: Re: How much detail is too much? I've read a few amateur stories online and sometimes the author will include so much detail that the reader gets a little bored or distracted and forgets what

@BetL639

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While the existing answers are helpful, they don't address what seems to me the crux of this question. The answers will change depending on what you are writing, for which audience and what effect do you hope to achieve?

For example, I primarily write journalism. The idea is to engage the reader quickly and carry them through to the end of the article. As a general rule it is good to keep descriptive writing to a minimum since it reduces the punchiness and impact of the work. Better instead to pluck a few well-chosen metaphors to help the reader relate what you're describing quickly and easily to their own experience.

Yet even this is subject to change depending on circumstance. A print article is generally subject to a draconian word count and you must be even more sparing with your descriptions. On the other hand if the feature is emotive in nature or is describing an external narrative, you will need to spend some time scene-setting.

Contrast this to the opening sentence of Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree.

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the
streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now
when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in
alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in
the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled
corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors
no soul shall walk save you.

This is grandiose to the point of impenetrability. If I tried anything like that, my editors would tear it apart and never employ me again. It's also way beyond the level other answers are suggesting you should take descriptive writing. Yet I find it an extraordinary scene-setter, brilliant in its eloquence. It works because it's well structured and because in the context of the work of a heavyweight novelist, we might expect such constructions.

In summary: your yardstick for measure whether you've got "too much" description depends entirely on the effect you're trying to achieve and your skill at building descriptions.

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