%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |   A month-long novel-planning challenge with prizes galore. |
| We've spent the past few days on setting assignments, so it seems like an ideal time to bring up pacing. How much description is enough? When do you know it's too much? Does it depend on genre? On target audience? How do you adequately paint a picture in your reader's mind while still moving the action forward? Cheers, Michelle Battywyn |
| Good questions, I'm not sure. I know when I was in Academic Decathlon, I had to read this novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. As a teenager, I found all the descriptive language and random events that didn't appear to have anything to do with the main plot tedious. I wonder if I'd see it differently now that I'm older? |
| It does depend on the genre to a degree, but just info-dumping description does become tedious. I mean, I love LotR, but 3 pages describing trees really pushed the friendship level. Besides, readers are not stupid. A lot of readers want to build these worlds on their own. I know sometimes a film of a book (while 99.9% are not as good as the book anyway) can disappoint me if the characters do not look like the way I imagined them in my head. I like to use relevant physical descriptions; extraneous stuff just bogs a story down. Without knowing what it was called, I have used Hemingway's Iceberg for description and world-building for years. I think that is best. Have your info there; only include what is absolutely needed. And Chekhov's Gun is still important! |
 2,000 GPs were sent to s  with this post.Chekov's gun really is important. I think of it all the time when I watch a movie, or see a play. Visual especially with a story. If they focus on one particular scene, or prop, you know that it is going to somehow perhaps be part of the eventual telling of the story. A plot point for sure. Queen NormaJean 2023 Quill Finalist. 2023 Quill Nominee. Quill Finalist Logo 2022. Quill Nominee Signature 2022 Preferred Author |
| I had to read Far from the Madding Crowd for academic decathlon too! I really liked that one as a teen. However, in college for a novel writing class I had to read the first book Cormac McCarthy published and couldnāt understand what was going on at all. |
| Oh, this is such good food for thought! It's definitely dependent on reader expectations and genre conventions! An author can get away with more description in hard sci-fi or high fantasy than in low sci-fi or cozy fantasy, and with much less in some other genres, where taut, to-the-point descriptions are more prized. (It is, of course, dependent on time period, too. Melville and Tolkien would not get away today with what they got away with before.) Fans of certain flavors of military science fiction would be furious if the author didn't lovingly describe the new weapons/transports and their specs. Romance readers might not love a two-page description of a forest, but they might be furious not to know how the love interest smells. My personal metric for figuring out how much description to use is to make sure the POV character notices things that would interest them (and, ideally, if the reader is compelled by the character, these things will be things that interest readers, as well). Description can also be used to set the tone or create microtension. "The brutal, glaring eye of the sun", while a bit overwrought as a descriptor, will automatically set readers on edge in a regular scene description and prepare them for tension. (It's so easy to go overboard on that, though! I guess there's a reason why sad scenes during rainstorms have become clichƩ.  )Ideally, every element of the story is serving more than one purpose. Description can paint a picture for readers, sure, but it can also reveal character, set the tone for a scene, or create tension. I like trying to make sure it's doing at least two of those things. That said, I still have a bad habit of describing too little and get told to bulk up descriptions sometimes.  But I guess that's what other pairs of eyes exist for. We can't catch everything by ourselves. |
| Are you talking about the book 'The Road'? It is a very strange end-of-the-world tale. I read it some time ago, published in 2006. I may still have it in my library. I'll have to check. Queen NormaJean Image #2291665 over display limit. -?- . Image #2291664 over display limit. -?- . Image #2273455 over display limit. -?- . Image #2273457 over display limit. -?- Preferred Author |
| No, Far From The Madding Crowd is a much older book. It takes place in the English countryside and the main focus is the love triangle between the main character, some arse I don't remember the name of and the property owner named Bathsheba. My opinion is that the narrative—like many during the 19th century—gets lost in the over description of the scenery and characters. |
| Maybe. I honestly don't remember a single thing. I just remember writing a paper about a particular section of the novel. Then the teacher said there was a big time gap in the middle of that section. My first thought was: where? *edit* Perhaps the teacher misspoke. I don't recognize any of the books listed on Goodreads. So confusing. It wasn't a very good class, which is unfortunate since it would have been more relevant since I write novels. When we submitted chapter drafts of our own work, she said my chapter was too polished so there wasn't much to change. That was back when the novel was in first person, which I suck at writing. I've rewritten and edited that novel a few times with no help from having taken a class on writing novels because I learned nothing there. lol |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
