Is there a thing as too much description?

I think you're right. In the first draft of my second novel, I went from one extreme to another. My first was 'just the basics' as far as description goes, but one agent i sent it to said it wasn't enough. In the second, i've put in absolutely everything. Every little movement, every breath of wind, every rustle of the leaves. It's made it boring and dull. Only now, 1/3 of the way through my third, and with the help of a development editor, am i finding an interesting mix of description/imagination.

Too much and its too easy to lose the reader in the details. Too little and the reader can't get the picture you're looking for. I think even published authors today, still struggle between what's enough and too much.

Yes. As a hot rodder, I'm well aware that I have a few interests that my readers would not share if I were writing fiction. I'll pick up a magazine and enjoy reading articles that span five or six pages to describe a car. But if I ever spend a whole consecutive page describing a character's car in a normal work of fiction, I know I'll deserve reviews as poisonous as antifreeze. And I know that the same thing can apply to anything - future technology, a house, a character's clothes.

Samuel Dark said:

Honestly, I think there is. In my opinion, you should only gice enough descrption to get the imagination started. What do u guys think?

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Generally I'd say that's the key. You want to clue them into the general atmosphere, but some well chosen specifics also help. You can say, "suburban neighborhood" and they'll see something generic. If you say, "prewar bungalows... old trees... broken sidewalk" you spark the imagination a little better.

It's a balancing act. I usually try to give a good paragraph to setting a new scene, then ease off and fill in a few blanks after that between actions and dialogue.

If it's a new object, or person, I try to get the picture across in a sentence or two.

But sometimes it's fun to spend a little time with a description - especially if you're emphasising the POV character's take on things.

The later volumes in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series is often cited as a great example of description gone mad. Read the one- and two-star reviews (i.e., most of them) of vol. 10, "Crossroads of Time," at Amazon to see what this has done to his fan base.

Anything more than a few paragraphs is too much.

Description is wonderful, but if it isn't moving your book forward it's holding it back.

if you want an example of too much, check out the first fifty pages of Eco Umberto's Focult's Pendulum.....the first 12 alone are devoted to describing the monotonous swing of a pendulum.....sheesh.

Personally I tend to keep it light. But then I came to novel-writing via screenwriting where word-economy is a vital discipline.

I skip passages of description when I read. I try to remember that when I write.

I do the same - skip it. Or, many times, I'll put the book down. So don't start the book with lots of description. If you've got a good hook and some decent characters with a compelling plot, I can overlook some excess description. Those writers who like to start with a ton of description lose me.

Is a lengthy description absolutely crucial to the story? Chances are it isn't, unless it's some remote place nobody has ever heard of or can imagine. Even then, I feel all that is needed is sufficient description to let the reader's own imagination take over.

Good descriptions, like the details in a movie (such as Titanic), enhance the reading experience. Like Uncle Jim said, descriptions can be wonderful. Vivid descriptions put you in a 3-D space and transport you to that world, whether it's an alien planet or your own hometown. The trick is to find the balance. In a movie, you don't want to let the set and the landscape, cinematography, etc. dominate the story and characters. Same concept in the book -- you don't want to STOP the story cold just to describe some beautiful sceneries. There has to be a reason, and descriptions should support and enhance the story, not overwhelm it.

As a reader.

As a reader, unless description is somehow moving the story forward, I will start skipping the passages almost immediately.

I don't want to know how the gun, car, spaceship, etc. work (especially not down to the part numbers). I don't want a biography/obit infodump of someone the first time that character meets the MC.

When was the last time you woke up in the morning, made your coffee and thought about how your indoor plumbing, coffee maker, car works while you were on your way to work? Replace those with the 'reality' of your story.

I want to know things that will affect the character: setting, mood-alerting events, the MC reaction to the type of people around them (friends or foes), details of action that impacts the story.

Description is like dialog in a novel. You aren't showing every single piece of conversation that passes between people word for word, you summarize and condense to move the story forward.

Indeed, balance is key. Personally, I don't like stories with sparse description. I find them bland and dry. It also depends on the story you're telling, and the audience you're writing it for. Some people like rollercoasters, some like a nice lazy gondola ride in Venice.

Description is like dialog in a novel. You aren't showing every single piece of conversation that passes between people word for word, you summarize and condense to move the story forward.

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I like that way of looking at it. If you can't resist, go ahead and put all the description you want in your first draft. But be prepared to go back in revision, identify the salient, evocative detail(s), and cut the rest.

Yes, of course there's such a thing as too much description. "How much detail is enough?" is one of the basic artistic questions.

Most of what your readers experience when they read your story is stuff they make up themselves. The details you give them are their cues for what they should be imagining. You need to know all the details, and have them firmly in mind, but you also need to leave almost all of them out of the story. The few details you do use will be in the right place, and so readers will feel the solidity of that world you're mostly not describing.

Here's a good way to think about rate of exposition: your readers are compiling a movie in their heads as they read. There should be no more detail than someone reading at normal speed can assimilate into that mental movie.

Long incantatory paragraphs, dense with adjectives, that go on about how dark and spooky this cavern is, or how very autumnal this autumnal wood is, or how exotic and wicked this nighttime city is, are generally a complete waste of time. The reader can't assimilate all that superfluous detail. They fall out of the movie, and realize they're looking at words on a page. Once they realize that, they may treacherously reflect that they could be doing something else right now -- checking their e-mail, say, or making a sandwich. You may or may not get them back.

If you're a very good descriptive writer, you can sometimes get away with long descriptive passages. It's still a movie, but the descriptive segment is like footage you'd see on a National Geographic special, or one of those landscapes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Bear in mind, though, that most people's descriptive writing is nowhere near good enough to pull that off. If you're that good, you already know it. If you cherish the slighest doubts, don't even try it.

