Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!jagardner
From: jagardner@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: ont.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Publishing Times
Message-ID: <25538@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 25 Apr 89 21:11:12 GMT
Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jim Gardner)
Distribution: ont.sf-lovers
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 45

In article <407@hcr.UUCP> lynda@hcrvax.UUCP (Lynda Williams) writes:
>People keep telling
>me there has to be lots of description. Personally I like minimal
>description. Just enough to set a scene and help define the characters 
>or action.  A little sensory input.

Gack!  If there is one thing that separates amateurish writing
from the real thing (apart from bad grammar and spelling of course),
it's putting in pointless description.  Description MUST serve a
purpose; it must advance the plot, or heighten characterization,
or establish a mood, or help the reader interpret events or setting.
Description for the sake of description is bush league stuff.

This doesn't mean you should avoid description; it means that you
should make your description count.  Description should ALWAYS move
the story forward.  For example, in most stories, we see the events
from the point of view of the characters.  Even in stories written
in the third person, we tend to follow one person for a while, then
move to another person's point of view, and so on.  When we are seeing
a scene from a character's point of view, it is helpful to describe
the scene as the character sees it.  You don't describe things that
the character would normally ignore, because it almost always comes
across as over-writing.  Instead, you show the things that the
character pays attention to; not only does this tell the reader
what being seen, but it shows what the character thinks is important.
That way you're conveying information about the character as well
as about the setting and the events that happen there.

It's helpful to take a short story that you admire, write out a
page or so by hand, and see just how *little* pure description there
is.  I think you'll see that the description is not just talking
about objects; it shows personality by talking about how people
relate to the objects.  It also gives clues about the interpretation
of the objects.  An example that comes to mind is the first sentence
of Neuromancer...it says something like "the sky was the colour of
a TV screen tuned to a dead channel".  Right there, in a description
of the weather, Gibson has introduced electronics as the measure of
the world, and has brought in a suggestion of decay, things falling
apart.  It starts to establish the frame of mind in which you should
be reading the story.

I could wax poetic on this at length, and may do so in a day or two.
Does this little bit help?

		Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo