I thought I knew about this rule, but it was really only
recently that I fully grasped it.
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| Photo credit: Per Jensen on Flickr |
You see, I’m a little obsessed with eyes (turns out, much of
the female population is—go figure). In my art, for example, if I don’t like
the way the eyes turn out, chances are I’ll dump the whole thing. I didn’t
think this obsession translated into my writing until someone pointed out to me
that my very male, very distressed protagonist probably wasn’t going to be
noticing everyone’s eye color in the opening scene. A quick scan through my
manuscript showed that I’d mentioned pretty much everyone’s eye color—including minor show-up-once characters.
Oops.
Turns out, that pretty much applied to hair color too.
Apparently my knee-jerk descriptions rely on the two.
As the author of our stories, we know what everyone looks
like. We have a mental image of every character, every face, and our instinct
is to try to paint in our readers the exact same image as the one in our minds.
Yeah, not gonna happen—nor should it.
We all have
imaginations—and that includes our readers. Even if you go through the trouble
of describing the way your love interest’s blonde hair never looks neat and the
tint of his brown eyes and how he’s just shy of six foot and athletic and loves
Levi jeans and Etnies and wears the same blue t-shirt every day, your readers
will each have a different mental image of your character.
So if they’re going to imagine their own version anyway,
should you really take the time to describe every character in every scene down
to hair and eye color?
The short answer is no.
Guess what? Readers don’t want to know about every detail—they want to know the
important details. Don’t tell us your character has black hair, blue eyes,
stands at 5’9” and has a runner’s body—tell us about his crooked smile and the
dimple on his cheek and the way his eyes completely pass you up when he walks
past you. That’s much more powerful—agreed?
Truth is, if you leave out that your love interest’s dark
hair is actually dark brown (not black) like Veronica Roth did, your readers aren’t going to feel cheated, nor will they be unable to
picture your character. Whatever you don’t tell them, they’ll fill in for
themselves.
It seems that sometimes we forget that readers have
imaginations, too. Don’t underestimate them—they can fill in the blanks.
Leave out the general details and strive for the specific,
important ones and your readers will love you for it.
Do your favorite descriptions fully describe the character or setting, or do they choose specific details?
26 comments:
OMG! I write too much about eyes too! blue, green, brown, uff...thank you for reminding this. I have to get back to my MS too to check if I overdid this. Very informative post!
I knew the eye obsession wasn't just me! You're very welcome--it's something I still have to stop myself from doing. :)
I used to always point out eye and hair color of every character because I thought that was what I was supposed to do...turns out, that gets annoying for readers and becomes more and more challenging for the write to do in a way that isn't boring. These days I only throw in those details when they're really important and prefer more subtle traits like you mentioned in your post.
Great post! Yes, I did this at first too, and for the same reason you mentioned - wanting the reader to see the same image I did. Oops. :)
This made me laugh, because any time I'm reading and a male love-interest has a pony-tail or their hair is too long, I immediately pretend like that sentence never happened. Loved this post.
My first thought on reading this is, "but I want to describe what my character's are wearing and their body types and their hair color in detail!" Isn't that part of our art? Part of the breathing room that fiction writing gives us is to paint these scenes in our reader's minds in detail.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in complete agreement with your thesis: readers are far more capable than most writers credit them for. I'm also aware that detailed descriptions aren't always a good thing. I think, for example, of playwriting, in which the writer must be vague enough to give the actor and director plenty of room to interpret. Poetry, also, thrives on being just detailed enough but not too much so.
So, I'm wondering if it isn't a stylistic preference? I can think of several writers, both modern and otherwise, and of various genres, that choose to write in exhaustive detail, and some who intentionally choose to be vague. So, perhaps the difference between which details are superfluous and which are the "specific, important ones" varies according to the writer's voice and style? While I tend to describe my characters in great detail, I typically leave a great deal to the imagination in my description of setting: that is, my descriptions are much more succinct in describing the room that the character is in, than in what the character is wearing.
Just thinking out loud. Thanks for a thought-provoking post!
When I first started writing (besides my obsession) I thought that was the way things were done, too. It wasn't until I really started paying attention to what I was reading and other writing advice out there that I realized that it wasn't the case at all.
I've realized both from my own reading experience and from reading other people's experiences that we (as readers) tend to imagine things the way we want to, regardless of how the author describes it. Love interests who aren't necessarily described as handsome (or beautiful), for example, end up beautiful in the minds of the readers as they fall in love with the character.
Hair and eye color? Yeah, not the most important detail to mention after all.
Ha ha, I've realized that I tend to ignore little details like that that I don't particularly care for myself, *especially* if it's of the love interest. :D
I think, like all things in writing, it absolutely does come down to the writer's particular style. Some of us will describe more than others and that doesn't make any one of us wrong--it's just the way that writer works.
