When describing a brand new character or scene, how important is it to describe all the detail of said character or scene? Is it better to go into huge descriptive detail of it, or just a few lines and let the audience imagine it themselves? Advice please.

New characters I would suggest describing them with as few words as possible and leave the reader fill in the rest - Susan Hill ran an online CW course last year, and one of the exercises was to pick a secondary character in a novel from the first moment they are mentioned and follow them into the book until you get a clear sense of who and what they are. It is amazing how little a reader needs before they can visualise them - sometimes as little as a line of description. Description of hair and eye colour is often un-necessary unless it gives a clue to their character (the fiery redhead, for example).

As for scenes, that's up to you. If it's a contemporary novel, then less description is needed if it can be reasonably assumed that most readers will be familiar with the location you are describing. If, however, it's a fantasy location, or a historical, or foreign, or a strange and interesting place, then you can probably hold the reader's attention with more description.



- NaomiM

Once again, Naomi, thanks again for your valuable advice. Myself, I always have a fear of boring my readers with too much description, so I only just try and put in what I think is needed. That could just be me though. lol

Me too, Dwriter It's not just setting the scene, though, it's also setting the atmosphere and your character's preceptions of the place.
Memoirists are excellent at setting the scene and can go on for pages - and that is largely down to decribing it from their pov; how it affected them at that stage in their life, and it's all in the 'tell' format.
Personally I stick to half a page or a couple of paragraphs at most.


- NaomiM

Very true. At the same time, a scene could also be a repsentation of a characters past and how it's affected them now. Like Lady Haversham in Great Expectations. SHe lives in a run down and dusty house with worn out wedding dresses that represent her hatred for men and her shame at being jilted at the altar. At least, from what I remember. My memory of Charles Dickens isn't that great so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Absolutely, Dwriter - I think description of place can serve different functions, and for me the best is when it's doing several jobs at once. Miss Haversham is a great example - the description sets up atmosphere, and at the same time symbolises the way she's living her life, regretfully, in the dark of the past. I love it when place becomes another 'character' in the plot.
Susiex

Actually, interesting while we're on the subject of scene setting, there was this film I saw a while back called Oldboy (don't know if anyone's seen it, but if you love Count of Monte Cristo, you'll love this). In certain points of the film, the main character is stuck in rooms which have a bizarre pattern to them. The same pattern is a recuring theme through many places of the story. The antagonist of the piece wears a lot of ties with this exact same pattern, so you automatically know it has something to do with him. I find this great, because it's almost like a subtle way of saying the bad guy is constantly hounding the hero without him really knowing it.

A large chunk of detailed description when a new character is introduced risks being a real reader-stopper. It's probably best to keep to essentials and to let your reader build up her own picture. It could also be wise to present those essentials from the point of view of whoever is encountering him, e.g. 'his ear-rings and greasy, uncombed hair were not what she had been expecting' rather than 'he wore ear-rings and...'.

However, if for whatever reason it is important to communicate the details, it's almost certainly best to do so up-front. If you introduce the character without detail, letting the reader build up her own picture of him (perhaps as a twenty-something with a pony-tail and a nose-piercing), it will come as a slap in the face to her to discover twenty pages later that he is a bald forty-year-old. As a reader, I find that disconcerting rather than revelatory!

The same goes for scenes, I suppose. It's dangerous to overdo the detail but withholding essential information can backfire later.

Chris

Yes, I agree on the first point Chris. I hate reading novels that go into half a page to describe them. Makes me lose interest. But getting the essentials in is the main point I guess.

A lot does depend on genre, though - chick lit thrives on vivid, upfront descriptions of a character's appearance, from their glossy highlights to their Jimmy Choo toes.

Probably why I don't read chick-lit. lol. Seriously, I think the only time when a lot of description is needed is when you're introducing a form of alien creature. That's one time description is needed, but maybe it's best to work it into the dialogue so that it flows within the story.

I think sometimes it can be too subtle though. I once read a Maeve Binchy book (i normally love her work) and by the end still couldn't picture one of the main characters. I think you have to work hard at making all characters distinctive, whether that be through their appearance, their dialogue, their mannerisms, whatever.

Alien chick lit, maybe that could be an emerging genre

x

Mind you, I don't really know what my characters look like in any detail, so I've no idea if my readers do.

FWIW, I only ever do scene setting or character description when a character would notice it. If I want the reader to know something, I have to find a convincing reason to make someone think or say it. Which also has the advantage that it becomes a 'show' of that someone's character, as well as a 'tell' of what they're seeing. And then you have all the fun of making them have one view/experience of the scene or character, while getting the reader to see/feel it quite differently.

Emma

I think that as with most things, it very much depends - there isn't really a one answer fits all...

BUt, with regard to characters in particular, it's worth remembering that you can do quite detailed description that isn't all that specific, if you want to... Detailed doesn't have to mean giving precise descriptions of exactly what they look like.

In terms of setting the scene, I think it's not so much a question of length but of how you do it. If you just chuck in a chunk of bland description at the beginning of a chapter, it will feel wrong, clunky, out of place, too long even if it's only a few lines. If the description and scene-setting is woven in, so it's part of the story - part of the background, literally - then you can cram in a huge amount of atmosphere, description, detail, etc etc, without it feeling boring or superfluous.

It's also to do with pace - some books/chapters/scenes will be best served by longer, more ponderous descriptions of both character and setting; with others, it will work better to use just a word or two.

And yes, like others have said, it doesn't have to be direct, you can describe through scenes, memories, actions, conflict, dialogue, what other people say... any number of things.

I think Emma's point about how if it something the Character would notice, is a good observation on when detail is invasive.

With new characters entering a story, detail may be necessary if they are not from Central Casting, after all we only need to know the hero is talking to a Policeman, we don't need to know if he is a Gene Hunt type by the way he dresses. His first line of dialogue should establish that and bingo, the character is inhabiting the story without wrecking it.

I am sure we can all recall books where elaborate scene setting or character descriptions only serve to break up the pace of the narrative.