Have you ever felt constrained, earth-bound, by a sense of obligation to fully describe settings, even in an action scene?
When you’re in the midst of a complex, fast-moving set of events, the last thing the reader wants to, or needs to know is the period vintage of the side table, or the eccentric swirl of the peony beds, or the rustle and sweet smell of the eucalyptus trees. Get on with it.
Not like this:
The thief burst into the ornately furnished living room, climbed through the larger of the three kitchen windows, sending an invisible stir through the heavy air.
Not like this:
The thief jumped out from behind the wheel of his car, a shimmering, gun-metal blue, vintage BMW, sprinted across the lush green front lawn, nicely mowed only days ago. In one leap he vaulted the four new pine steps Jane had restored with original Victorian detail, and shoved the ancient heavy kitchen door open. He was in the house.
How about this:
The thief burst into the living room.
Too easy? Absolutely not. Sometimes, setting needs full rendering, with select details to help set mood by unlocking look of a room, a neighborhood, a town.
But the appropriate time to do that is most definitely not when the writer’s job is to deliver a sequence of intense action with all the speed and physicality it demands and deserves. That’s when you jettison non-essential descriptive language.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! I often struggle with too much detail – not in the actions scenes, mind you, but more in the dialog. I have a habit of adding way too much dialog – I’m guessing I’ll have to cut at least a fourth of it out when I edit.
~ Katherine Anne
That’s wise. One handy truth to keep by you when writing dialogue is that people don’t let other people get out more than a couple of sentences before they respond–then they in turn get only a couple, and so it goes. Evesdrop, and you’ll hear that’s true. Rarely in real-life conversations do people make “speeches,” so… one more argument to bolster your good instinct to cut away.
I enjoyed this little editorial essay very much.
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–J