How much detail is too much detail?
Sculpting the visual in the literary world is one of the most important goals for me when I sit down and write. Small, nit-picky, niggly details are the most integral in constructing a scene like a frame of a film - you’re able to look around in your mind’s eye, and you know the texture of the carpet, the shade of the couch, the fingerprints on the wall near the light switch. I’ve found that it’s that obsessively structured world that creates the most important frame of reference, and that keeps events or a character in your conscious longer.
As a (clearly) wordy writer, which I’ve tried to be much more conscious of in new compositions and editing of the manuscript, but it’s hard to discern where to draw the line with description. It’s hard to know whether or not that description is subjective based on taste and style, or if there’s really a measuring cup threshold that definitively shouldn’t be passed.
Here’s to re-learning what “reading with an editing eye” really means.
M
