How much details do you use?

[LordInui]

As the title says, do you go into detail for every action, or do you just skim through it? It could be a new morning or a fight. I personally use so much detail that even a simple morning feels like 500 words.

I personally love it when the author goes into detail. It’s just so much easier to picture everything.

Edit: I use 1st person, if this matters.

 

[TheBestofSome]

For me, it depends. I think of my story in terms of scenes and transitions. If I have a reason to turn a specific morning into a scene, then I'll likely describe most of what's going on, otherwise it'll just be a transition and a few words are enough to indicate that the character woke up, ate breakfast, etc.

Now as for the reasons I'd turn the morning into a scene, those are diverse and varied. Maybe the characters are talking about something that'll be important later. Maybe I need to give my audience some time to breathe with a little fluff. Maybe I just want to show my characters growing closer.

While you can describe everything that's happening to great effect, I'd caution against doing it too much. When you first meet a character, seeing how they do everything can tell you about their personality, but then watching them do the same things over and over again every new morning will get boring fast. There are tricks to avoid this; you can weave conversation into the actions taken to give your readers a reason to stay interested, or use the description to show the character's mood and so forth.

But in general, every sentence in your story should have some reason for being there. If you can take it out and there's no reason to miss it, it should probably stay removed. Not every sentence needs to have grave importance, but every sentence should be doing something to tell us about the characters, the plot, the setting, etc. (Note that I'm not at all certain that I do this properly; do as I say, not as I do. )

And there's also the fact that what genre you write matters a lot; an action story doesn't want to waste time describing whether the character's eggs were sunny side up or scrambled, but a relaxed slice of life might take the time to tell you about it (and weave in some worries about how we're going to finish the upcoming project while it's at it.)

Of course, there's no one right way to write. Everyone writes a little differently, and everyone wants something different out of the things they read. The more you write (and crucially, read other people's writing) the more you'll get a sense for whether or not something belongs in your story.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Used to bloat everything, now try to cut everything that isn't necessary or interesting.

 

[melchi]

Used to bloat everything, now try to cut everything that isn't necessary or interesting.

This ^

The sweet spot is to give just enough so readers understand but not so much that it seems like bloat.

 

[John_Owl]

I view it like an anime - What you draw the reader's attention to is what's important. Background CAN add flavor, but most people won't notice it anyhow. As such, I use enough detail to paint the picture I want. Beyond that, it's up to the reader to fill in the blanks. Did I mention the COLOR of the shirt? If so, it'll be important. if not, then it doesn't really matter.

If I don't describe the change in clothes, then it's reader's choice to imagine them in a different outfit or the same one again.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

As the title says, do you go into detail for every action, or do you just skim through it? It could be a new morning or a fight. I personally use so much detail that even a simple morning feels like 500 words.

I personally love it when the author goes into detail. It’s just so much easier to picture everything.

Edit: I use 1st person, if this matters.

Depends.

I also use 1st Person POV often, but depending on the necessity, it's either I go into details or just skim through action sequences.

Major fights are often detailed, otherwise, it's just mentioned or a footnote in the characters' memories.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

It's Konosuba vs Re Zero

Konosuba skips a lot of things, but the story focus more on Macro-plot storytelling and how it connect to one another than focusing on details.

Like when what happen in one dimple chapter actually affect another chapter down the line, or affect the progression in unexpected ways.

There's lots of detail. But they're not all shown in the singular chapters. The author have done great job to make the story feel simple.

Re zero, on the other hand, have so much detail in the story that the Anime have trouble keeping up.

There's so much material here and there in the LN, Even the Movie and OVA of Rezero are actually Canon.

Even the damn advertisement too, when MC finally eats his noodle cup from another world.

Despite the existence of connection between action he done in an arc to another, it's hard to keep up in Re zero.

We're not just storytelling, we also gives reader experience.

 

[Tsuru]

As the title says, do you go into detail for every action, or do you just skim through it? It could be a new morning or a fight. I personally use so much detail that even a simple morning feels like 500 words.

I personally love it when the author goes into detail. It’s just so much easier to picture everything.

Edit: I use 1st person, if this matters.

Sir would you be interested to read CHINESE NOVELS (full of details like heck unlike JP WNs)

 

[Puji-Maki]

Depends on how my mind works.

If my mind said: "Bro, your just spamming conversations at this point, why don't you describe the background?"

Then I'll reply: "Fuck no. I'm too lazy to put detailed description, let the readers imagine it."

Because I'm different.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Generally depends on how important I believe it will be overall (and sometimes I'm proven wrong later). If I expect something to be important it gets more detail, be it a person, a place, a thing or an event. If I don't think it will be important, then it gets very little detail (at least at first... a few times things I thought trivial wound up being critical later).

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Mostly write skeletons with a bit of meat

 

[Corty]

It depends on the scene, but I like including details to immerse people in the world and the scene. And if they don't like it, they don't need to read it. Easy.

Of course, I am not doing Tolkien-esque descriptions where you flip five pages and he is still describing the landscape.

But a two or three-sentence-long description of the situation never hurts. I take it as me being a narrator in a DnD campaign, setting a scene.

 

[Gray_Mann]

I really dislike the excuse of "I don't bother with too much detail, I just let the reader imagine it." To me, that's just an excuse. It's not the reader's job to imagine anything. The reader isn't writing. It's not their world. The world belongs to the writer. If the writer can't give it the description it needs, than why bother writing it at all? It's the writer's job to paint the picture. No one else. If the reader is forced to imagine something because it wasn't given beforehand by the writer, that's a failure on the writer's part.

But eh, I'm well aware I'm in the minority group with this opinion.

 

[TheIcMan]

Mostly write skeletons with a bit of meat

Unironically yes ?
I need help knowing if I’m leaving a barren mess of words or if I’m overdoing it sometimes

 

[QuercusMalus]

I really dislike the excuse of "I don't bother with too much detail, I just let the reader imagine it." To me, that's just an excuse. It's not the reader's job to imagine anything. The reader isn't writing. It's not their world. The world belongs to the writer. If the writer can't give it the description it needs, than why bother writing it at all? It's the writer's job to paint the picture. No one else. If the reader is forced to imagine something because it wasn't given beforehand by the writer, that's a failure on the writer's part.

But eh, I'm well aware I'm in the minority group with this opinion.

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

 

[BearlyAlive]

Just enough to create a slight picture, I'm a terrible artist so I'd like to think the readers' imagination is better than most things I could cook up.

Not because I'm lazy, I swear!

 

[RepresentingWrath]

It's the writer's job to paint the picture.

The point is to use as little strokes as possible to do it.

 

[BearlyAlive]

The point is to use as little strokes as possible to do it.

There's a joke to be found here

 

[RepresentingWrath]

There's a joke to be found here

I'll give you a hint, it's a penis joke.

 

[PBJ_Time]

I just write enough without turning it into a "tell, don't show" fest. I usually do it with some inner monologue from the protagonist (i.e., he wished he punched/kicked the goblin faster, but it still landed) using the third-person limited prose. After a few more details, I move on to the next scene.

Hell, almost every fight scene I've written about so far is through the protagonist's perspective. Third-person limited allows me to not really worry about everything that's happening in a scene and focus more on two or three characters, including the protagonist.