Some of us like short stories, and some of us novels. What differentiates them? Longer books tend to have detailed descriptions - describing every word, every emotion, every setting to the last detail - the colour of the sky, the way the character's mouth twists, the look in their eyes. These are created to make it easy for the reader to visualise the story, to connect with it. It probably works too.. however; is it real?
Imagine you read this- "Her hair was a mass of curling brown, gold in the sunlight, like the color of maple syrup, and her eyes were the gray of the sea, tumultuous and changing, reflecting every shift in light and shadow." This is a line used to describe Tessa Gray from 'Clockwork Angel' from The Infernal Devices written by Cassandra Clare.
You can imagine the colour of Tessa's hair- a luminous brown, and then... what else? It's curly.. then?
Is it necessary to describe something in such detail? Do you ever look at someone with green eyes and think 'Woah, his eyes are the same green as the underside of a leaf' ? Yeah, probably not. Do you even know what colour the underside of a leaf is?
We only use such words when we are maybe describing someone to the cops- and even then we would use words like 'bright', 'dark', or 'light'.
As far as I know, it is not easy for everyone to visualise things easily, they are too used to having the image brought right in front of their faces by a television or computer screen, they have forgotten how to create worlds on their own. Only by describing things so minutely can many readers actually feel the vibe of the story. If not, a story would be a story and not a land where you get immersed into. Only by describing in such setail, a person gets a minimum idea of the character- how sad is that?
If you rethink, all the moral stories we have read- like the Hare and the Tortoise or the Boy who cried Wolf, they are all just stories. You don't keep thinking about them as they lack detail. It's just a boy. What colour is his hair? What clothes does he usually wear? We don't know. How can we remember a person when we don't even know what he looks like?
I'm not saying that details aren't important, we just proved that they are. It's just something I noticed- something that shows how in depth stories need to be written so that readers can feel engaged, how the so many human minds find it so hard to visualise. Yet, we find a story boring when they explain too much and don't move on with the storyline! What is the perfect amount of detail? If only we knew.
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