talks about this a great deal. Description is a tricky thing, and it depends on many factors like psychic distance, the tone of scene, etc.

I think it really depends on the genre of your manuscript. With crime stories, you have to keep the pacing going without bogging it down with too much description. Mainstream novels, however, are loaded with descriptive passages. At the same time, books without them do the job well (The Exorcist comes to mind, but that's a horror novel.)

As for me, I'd get turned off if I find descriptive passages like Nate's 3rd example in a crime book. It just doesn't hold my interest and makes me want to scream, "I get it, already!" However, here again, it depends on the genre. Some genre formulas demand them.

:rollin

I want to thank you all for your input on my question. It's nice to know i'm not nuts. (all writers must be nuts!) It's ok, I'm old and gray and started out a bit nuts anyway. It's called the head start program. (wink)

I think i will keep going on with my style let the 'chips fall where they may'.

Good luck to each and everyone of you...

~~Wendy~~

:rollin

fiction/crime book

Click to expand...

You are writing in the same basic genre as I am. Crime fiction tends to be snappy, with short sentences and paragraphs.

However, crime fiction also has need to describe the surrounding in some detail, like a crime scene. This brings the mystery to the mind's eye and also fills the reader's interest.

You don't want to pad your writing. That's obvious. But "flowers" are not necessarily padding. They add richness to the prose and flesh out the story.

Overwriting a scene can indeed be tempting and you need to guard against this. But also work to ride a middle line, because fiction that's too sparse may not have sufficient depth to intrigue the reader.

Can you post a typical excerpt for us?

COURIER NEW

:rollin

When using this font, as I understand is what agents want, and you have a 'three dot' break ... it does not show up because of the print even when the BOLD is used. Do i do the three dash thing ( ---) instead? Maybe it is just my computer.

I had my story all done in the Times New Roman and have now changed it to the Courier New.

I understand about using the underline for italics but not the use for the dot or period.

thank you again...........

:rollin

Re: COURIER NEW

Good tips here, and Nate nailed it well. And as for Hawthorne, I once threw a copy of "House of Seven Gables" across the room because it took three pages to describe a man's expression. I'm not kidding - some guy was told something and then the camera zoomed in for a twenty-minute close-up. I stopped reading right there.

So yeah, give us an example. Like the first two paragraphs - your way and then your teacher's way. He could be fleshing it out or clouding it up.

Re: COURIER NEW

:rollin

HEY SC211...MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS [email protected]

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO EMAIL ME I CAN SEND YOU WHAT YOU REQUESTED.....THANKS....WENDY

:rollin

Re: COURIER NEW

I would say for you to write in the way you enjoy writing in so far as it is feasible to do so and be published.

Not everyone enjoys the same type of novel, either genre wise or style wise. What you need to do is to find your own readers, your own following, not those of others.

One thing I would suggest is to write the type of story that suits your writing style.

No matter the genre, I think successful writers are the ones who find and use their own unique voice. You can't write the way someone else tells you to write, and you can't write because of ideas about the style of a given genre. Find your own voice and use it.

Trust your ear. If you genuinely like the way the writing sounds, go with it. The last thing a good writer wants to do is sound like anyone else in voice or style.

It depends on your style and what you're writing and your target audience. If it's literary, you can probably spend ten pages talking about the color of someone's eyes and get away with it (if it's WELL written). If you're writing a mystery or thriller, you'll probably want to zip along, giving only enough details to help the readers visualize the settings, etc.

It's always good to give details in terms of the five senses, to put your readers inside the story. When is it too much, too little? You have to decide as the writer.