Writing Styles and How They Plague Me, Part 2 –Am I Reading a Story, or Blueprints?

Writing style seem to reflect how the writer views the world about as much as the content itself. I tend to focus on characters and do very little describing of how things appear, and when I do offer descriptions, I tend to more focus on how it feels (ie, adjectives like wispy, dark, suspicious, tall, agitated, demure) than on more concrete details (blond, rectangular, steel, 6 feet). I tend to only include concrete details when I feel it is important or pertinent to what I am attempting to convey. For me, atmosphere matters far more than the specifics; angry and intimidating matters to me when describing someone, not what kind of haircut they have or what color eyes. I don't think about the world in a visual sense, and when I am captured by something enough to want to take a picture of it or describe it, it's always about how it feels.

Then you have writers that are the opposite of my own style, authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Neal Stephenson. These authors are so descriptive you can practically see what they are visualizing, and everyone should have the same basic image because they provide so much detail. These writers are clearly visual, and pay close attention to detail. They can tell you about a place and when you see it, you know it is what they were describing because everything is exactly as they said it was.

I wouldn't begin to question the talent of these more detail-oriented authors, as they are clearly masters of their craft. I respect them immensely. Yet I take issue with the way they write, not because it is particularly problematic, but because it is difficult to read. Yes, Lord of the Rings is difficult to read, specifically because there is so much detail.

Nothing takes me out of a story more than having to stop and see a building described in excruciating detail. I don't want to know every aspect of a building; I want to understand its significance and then continue with the story. Too often I read books where the author provides so much detail that I lose interest, virtually forgetting what was happening in the story. I can be extremely interested in the story, but give up on the book for this very reason. Neal Stephenson is a prime example of this; I want to read his novel Anathem, but I have difficulty getting through it due to his incessant need to get way too specific. Here is an example, one short paragraph taken from early in Anathem:

The Praesidium stood on four pillars and for most of its height was square in cross-section. Not far above the dials, however, the corners of the square floor-plan were cleaved off, making it into an octagon, and not far above that, the octagon became a sixteen-sided polygon, and above that it became round. The roof of the Praesidium was a disk, or rather a lens, as it bulged up slightly in the middle to shed rainwater. It supported the megaliths, domes, penthouses, and turrets of the starhenge, which drove, and was driven by, the same clock-works that ran the dials.

That was only the shortest paragraph in two pages of describing this one building. I don't care about how this structure appears anywhere near enough to read so much about it. Does this much detail matter to the story? Doubtful. Certainly there are people who appreciate this amount of detail, and I don't want to discredit this, but putting personal taste aside, I feel this breaks up the flow of the story far too much.

The way the building looks is not the story. The story is the character and the events, while the building is the setting. Sure, apply some description to the setting, but keep it limited so that it doesn't interrupt and overtake the narrative. Both Tolkien and Stephenson get caught up in the descriptions such that it derails the narrative, making it difficult to get through the book for many people.

I know I personally will likely never read Lord of the Rings again, if only because the descriptions can be so tedious. I am not alone in this. I hardly think I am better than these authors (or can even compare at this point), but I do feel I am more aware of what the average reader is interested in and can tolerate when it comes to narrative pacing in this regard. Hopefully that comes across in my writing, although I have to say, I am curious to find out what people will complain about after reading my work.