Dear O'Abby: How much detail should I use?

 Dear O'Abby,

I'm doing NaNo this month and am doing pretty well, I think.  I'm definitely going to get to the 50K, and quite possibly even more.  But as I've been writing, I keep getting stuck on how much detail to go into, especially around describing people and things.  My book is set in an alternate world, so things are not going to be familiar to modern readers, but I feel like I may have been going a little far with detailing things.

Do you have any advice?

Truly,

Descriptor

Dear Descriptor,

Over-describing is an easy pit to fall into and one many writers struggle to get out of.  Especially, as you mention, when you're writing an unfamiliar world.  There's always a temptation to make sure your readers understand and see the world as clearly as you do.  But in reality, you need far less than you think.  Readers' imaginations are wonderful things and should never be underestimated.

When I'm writing, I always try to make sure any description I give is warranted or that it can pull double duty in giving insight into a character as well as describing a place or object. For example, describing a character's shoes as  meticulously cleaned Jordans tells you the character is probably both careful with his appearance and has enough money to buy name-brand footwear.

If a person or place is incidental to the story and will not appear again, then there is no reason to go into much detail.  Be sparse and generic and move on, saving your more detailed description for a place that is central to the plot or a character you want the reader to remember as a policeman, or describing an office building as being a high-rise.  Those few words can orientate the reader enough that they will understand the scene without going into any unnecessary detail.

Nothing stops the action as quickly as a long paragraph of description, so try to scatter your description throughout the text for the reader to pick up on as they follow the characters through their journey.  This is especially critical in the early scenes of your book where you are trying to propel the story forward, introduce your main characters and hook the reader enough that they will keep going.  Once you've got them into the story, there might be an opportunity for some longer passages of description if needed.

This can all be fixed when you edit post-NaNo, so don't worry too much about it as you try to reach that 50K goal.  Right now you just need to keep writing.

Hopefully that helps!

X O'Abby

Another Unexpected Writing Lesson from Real Life

Forgive me if this thought is a bit random and babbling, but it just sort of hit me as I was reading a post this morning. Bear with me, I promise I have a point :)

Late last week, a very good friend of mine from high school unexpectedly passed away. I hadn't spoken to her much in the last few years, other than some Facebook updates, but her death hit me very hard. She had been, at one point in my life, one of my best friends. And though I moved to the other side of the country after graduation, we did keep in contact for several years fairly frequently, and in more recent years, we kept in touch through places like MySpace and Facebook.

Friends and family members have been posting lovely comments about her on her Facebook page. Things about how she will be missed and how wonderful she was, how funny and loving and kind she was, those sorts of things.

Then this morning, someone posted something different. Instead of posting the lovely but pretty vague usual sentiment, this person posted a long list of specific things that she thought of when she thought of Kendra.

Things like how Kendra loved fuzzy socks and hot chocolate. How she made the best bread in the world and liked to dress her girls in striped leggings. How she preferred to sit on the floor, unless you were talking picnic tables - she liked to sit on top of those. How she let her kids play in the mud when other mothers chased their kids away from it. How she liked to play games on her cell phone and reuse things like turning an empty laundry detergent box into scrapbook supplies storage.

I absolutely loved reading this list. The other posts were wonderful, but this one...this one really SHOWED who Kendra was. This one painted a picture for me like none of the others did. It was wonderful being able to see the type of person she had grown into. I could picture the high school girl I'd known as this wonderful and quirky woman that was being described. It made me laugh and smile, even while I was choking back tears.

In fact, I think I will print the post out because through it I can truly SEE my friend.

And because all things in my life eventually get related to writing, it struck me that this is what I need to do with my characters. Yes, having a character who is beautiful and funny and just all around amazing is cool. But what really brings that character to life are the little things, the little eccentricities and quirks that make that character different from all the others out there. I need to make my characters truly SEEN.

For me, these types of things aren't something I can sit down and plan out ahead of time. I know many writers who write out character descriptions in the planning stage of their novels. I just don't know my characters well enough until I've gone through at least a draft or two of the story.

But it's something I will keep in mind more as I write now. And I'll probably think of Kendra every time :)