Description: an end in itself?

To me, the length of a descriptive passage is not so important as it's purpose. There are stories where the environment is as much a character as anything with a speaking part. I could be perfectly happy reading pages of rich description if it had an immediate bearing on the story (as opposed to a meaning that only becomes clear after the passage). Obviously, a skillfully executed description is better than a poor one, but even the most beautiful language can become tedious if there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no obvious destination or purpose communicated to the reader.
 
I don't necessarily like to read big walls of description, but I don't mind it either, if the prose is good and makes it flow well.

I love detail, but prefer it spread out, rather than all in one go.
 
I'm right with you guys to much description kills me, I think that's why I can't get into Stephen King's books.
 
Kind of ironic. I hate pointless description. Yet people are yelling about Return of the Native[1] and Wuthering Heights, which are two of the few "mundane" English novels I like. I think there's two keys: 1) I voluntarily read both books and didn't have them inflicted on me by school and 2) like Vertigo and AnyaKimlin (and maybe others) say, it can be necessary or well done. In those two books, the heath and the moors aren't so much settings endlessly described, as characters or forces in their own right. But, basically, the abstract principle is to pare down description to the minimum necessary.

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[1] Of course, people seem to be assuming landscape description. Probably my favorite part of Return of the Native is in the first eight paragraphs or so of Chapter 7 where the landscape is Eustacia Vye. :)
 
I've found some critics, in the book reviews, hate any description at all. At least that's the way they protray themselves. I absolutely love it. Landscape, people, a crowded gather, a busy street. I feel that without enough description, the author is relying to much on the reader's imagination.
 
Well, yes. It's supposed to be almost a partnership between the reader and the writer, isn't it? If you say too much, you're insulting the reader's intelligence. If you say too little, the reader gets stumped. I like description that has a purpose, too, and - like Teresa - I like to be "intoxicated by words." So give me something that flows beautifully and tells me something I want to know about the story, and I will breathe in every word.
 
I like descriptions to flower. not flowery descriptions per say, but ones that wind about getting to the point when setting the stage (not in the middle of climactic action, because its hard to be tence about the roses falling out of her hair peddle by peddle when she is running from a would-be ravisher who is raving about the moonlight) I like the story to wind about itself the way that small children tell stories, starting with one story then interrupting to give the context of a tangent by telling most of another which also must be interrupted and explained before completing the explanation begun previously and then wrapping up the story.


but I'm ADD and that is kind of how my life goes, so it makes sense to me that stories would go the same way.
 
Culhwch said:
Two things from this:

1) How can you possibly follow the story? Well, I can see that you can probably follow the story enough to get by, but how can you possibly expect to pick up all the nuances and undertones and so on that the author may have laced through. And don't you ever read a piece of dialogue and wonder what the hell they are going on about?
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Because, despite all appearances, I'm not completely stupid.

2) You're foregoing the opportunity to learn from anything the author is doing well or, conversely, from what they're doing poorly. Isn't that one of the more valuable outcomes of reading when trying to improve yourself as a writer?
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But I said if I see a big chunk I skip it. I don't skip all description, that would be stupid. I'm talking J.V. Jones's amount of description here.

I love Neil Gaiman's description - that's what I'm aspiring to. I love Philip Pullman's description.
 
As I usually answer to these sorts of things, whatever works, and whatever the story needs.

I personally use description to manage tone and pace. Where it's a fast-paced action sequence I will barely put description into anything, reducing events down to clinical, factual phrases.

But if it's two lovers entwined in each other's arms, relaxing on a deck watching the sunset, totally absorbed in the moment, you can expect extensive, poetic description.
 
Mouse said:
Because, despite all appearances, I'm not completely stupid.
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I certainly wouldn't insinuate that you are stupid in any way, Mouse. I just couldn't imagine reading a book and skipping over a large section of text. When I was done, I wouldn't actually feel like I was done, for a start. And if the description was so dire that I had to skip parts, I'd just ditch the book altogether. Too many books, too little time.

Don't get me started on folks who skip prologues....
 
Culhwch said:
Don't get me started on folks who skip prologues....
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Oops. :eek: Have been known to.

