Precise or Purple: How Much Detail Is Too Much?

This is a hard question, because tastes differ a lot from writer to writer and from reader to reader. Between Hemingway and Melville is a gigantic gap, and both of them are rightly considered as masters of American literature. As a reader, I’m not terribly fond of either, though I can appreciate their respective techniques. There are also books I have loved which have lush detail, and books I have loved that have sparser, targeted details. But certainly there is more than one way to write a good story or a good book.

It is true that the fantasy field tends toward the more descriptive end, and there is a good reason for this. When one is creating a world from the ground up (pun intended), it’s important to be clear on how this world differs from our own (even if it’s ostensibly set in our own world, the addition of magic makes it subtly different), and to delineate how magic works. Otherwise, the reader will develop expectations about the story that are not what the author intends, and when their expectations aren’t met, they may very well put the book down and walk away. It also matters to the plot; if the details are clear, the plot will also be clearer and tighter, as it will be set up by the details.

But deciding how much description is necessary, and how to integrate that detail into the story can be tricky. Many readers have worked their way through writing that is so dense they simply cannot strain out the words in order to find the story inside them. Equally frustrating to my mind is the writing that is so sparse that it either blends into every other story with a similar plot, or doesn’t introduce key story elements in a way that supports the plot as a whole.

Within that range, personal taste dictates how much detail one wants, but there are a few rules of thumb that I personally follow. Adjectives are great, but they aren’t the only way to describe something; metaphors and similes are also excellent ways of conveying an image. Flowery language is not necessary to make a clear, beautiful description unless you’re describing flowers. Clean, simple language sometimes gives a much better image to the reader than does elaborate language. Not to say that elaborate language isn’t ever called for, but overdoing it can put a reader off. You’re trying to pull the reader in, not intimidate them.

There is a thing I call the “thesaurus disease”. Now, I use a thesaurus almost every time I write. They’re wonderful tools. But they’re much better used to find the word that you just couldn’t remember at the moment than to find a brand new word for something when you may not know the subtle shadings of meaning that the word conveys. For instance, years ago, in a college writing class, I was trying to find another word for “elected leader”. I looked in the thesaurus for a good word, and came up with one I wasn’t terribly familiar with: “potentate”. I used it without realizing that the connotations were of a foreign, often Eastern, dignitary, and had nothing to do with an elected leader. A thesaurus is not a substitute for a good vocabulary or a precision in the use of words. Misuse of one can be at best ignorable, occasionally comedic, and at worst, unreadable.

Precision is not about how many or few words one uses. It’s about using the words you want to use in a way that you convey the images you want to convey. Whether or not you want fewer details, or a more lush style of writing, you need to know what each of your words mean, and how they fit together in a whole to make a coherent narrative. The ideal is that one should always be aware of the weight of each word one uses. Practically speaking, no one achieves that 100% of the time, but it should be a goal, especially in the revision phase.

(However, one should never let that frighten them into needing so much to be perfect that they’re afraid to write. The best teacher of writing is the process of writing itself, and the more one writes, the more understanding one has of the process.)

I’ve had people complain that I put too much detail into my stories; I have also had people say I choose the right amount, and that it makes my stories strong. It’s useful to check with one’s workshop or beta readers, because they often see things that you do not. And occasionally that single voice is correct: during the writing of “Etched in Fire”, one of my workshop members said that my opening was too detailed and descriptive. I took a really good look at it, decided he was right, and cut four pages down to about one. I think it’s considerably stronger for the rewrite.

What’s considered the best writing style varies with time period written, genre and sub-genre, and individual taste. But classics become classic, not because they are perfect, but because they are powerful: because the way the author chose to speak about their story resounded in the minds of many readers over many years. And that’s perhaps the best writing goal: telling your story the way it needs to be told.