(A quick test: what is Melville up to in the first two-thirds of Moby-Dick? If the "unnecessary" explanations drove you crazy, or if you read them contentedly enough but didn't notice their strategic purposes, you're not that kind of descriptive writer.)

A very few details that keep the reader inside the story are worth a thousand details sitting dead on the page when the reader has fallen out of the story.

Here's another major error: "introductory scene setting." Don't do it. Big mistake. The applicable rule here is that you should never explain anything before the reader wants to know it. Instead, get the story started, and toss in whatever exposition's needed along the way. I'm dead serious about this. Exposition is wasted before there's a story to attach it to. If we don't know where the information fits in, we won't remember it.

Once we care about the story, we'll assimilate quite remarkable amounts of related information. Patrick O'Brian's readers come out knowing all sorts of information about sails, mainbraces, knees, firing rates, and other age-of-sail technology. You couldn't pay them to learn all that if it didn't come with a story attached.

HapiSofi said:

Here's another major error: "introductory scene setting." Don't do it. Big mistake. The applicable rule here is that you should never explain anything before the reader wants to know it. Instead, get the story started, and toss in whatever exposition's needed along the way. I'm dead serious about this. Exposition is wasted before there's a story to attach it to. If we don't know where the information fits in, we won't remember it.

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This is a good point, and many novice writers (me included) do that. I've seen so many stories that open with something like "It was a dark and stormy night..." or "The moon was bright and round and the landscape was serene..." or "It was one of those quaint suburban neighborhood..." Scene settings, like an establishing crane shot during the opening of a movie. Avoid that.

Yes, yes! I'm as guilty as anyone. Especially when you are trying to write an action-packed opening, you have to keep reminding yourself your hero's not likely to expend any of his awareness on contemplating the crumbling masonry of the century old hotel he just ran out of, while he's diving head-first into a dumpster with bullets whizzing past his ear.

HapiSofi said:

A quick test: what is Melville up to in the first two-thirds of Moby-Dick?

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I'm relieved to see this. I was going to mention M-D. It's full of description, but Melville does it so well, and he doesn't start his first chapter that way.

reph said:

I'm relieved to see this. I was going to mention M-D. It's full of description, but Melville does it so well, and he doesn't start his first chapter that way.

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Also, it's all to a purpose. As a writer, Melville's a top, about as laid-back as a border collie. He wants you to see and understand certain things in certain ways. If you put yourself in his hands, amazing things will happen.

Maestro, Chunky: It's not just the opening passage. Newbie novelists will have whole chapters where nothing really happens. They'd do far better to acquaint the readers with their characters by showing them in action.

HapiSofi said:

Newbie novelists will have whole chapters where nothing really happens. They'd do far better to acquaint the readers with their characters by showing them in action.

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Now, what did Melville do (with chapters where nothing really happens) that a novice writer doesn't?

I have a question, esp. for HapiSofi because your post was so helpful, but also for all.
I am working on my first novel. I have completed a first draft, which is still very rough. I am finding I have a story and I believe the characters are rounded out, but Where they are is bland. I don't have enough description; you can't see where they are. But when I try to add it, it comes off as an info dump. I’m not sure how to fix this.

The other thing I tend to do, and until now thought was wrong, is start a scene with Dialog. I start right in with the discussion, and let the conversation and actions indicate where they are. I thought it was wrong, that I had to set the scene first, but to me the dialog shows action, moves the story along and when I stop to set the scene I lose momentum. Reading this thread I am finding that maybe that it is not wrong to start with conversation, as long as I effectively set the scene as the conversation moves on, or the character starts doing something. Am I crazy?

I'm also a first-time novelist, and I've got the same problem Sassandgroove describes. My characters talk a good game, but they tend to be moving around on a blank page.

From what I understand, one approach is to deal with it like a stage play. Put the actors on the stage in very broad strokes. The reader at least needs to be given the information of where the characters are and who is present, then as the conversation and action progresses more details can be added to the description of the surroundings. The level of description detail is also used to control pacing of the scene. More description = slower pacing. Fast action scenes would have little detailed description unless it's a detail that would hit the character in the face.

I've read before that when describing a place or thing, you should pick out the three most important details; the reader will make up the rest. You have to be careful because if you don't make the reader do a little mental imagery work, it will get boring to read.

So...say your character is entering someone else's house: what are the three most important things (the things that make this house different from any other, or what your character notices first)? They might be the high ceiling, the expensive furniture and the annoying yap-yap dog barking from its cage...so describe those things, and the reader can fill in the rest. Or say your character is seeing someone for the first time: the three most important things might be the woman's long, dark hair, the way her eyebrows are raised making her look continually surprised, and the fact that she's six feet tall. Obviously this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it's a good reminder if you think you're doing too much or not enough.

I'm also working on my first novel, and after reading some other novels recently, I noticed my setting is virtually non-existent (as in, the city it's set in..though even my houses and such aren't that descriptive)...I'm more focused on dialogue and conflict right now, so on the rewrite I plan on bringing out the setting a lot more.

rowriter said:

I'm also working on my first novel, and after reading some other novels recently, I noticed my setting is virtually non-existent (as in, the city it's set in..though even my houses and such aren't that descriptive)...I'm more focused on dialogue and conflict right now, so on the rewrite I plan on bringing out the setting a lot more.

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Exactly my problem, but HOW do you do it after the story is written? That is where i am stumbling.

I'll try the three things rule. suggestion, guidline. whatever.... THanks!!!!

All I as a reader want to know is 'Where am I?' - I don't need a paragraph description - just enough to let me know where I am. Mention of a desk would suggest an office; a stethoscope suggests a medical environment of some sort; a smell, a sound - anything to at least point me in the right direction, then build on it.