I don't want to know about what colour flags people have, and endless description for descriptions sake, padding. I do want to know what moves and motivates the characters and if that's a lovely forest walk then yes, I want nice description of it. I have read well written descriptive passages and gone, oh wow, that's brilliant. But I have read far more descriptive passages that are deriviative and unmoving, and that the book would have been better without.
 
Sorry to hear about your Hardy traumas -- we had The Mayor of Casterbridge inflicted on us. I hated it. Hatedhatedhated it.
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Ah, that takes me back. I did it for GCSE and had a similar view. His outlook just seemed like a pose to me: after all, when is hubris really punished by the gods? To judge by the idiots on TV, never. You're better off reading Cold Comfort Farm, which at least has jokes.

Anyhow, I'd say it depends. I get irritated by people who think that writing is just a vehicle for listing a bunch of events, but purple prose annoys me too. I suspect that to write really long descriptive passages, like those that open Titus Groan, you've got to be very good. You've also got to have a certain amount of mental toughness to stick with them.

Actually, I think quite a lot of fantasy suffers from a lack of description, partly because it suffers from a lack of having anything that needs to be described. You hardly need to tell me what a dwarf is, but if you've got something interesting to say about dwarf culture, or about some new creature of your imagining, then it deserves more time. Similarly, a mock-medieval setting is pretty much there already.

I remember one novel, about 20 years ago, where almost all the description was replaced by exclamation marks: "It was a skeleton warrior in light chainmail!". Super.
 
I just remembered a particularly harrowing experience description wise - Moby Dick. A great tale of the sea and the futility of vengeance is broken up ad nauseum by description of nothing! I mean Melville took three chapters to talk about pictures of whales! Did it have anything to do with the plot? No! Were any characters influenced by whale drawings? No! I ended up skipping roughly every other chapter to get through that thing.
 
Culhwch said:
I certainly wouldn't insinuate that you are stupid in any way, Mouse.
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No, I know. Mornings = grumpy Mouse.

Don't get me started on folks who skip prologues....
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Now, I never do that. ;) I don't get why people skip those! They're like little teasers before the big event.

You know what I have skipped? Parts of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I love Oscar Wilde. Ok, so I only skipped the part where he's going on about... I can't even remember what it is now. Something Dorian gets obsessed with, his collections of perfumes or pomegranates or something. I love the way Wilde describes people though.
 
Mouse said:
You know what I have skipped? Parts of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I love Oscar Wilde. Ok, so I only skipped the part where he's going on about... I can't even remember what it is now. Something Dorian gets obsessed with, his collections of perfumes or pomegranates or something. I love the way Wilde describes people though.
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I bet you're talking about Chapter 11. I can't remember what he was going on about, either - jewels and embroideries and whatnot. I read through it but I'll skip it in the future.

On a first read, I read everything (including blurbs, the copyright page, etc.) If I find myself getting impatient and find myself skipping, I also find myself giving up on the book.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
Brian Stableford says a little bit of purple prose is okay, and he should know. Personally, I agree with him, especially if the novel in question has a "journey" aspect - it's often the journey that is more important than the ending...
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I agree, for me the best book has a bit a purple, but not too much, a touch of stereotype/cliche and a lot of other things it isn't supposed to have.

My very favourite ever novel is Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill about the Pendle Witches (well loosely). It breaks all the 'rules' of modern writing. Begins with a three page, backstory infodump, the character would be classed as the internet Mary Sue, it is full of adverbs (some of which are highly creative lol), he describes the clothes, the buildings, the scenery, the people. The book for me is warm, colourful, cosy and great for Sunday afternoon lazy reading and despite having read it three times a year at least since the early nineties, I have never got tired of it.

I did notice with the new edition one person on Amazon noted some of the text had been modernised. They complained it had lost some of the colour and intimacy. Which is a shame I'd been hoping to replace my very tired looking copy.
 
I'm imagining the start of a film. The orchestral accompaniment is low, brooding, full of tension and menace. The camera pans slowly across an ink-black void from which abstract, shapes emerge from the darkness. Briefly they glint brilliant shining steel, only to descend back into the shadows. The music builds as the camera drifts back until with a crescendo, the full picture appears with a flash of blinding light!

It's the film title in big shiny blocky letters and it's a waste of time
 
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