Description: an end in itself?

[Warren_Paul]

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

Hey! I go to movies in the theatres just to see how they reveal the title...

j/k


Yeah, there needs to be a point to the detail, plain and simple. Although building atmosphere can be that point.

 

[Ursa major]

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.

I may have read this well over thirty years ago. At least I've read a novel about the Pendle witches that went into a lot of detail about clothes.

I seem to recall a character (probably the main character) describing the layers and layers of garments she was wearing (or putting on): all sorts of under this and over that.

 

[Urum Rekhesh]

Robert Jordan is a good example of an author who uses an excruciating degree of detail in his works. He does it really well, though, so I don't mind.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I may have read this well over thirty years ago. At least I've read a novel about the Pendle witches that went into a lot of detail about clothes.

I seem to recall a character (probably the main character) describing the layers and layers of garments she was wearing (or putting on): all sorts of under this and over that.

Sounds like Margery Whitaker lol it was written in the 1950s. It won't be to everyone's taste but I loved every moment of that book. I've had it at least since about 1989. She even discusses the material, ribbons etc with the pedlar. It actually had a purpose serving as a distinction between her Puritan family she grew up in and the indulgent guardian she ended up with. Also the Puritan vs non Puritans in the story.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Keith Roberts' Pavane is like this, I think?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I've never read it but from what I have just read it does seem to have similarities. Technically Mist Over Pendle is an historical novel but it does have a magical realism/paranormal angle and is more of an alternate history. The way he unfolds events is the reverse of how history sees it. The MC's indulgent guardian is seen as a land grabbing squire in the histories whereas in the story he is the dashing, older hero type.

 

[Mouse]

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.

That sounds about right. I don't have the book to hand to check for definite.

 

[Dante]

Description, as with any other device in writing, is a tool that can be used wisely or improperly. I feel at times authors lose control of their story and get caught up in using description as a device to propel the story forward. At that point, there wasn't enough of a driving force from the characters or actions to provide a more compelling direction.

 

[Extollager]

I'm afraid I'm terrible for skipping passages of description, especially if they're long and seem to me to be extensive scene setting/ filler -- PD James does it in some of the Adam Dalgleish books, which otherwise I really enjoy. But even if the description is well-written and utterly relevant I often find I've skipped it. I seem to do it automatically. My husband will read books all the way through and doesn't understand why I don't/ can't. I always feel I've picked up enough from the first couple of sentences of description to give me an idea.

When I read 'Bob and Sue walked hand in hand through the forest' I envisage all sorts of things -- because even if the forest was described for pages that's probably pretty much all I'd read anyway. The things I see might not be what the writer intended but nine times out of ten it works for me (and when it doesn't, I go back and look).

I'll blame my mum. I remember her giving my sister a copy of The Return of the Native when we were teenagers (I can't bear Hardy -- too much inevitable doom). There was a bookmark about 100 pages in, and my mum said: "That's where the story starts."

ps: I love Dickens. His description comes in great, telegraphed skippable chunks.

I searched Chrons for remarks on the Inspector Dalgleish books and noticed this. What's got my interested in reading them is my current absorption in James's non-series novel Innocent Blood, which I, who have never been to the UK, keep thinking is "a London novel." I relish her descriptions of settings.

 

[Hikokage]

I totally agree if the description is irrelevant. I also agree that in SF and F we sometimes need to describe the world. I try to use dialog for that if possible. But when a person explains how the world works to another person familiar with that same world, it feels forced and pulls me out of immersion. So using the all-knowing third person sometimes helps keeping the description short and relevant.

 

[Vertigo]

My original comment in this thread was tolerant of descriptions, especially in SF&F, but now, a dozen years later my tastes have shifted rather. Since that time I've read many books with huge amounts of description particularly in the genre of magical realism, from authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami, but also many others and now, maybe in my old age I'm getting more measured in my reading, I find I love well written descriptions probably more than I do fast paced action dialogue.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

When there's too little description, I lose any sense of immersion and basically stop caring. It feels like wire-frame puppets going through the motions in an infinite grey void. Often seems to go with slightly iffy character motivation and / or action sequences that make no physical sense.

 

[paranoid marvin]

When there's too little description, I lose any sense of immersion and basically stop caring. It feels like wire-frame puppets going through the motions in an infinite grey void. Often seems to go with slightly iffy character motivation and / or action sequences that make no physical sense.

The descrptive text is what brings Midfle-earth to life, and makes LOTR so special.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think description can never really describe something perfectly: the good stuff gives a striking impression and/or prods the brain in a certain description. This is the opening of Count Zero by William Gibson:

They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.

Gibson doesn't say what a slamhound looks like: it might be like a little car, a robot dog, some kind of cyborg thing - but you get a mental image of it and what the setting is like. Maybe the lack of precise description forces the reader to engage with the story in making up their own image. The choice of what's described and what's isn't is important, which is probably why 1984 is full of things being cold, bland, grimy and so on. Likewise Mervyn Peake's rather wordy descriptions in Titus Groan provide a mood as much as a scene - although he can be very exact when we wants to be.

 

[Pyan]

Try the Slough House series, by Mick Herron: chock full of descriptive passages, all of which contribute hugely to the atmosphere of the books.

“When dusk at last comes it comes from the corners, where it’s been waiting all day and seeps through Slough House the way ink seeps through water; first casting tendrils, then becoming smoky black cloud and at last being everywhere, the way it always wants to be. Its older brother night has broader footfall, louder voice, but dusk is the family sneak, a hoarder of secrets. In each of the offices it prowls by the walls, licking the skirting boards, testing the pipes and out on the landings it fondles doorknobs, slips through keyholes, and is content. It leans hard against the front door – which never opens, never closes –and pushes softly on the back, which jams in all weathers; it presses down on every stair at once, making none of them creak, and peers through both sides of each window. In locked drawers it hunts for its infant siblings, and with everyone it finds it grows a little darker. Dusk is a temporary creature, and always has been. The faster it feeds, the sooner it yields to the night.”
London Rules.

 

[sknox]

As these samples demonstrate, it's not so much the description or even its relevance, it's the prose. If the author is adept, then the writing carries us along, whether it be narration or description or dialogue.

When this question gets asked in forums, there is a variety of replies simply because different people like different things, and we even like different things at different times. Asking if description is an end in itself is a bit like asking if writing is an end in itself.

Of course it is.

And no it isn't.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Description is an art; it paints a pictute in the reader's mind. The best descriptive text isn't usually a photographic represention, in the same way that a painting isn't usually an exact representation of the subject being painted. It's an idea that the artist is painting inside your head.

Thus The Haywain depicts an idyllic countryside with man,animal, land and nature existing in harmony. We don't see the malnutritioned farmworker or emaciated horse, nor the ramshackle hut in which he lives. Life was brutal for people living in the countrtside at this time, but this painting makes it look like Heaven on Earth.

In the same way that Tolkien paints The Shire as a place where Hobbits live in harmony with nature; everyone is content, has a full belly and lives at peace with their neighbours. When the likelihood is that - just as everywhere else - there are the haves and the have-nots, and everything that goes with that; some Hobbits are more equal than others. But Tolkien paints this picture so that it can contrast with how the rest of Middle-earth is, and a forshadowing of what is to come in the future.