: Re: How much description is necessary? I have trouble imagining things. With me everything is blurred, as if I were almost blind. That's why I find it hard to describe things. For example, the

@Caterina108

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How much description is necessary is a matter of style, taste and to a certain extent, genre.

Some genres, such as Young Adult, possibly crime and others tend towards more broad strokes when it comes to description.

Other genres, such as fantasy, sci-fi and literary (not exactly a genre, but you know what I mean) usually indulge in much more heavy description.

Whether you should write a lot of description or not, you need to learn from experience. If you enjoy painting a vivid, detailed picture, then great! Tha's what you should do.

But if you find it bogs you down and you just want to get back to the action / dialogue then you have your answer.

Having said that, it is almost always a good idea to use specifics in description, even if they are sparse. So saying the room was 'decorated' is not much help. Even saying there were tapestries on the walls would be better. Describing the exact content of the tapestries is even better.

But you say that you have trouble visualising that level of detail, in which case, I have a few suggestions:

Images - I'm a huge fan if using images to inpire and inform my writing. Look up castles in a Google image search. Browse until you find one you like, then narrow your search to images of that specific castle. What details do you notice from the photos? The content of the tapestries? The colour and style of the stones? The number and shape of the turrets? Does it remind you of something, like a skull or a tree or a mountain?

Blueprints - just another form of images I suppose, but I find it very helpful to find example blueprints of the places I'm decsribing. This can help you make sure your charcters don't do anything logistically impossible and can also give you ideas about how the surroundings can incluence the plot, such as tables and chairs getting in the way of an argument or brawl.

I wrote this article a long time ago that goes into more detail - you may find it useful: www.novel-software.com/blog?article=developing-locations-and-settings

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