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For example the book Eragon by Paolini, and Magic Kingdom by Terry Brooks. These both have lots of description. To me that means lots of showing and less telling. Other books don't seem to have that much description. Some Sci-Fi has this as well, Jurassic Park, & Chrichton's other books.
I've downloaded lots of samples from Amazon and these (same genres) have more telling than showing or what I am calling description. These authors aren't as big, maybe they have 100 reviews. On the other hand, Old Man's War didn't have a lot of description in it either, compared to someone like Brooks, and it is very popular.
Are these just different styles?
Edit: This question is useful, but not the same, How to develop a more vivid and descriptive writing style
Edit: Based on what's link, I had this thought:
If it requires a camera and an actor to communicate a scene and feeling in a movie, then you have to show it. We rely on the actors in film to show us how they feel to make it real, whether it is facial expressions, voice tone, or something else. Some actors are better at it than others. The amateur actor tells more than she shows and most times it doesn't make for a good story.
All of us have tried to explain a scene in a movie to a person who didn't it. It's difficult. They have to see it, even though you just told it. "You have to see it" sounds better than saying to someone, "They have to show it."
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I agree with Standback, but his answer is not generally true.
The meaning of the quote above escapes me. Besides, I happen actually to agree with Standback. The building of a unique world would add color to your story (which should, of course, come first, setting being secondary and all), even if you deploy all the existing cliche elements, like FTL travel, spaceships, dragons, witches, elves, dwarves, vampires, zombies and so on.
Having said that, the level of the details you throw at your reader is up to you and you only, but if you skip them completely, you are risking that your audience will have a different picture in their mind than you are trying to paint.
Fantasy and science fiction books have a major additional task that other genres can avoid if they wish: worldbuilding.
A story of any genre can devote a lot of attention to description and detail, but it isn't a necessity dictated by the choice of genre. But SF and fantasy, as a rule, need to establish a new world. They need to explain how their setting works, how the world functions, how their premise has made the story's reality different from our own.
Even if 99% of the world is mundane, and exactly like our own, the fact that it's in the SF/fantasy genre means readers are coming without assuming that most aspects of the real world carry over to the story. You need to give the readers grounding, let them know where they're landed.
All that being said, there are incredible varieties in style. Plenty of genres, like romance and thrillers and certainly travelogues, will leap at the opportunity to explore a strange or unusual location. And plenty of SF/fantasy writers are sparse and lean, establishing the setting in a very minimal way and leaving it at that.
Bottom line is, yes, there's good reason for fantasy and science fiction to devote extra attention to description. But, if you look, you'll find that pretty much any combination imaginable can be done.
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