Guys, I am writing a new novella and I started to describe a lot in there. Will it be boring..........?

Question

Guys, I am writing a new novella and I started to describe a lot in there. Will it be boring if I made the whole 4 or 5 paragraphs describing the place and the characters. Also, should I describe every character? you know, hair, eyes, face, lips, clothing and everything else or should I leave for the time?

Answer 1

Just be truew to yourself in writing the piece. Your inner editor will ort it out for you.

Answer 2

Don't get too descriptive in just one part. Break the description up. Maybe, as you introduce characters, point out little details like "hair the color of flames" and "eyes so blue they made the ocean jealous." Those are helpful descriptions, and you don't need a whole paragraph to make them. Try to keep it simple and scatter description in different places.

It honestly would get boring if there was a whole four or five paragraphs on just description. Most readers would skim right through those, so it would be pointless, too.

Hope I helped you and good luck with your novella!

Answer 3

I write short stories and also teach creative writing. One of the things I tell my students all the time is that in creating a story, the reader does half of the work. Your job as the writer is not to describe everything in detail, but to put on the page only a few key details that will let the reader imagine the rest in the reader's own way. In some rare cases, it matters that the reader know that a character is, say, blonde, because she's going to take offense at someone's dumb blonde joke on page 40 of the story. In that case, it's important to describe her has blonde the first time she appears, and to remind the reader a time or two before page 40 that the character is blonde. Otherwise, many readers will have imagined her as having red or brown or black hair.

But it if doesn't matter, if there's nothing in the story that depends on knowing that she's blonde, leave that description out. (The exception is if you are writing romance, where the hair color and eye color and skin color and face shape of every character is part of the formula for writing such a story.)

It used to be that readers enjoyed long descriptions in novels. That is no longer the case for most readers, and certainly publishers begin to worry about bored readers when they see a lot of description, unless the description is essential to puzzling out something that the reader is anxious to understand for reasons of plot.

I have won major awards for SF, fantasy, horror, mystery, and literary fiction. And there is hardly any description in my stories. I concentrate instead on the psychology (motivation and emotion) of characters and the things that they do and say.

Answer 4

I hate it. When I read fiction I only want a general description. Once things start getting very detailed I start getting lost, so that by the time I get told that "...he walked along the walk on the west side of the house past the big maple tree and then down the terrace steps to the beach..." I am totally frustrated because I have carefully tried to follow the entire description and I realize I've gotten it all wrong because according to my understanding the maple tree was on the south side of the house and the beach was on the north side...

The same goes for long descriptions of characters. The reader needs to know something about the character before a more detailed description is needed. It is very difficult when I have to try to remember the first and last names of six characters, who is married to whom, who is dating whom, who is employed by whom, who has red hair and smokes, who has long black hair and is dangerously skinny, who is plump and wears short skirts.....

So tell me the story. Grab my attention. Then give me the descriptions that I need. The most deadly beginning to a story is four paragraphs of description. I've seen a blue sky with white puffy clouds and a meandering river before. I want to know the story. I will close a book before I'll wade through all that boring gunk.

Answer 5

i tihnk for lesser characters one trait to remember, maybe a scar or acne or tall , fat, etc... and for visual effects it's depending on how importatnt the surroundings are for the scene your building in the person's head.