How much details do you use?

[Gray_Mann]

It's okay that you don't have an imagination and need your hand held, we won't judge you for that.

Imagination? Nah. I'm sorry you lack an attention span that can suppress that urgent need for instant gratification any longer than what?...5-10 seconds maybe? Perhaps 30 if you really work at it? Lol. But I won't judge you for it. It's a common failure among your kind.

 

[BLIGHT_ZERO]

It's okay that you don't have an imagination and need your hand held, we won't judge you for that.

I gaslight myself into detail

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The thing with detail is that it is just as easy to go too far as to not go far enough... I remember reading "The Wheel of Time" and being in awe at how detailed Jordan's descriptions of everything except his characters (who all had one or two defining traits and were otherwise blanks), was. In literal awe. By the third book, though I wished he would STOP describing everything in so much detail, it got annoying and in the way of the story.

You need to find a balance - you have to leave some things to the readers' imagination, but you have to paint enough of a picture to get that imagination flowing too.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

The thing with detail is that it is just as easy to go too far as to not go far enough... I remember reading "The Wheel of Time" and being in awe at how detailed Jordan's descriptions of everything except his characters (who all had one or two defining traits and were otherwise blanks), was. In literal awe. By the third book, though I wished he would STOP describing everything in so much detail, it got annoying and in the way of the story.

You need to find a balance - you have to leave some things to the readers' imagination, but you have to paint enough of a picture to get that imagination flowing too.

I agree.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

It's okay that you don't have an imagination and need your hand held, we won't judge you for that.

Sure,

let's shame those who complain about the lack of info because we authors want to be lazy with our stories

It's the same things as lack of hand rails and safety equipment because anyone who falls the cliff and got into accident must be an idiot

 

[Gray_Mann]

Sure,

let's shame those who complain about the lack of info because we authors want to be lazy with our stories

It's the same things as lack of hand rails and safety equipment because anyone who falls the cliff and got into accident must be an idiot

Yeah, I was amused at such a brain-dead take. But whatever, smooth-brains will be smooth-brains after all.

 

[3guanoff]

TL;DR: it depends; travelogues need detailed descriptions; otherwise, prefer minimal style; must consider the reader; less descriptions == more assumptions;

It depends on what I write and for whom I write.

I enjoy reading detailed travelogues, both of places I have lived in and places I have never visited. Travel literature lives on detailed descriptions. Those descriptions tell you as much about the writer describing said reason as they tell you about the region being traveled.
Although I do not plan on ever publishing them, I wrote a few travelogues back in the day.

There are other kinds of books that live on their setting rather than their plot. But I generally prefer writing the other kinds:
I enjoy writing in such a way that not a word is extra, unnecessary.
This comes with having certain expectations of the reader:

• Do the readers share my cultural knowledge? Do they know what a car looks like? Do they know what a typical human looks like? What about the sky, the earth, and the sun?
• Do they possess similar senses and a similar manner of processing their sensual input? Can they see? Can they see colors? Do they mostly rely on their vision (as opposed to, i.e., bats who use sound) to perceive the world?
• How do they move? What is their relationship to spacetime?

The issue is mostly that first point. Since my target audience are (presumably) humans from planet earth living in the 21st century with access to the internet, our common understanding is great enough that if I were to write,

"The truck sped down the road and hit the cat at full speed,"​

they would understand that the cat was most likely dead or, perhaps, isekai'ed. They would not need to know that the truck had four wheels and that a cat is a mammal, nor would they wonder what a road could be. Unless they were aphantasiac, their mind would create an image of a "generic" truck hitting a "generic" cat. These genericism would vary considerably, however.

If I were to translate the sentence for a person from 2000 BCE Greece, I would need to describe "cat" and "truck", if not "sped down" and "hit at full speed". They would have seen few things move at and even fewer things collide at such speeds.
This was an extreme example, but the process and considerations remain roughly the same for all types of audiences.

 

[MarekSusicky]

I agree with that there is a need for details. I, for one, don't care much for details in stories, so they can be talking heads in white room with little details :) Things like story and characters are more important to me. But most readers are not like me, so I struggle to think up scenes, maybe I would fare better in screenwriting?

The truck sped down the road and hit the cat at full speed.

I love your humour! And that example is awesome!

What I imagined:
A massive coca-cola santa truck barreled down a narrow country road. They were late for show, so they pushed its engine roaring in the cold morning air. Dry cold dust scattered beneath its whoozing wheels as it approached a sharp bend. In the meantime, a small cat with emerald eyes and a long white tail stepped onto the asphalt, chasing a fluttering samurai butterfly. Oblivious to the incoming danger, the cat stopped in the middle of the road. The truck driver, chatting on scribblehub forums, didn't notice it. The truck collided with the cat at full speed, instantly sending the cat into another world, where it defeated the demon dog.