Opinions on amount of description in stories?

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This is a question of writing style. So you?re reading a story. The author describes in detail a room that the characters are in it takes up half the page if not more. What the room looks like is absolutely irrelevant to the plot, setting an environment or building the character. Does this annoy anyone else do you feel like your time has just been wasted by pointless description? Or is it something that you actually like and I just cannot see it's value?

i agree with you. when it comes to description, less is more.

Depends on the type of book it is. A mystery thriller like Angels and Demons for example, might have something hidden in the room that you might not have noticed before, but then you go back and see it. Why do the looks of characters matter? The personality is what affects their actions, so why do we want half a page detailing their appearance?

I find it annoying. I had to read A Year in Provence for my book group recently and found it excruciating. Pages on pages about a meal he had, a whole chapter about how it had been windy etc. Luckily me and my friends decided to go for a meal instead of going to the book group in the end so I didn't actually have to finish it.

Depends on the writer. Melville for instance is great at that kind of description.

I love descriptions, but my type of it. If it is something like: "it was a rectangular table with golden strings..." I read it as blablabla. They have to be intuitive descriptions for me. It is hard to give an example but I hope you know what I mean. It is like not objective facts but impressions, and things can be different for other characters seeing it. Good writers can do it.

if it a factual description then agreed, and I can't picture the faces anyway. But if it is a subjective or intuitive description it matters a whole lot! All the impressions about the character's personality are going to be there.

There's a rule of thumb about writing. For fiction anyhow. I can't quite remember how it goes but something like.

Every sentence must further the story line, remove every sentence that does not further the story line.
or something...
Regardless of how many books he sells, perhaps the author is simply a bad writer.

People with ASD apparently have trouble making concise descriptions/summaries, perhaps high attn to detail makes finding the balance difficult.

There are no rules you need to follow strictly as long as it's enjoyable on some level for someone to read. H.P Lovecraft is 90% atmosphere building, and he is hands down my favourite horror writer.

I think that you're confusing fiction with technical writing.

For fiction, I find that descriptive language can make or break a story. The descriptive elements that you say add nothing to the story are often extremely important, for imagery and character development. Descriptions are necessary to transport the reader into the world.


Here is a paragraph from "David Copperfield" that uses a lot of descriptive language in a way that really draws you in:

"It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that, at first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by Ostade. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant?berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage ?'lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a hatchway?were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow?chairs; others, despairing of a resting?place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins; every age and occupation appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the 'tween decks."

That paragraph could be summed up in about 2 sentences easily, but would it be nearly so interesting to read that way? Now with that said, some writers do describe things in an incredibly unimaginative and boring way. (Like: I entered a room. A lamp sat on a table, and there were four windows on the wall. There was a rug on the ground). I would just call that bad writing though.

Yes, or he could have said, "Uriah Heep had red hair and beady eyes," and left it at that.

And we would have missed out on such a wonderfully despicable character!

I personally love using graphic descriptions in my own fiction - after all, Joseph Conrad had said above all, he had wanted to make his readers see. I agree, though, that writers need to be able to balance out description with the pace of the story. In other words, you don't want to go on and on with descriptions to the point of slowing the story to a dead stop. Robert E. Howard was a master with his power of description while using spare language.

Agreed. I finished The Road recently and there was a lot of focus on atmosphere and the appearances of the world, but it was well-written and beautiful.

If there's nothing relevant about the room and the author has a very plain style, well...

No, it's definitely fiction, not techical writing, he just quoted it wrong. It's not that it needs to drive the storyline, but it must have some sort of purpose.

If you're serious about writing and exploring this topic in depth, read Robert Boswell's The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction.

I appreciate description if it's done well- if it suggests a new way of looking at things or adds to the story's atmosphere.

I tend to trip over description if it is just tedious details of the landscape, the weather or the local flora etc.

I get bored too when an author endlessly and pointlessly names artists, poets, and architectural fiddly bits in an attempt to prove just how intelligent they are.