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Griffinkeeper
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 Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:17 am Post subject: On the Evils of Description |
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Armando raised up the long and mighty sword "Harm-Bringer", glistening with the warm red blood of his foe, before bringing it down and seperating his opponent's head from body.
This is about the point where an editor begins marking up the monitor with a red pen.
Many beginning writers (and a few other writers) seem to be of the opinion that the more description you put in, the better the story.
Nothing can be further from the truth. The more efficent you are at describing something, the better off you are. If bigger and more was better, then the dragon would win, not the smaller (yet more efficent) hero.
The opening sentence is better written as:
Armando cut off his opponent's head.
Geez, but this takes all the drama from the entire thing. We want drama right?
The answer is yes, we want suspense. Suspense is good. It keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.
What is bad is sacrificing readability for suspense. Reading is the only way you can deliver an image through the written medim. If you overload the sentence with imagery, you overload the reader. If the picture isn't coming through clear on the TV, you switch the channel or turn off the T.V. Likewise, the reader puts the book down (or more likely, throws it across the room.)
In all writing, don't overload the reader. The only exception to this rule is when the character is narrating.
She had breathtakingly blonde hair, with skin that was bronze from all the bikini contests she had won. Her clothes were so tight, I could read the washing instructions- wash in warm water, with a tumble dry. She was gorgeous.
Narration like this, when done in character, is perfectly acceptable. In third person, when you are in charge of describing it, it is usually best to keep things simple.
In the case of the first paragraph I showed earlier, all I did was ask myself "What am I really trying to say?" After I figured that out, I just wrote it down.
Ultimately, the drama shouldn't come from the description. You can't dramatize a door just by describing a door. You dramatize a door by describing how characters react to it.
Grif reached for the door, but jerked his hand back when he got closer.
Creepy?
Now, we can couple Armando with a reaction and/or dialogue to make that scene really come together.
"Gryphon Lance! Attack!" Armando yelled as he cut off his opponents head.
Thus, with minor adaptation, we can take an overloaded sentence, simplify it, and then couple it with a character reaction and/or dialogue. The result is a sentence that both adds to the character, advances the story, and tells us what the character is doing. |
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Last edited by Griffinkeeper on Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Snoink
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:39 am Post subject: |
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"Armando cut off his opponents head."
Now if this sentence had correct grammar, it would be even more startling!  |
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Griffinkeeper
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:08 am Post subject: |
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*opponent's
Better? |
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Buscador!
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:40 am Post subject: |
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I disagree. Both your examples are inefficient. The first utilizes far too many commas and is much too choppy to be read smoothly, and the second is just boring.
Armando cut off his opponent's head.
This is short and to the point, but utterly boring. All you do is TELL the reader that he cut off some dude's head. As many people love to emphasize, Showing is better than telling. In your two examples, the first one has more imagery and better description. It SHOWS the reader what's going on, rather than saying it bluntly.
However, maybe, in this situation, the long, drawn out answer is not what the reader needs. Maybe our hero is merely wading through minions of some greater foe and paying them little heed.
In that case, you're going to want to say something along the lines of "'Gryphon Lance! Attack!' Armando yelled as he sliced through an orcish skull." It's not much different, but there is one KEY difference. The way you had worded it, designating the enemy as "his," enemy, made it very personal to Armando, like it was an arch enemy or something. However, you also shortened the sentence to the point that makes it sound like he's killing the opponent almost nonchalantly; if he's fighting his arch nemesis, you don't want a short, lazy swipe of his sword to finish him off--you want a huge, gleaming blade to tear through the orc's neck and send his head spiraling off into the darkness with blood spilling from the open wound! You want an elaborate finish to the fight, not a little tiny sentence.
Later on you say that you can't make a door dramatic just by describing it. I disagree again. The appearance of the door is important, especially if there's something about it that makes Grif react that way. The reader isn't going to know WHY he reacted like that if you don't show them with description.
I think what I'm trying to say is there is a time and place for elaborate description, even with a sentence as crazy as your first example.
One must merely know when to use that description, and when not too. It's all very contextual; there is no one rule that will work for description...you just need to balance the fancy with the simple in order to have the most impact and best dramatic timing. |
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Caligula's Launderette
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:45 am Post subject: |
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| Maybe I'm just a morbid little child inside but I would prefer something with a more gore... |
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smaur
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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To a certain degree, I agree with you.
...but only to a certain degree.
Weighty description is unnecessary in ACTION SEQUENCES. Or the majority of action sequences, if your intention is to keep your reader on the edge of his/her/its seat. Long-winded overwrought descriptions of the hero's shining blade as it cleaved the air is just unnecessary, and it murders that whole "suspense" thing. Here's a vaguely lengthy article (not really) on why and how.
And as long as we're critiquing the "Armando cut off his opponent's head," sentence (don't kill me!) ... there has to be a better verb than "cut off". In fact, there is. There's lots of them. If you're going to pare down your adjectives, make sure you give them adequate replacement. Which is to say, yes, this is an action sequence. If Armando were peeling potatoes to make latkes, "cut off" MIGHT be a reasonable verb. But he's not. He's fighting an Evil Foe! Insert epic Lord of the Rings-esque music here! There are SO many better, more exciting and interesting words you can use here. Some of them might sound out of place, but I GUARANTEE you that there's at least two words (if not more!) that would flow with the sentence and spice it up.
I also think description has its place, and to a certain degree, the amount of description you use might be dictated by your particular style. Which is to say, if you're aiming for a minimalist approach, then yeah, forty pages of description on the heroine's flowing gold locks might kinda suck. Again, only to a certain extent. Sometimes superfluous is just superfluous. |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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So use your better judgement, no?  |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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Lol, description's not evil, it's merely... *gestures, searching for word* ..merely... exceedingly difficult to write properly. But maybe it's evil because it's so hard to avoid being wordy and difficult to read... Ugh, I hate writing descriptions. 
But I'm not sure your examples did what you were trying to get across justice... ^_~ |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, description is great (I love doing it) but only to a certain extent. It's like if you have too much food you'll barf. So don't barf when you're reading ^_~ |
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Griffinkeeper
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| I concede to Smaur. |
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smaur
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:40 am Post subject: |
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| Griffinkeeper wrote: |
| I concede to Smaur. |
Everyone always does.
I MEAN. Um. Look, behind you! A tree! |
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| Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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*spins around*
Where???
But yeah, I agree that description ought to depend on whose eyes we're looking out from, though I can rarely stand a ton of description; I'd rather fill in the specifics on my own, thanks very much. |
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