What I mean here isn't necessarily that a lot of description is *wrong,* just that especially today, there is a very real danger of over describing that we as authors need to be aware of. With attention spans what they are today, readers tend to favor more concise descriptions, which then forces us as writers to learn what specific details we want them to remember.
That doesn't mean that if you're a writer who includes exhaustive detail that you're doing something wrong--only that in the end, readers don't necessarily *need* huge amounts of detail to picture what you're trying to get across. A few specific, memorable details can be just as good as (and, in my opinion, often better) than long paragraphs of description.
Of course that's my stylistic preference, which is why the eye and hair color revelation was such a big deal to me. I realized that those kind of details weren't always necessary and in my case, I was overdoing it. That's certainly not the case for everyone, though.
I love your example (black hair, blue eyes vs crooked smile, dimple), it really brings home your point. And the reader gets more of a sense of the character with the latter description.
It's so easy to get hung up on these minor details and lose focus on the story as a whole - but I guess that's what editing is for!
When I think of some great literary writers...Nabokov, for example...their descriptions were lengthy and held a poetic beauty that is rare today. Many readers would find it too long, and I think that short attention span is a problem to be addressed rather than a condition to be accepted.
Perhaps those writers had found the balance of which you speak, in discerning which details are important to warrant lengthy descriptions? If so, I have some way to go.
A lot of the classics have much longer descriptions--sometimes descriptions that went on for pages. At the time, that was absolutely acceptable, and I think part of that was that people were wired differently (yes, I mean attention spans again).
I understand your point about attention spans being a problem to be addressed, not a condition to be accepted, but I honestly don't believe it's something that can be fixed on a wide scale. We live in an age where we've become conditioned to things happening quickly and where multiple stimulus is normal--if not expected--and as a whole, attention spans have suffered.
Perhaps I'm more prone to accept it as something that just is because I know my attention span isn't exactly pristine (although it's better than many, especially those who don't read at all).
Attention spans aside, I think that writers of that time did indeed ride along a balance of important details, but in their case (and this is just my opinion) the balance was different because of what people were accustomed to encountering in their reading. I think today the balance is much more fine, as readers often except us to give them just enough description without going on too long about it.
Again, this is all just my opinion. It's definitely an interesting thing to discuss, though. :)
Some times full body/clothes descriptions works in stories, dependson the story. I enjoy books just as much if all I have is the front cover with very little description. More about who the character is.
I was discussing that with Dave, it definitely depends on the book. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't...regardless of how much description you use though, I think it's important to make sure the descriptions focus on the right details, versus general ones.
I've certainly enjoyed the conversation!
A big amen to this. It's not just limited to description, either. I recently read a forum post from a beginning writer who was really worried about his first book -- because his "target market was geniuses," and he was afraid the unwashed masses wouldn't be able to grasp the intricate subtleties of his work -- which was a very mediocre fantasy war novel.
Some of my favorite writers manage to imply great detail in only a few words, it's a skill I envy.
Your blog rocks.
I'm not entirely sure what to say about that forum post...I think I'll just...pretend I didn't read that part. Hmm...
Getting those true details down in just a few words is something I really admire myself. I'm personally a big fan of conciseness, and learning how to choose the right details to include and finding the balance between too much and too little isn't an easy thing--but definitely worth the effort, in my opinion.
And thank you! I think you're awesome, you know, for commenting. :)
I think this is something every writer comes to grips with eventually. Personally, I've decided that if the reader can imagine a detail for him/herself without it messing with the plot, I'm not going to describe it. There's just too much other important stuff to include, lol.
That's one way of looking at it. I don't think it's something we need to stress about while writing, but it's certainly something to look out for while editing.
Great points! The overuse of eye color is one of those things ... once you think about it, you see it everywhere! :)
SO true!
This definitely falls into the don't-worry-while-you're-writing-fix-in-editing category. While you're writing, you don't need to focus on those nit-picky things (in fact, it's probably best if you don't).
While you're editing on the other hand...
Ahh, yes. It's so easy to fall into an eye-describing habit! I'm guilty of that one, for sure. I agree that details are so not necessary, but I don't have a problem with light descriptions like hair color and build. Especially hair color. If one of my characters has red hair, I don't want someone imagining them with blonde. But when it comes down to style or shade, I don't mind leaving that up to the person. (Well, at least, I'll practice not minding. *twitches*)
Nice post! =)
Thanks! I still catch myself over-describing those pesky eyes. I hunt them down with the delete button in later drafts. :)
LOL! It's very easy to do. Eyes rock.
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