Yesterday I wrote my story for Daniel O'Shea's flash challenge. No, it's not finished. I'm not happy with the ending and will spend the next few days working on it. (procrastinating and mulling at the moment). The thing is, I dropped the story into my flash critique group and one gentleman thought I should add more details about the characters.
Sigh. I hate describing characters. I'll dress them up because clothes will give you more details about a character than how tall and skinny they are. How they move will give you their age group, even how they talk tells you a lot about the character. The thing is, I always have a picture in my head of how they look, but writing it down, never brings them to life for me. And the truth is, describing how someone looks and going into excessive detail about what they're wearing, the kind of shoes on their feet and the wing-back, flower patterned, 19th century chair they're sitting in are the parts I skip when I'm reading.
How about you? Do you need those descriptions to really "see" a character or do you like the image you conjure up yourself when you're reading?
7 comments:
I like character descriptions myself, and I usually get a very good image from them. I may be an exception to the rule in this though.
Being a pretty new kid on the block, this is only my opinion and may not count but, I think that in a piece of "flash fiction" you don't really have a lot of room for too much character descritpion as you may end up sacrificing other essential parts of your story (Word count). I like to let the reader (Me included - as a reader of other writers) make up their own mind on how a character looks in a short piece of writing.
Also, another way of describing your characters could be done by using dialogue between them.
As I said, this is only my opinion but a good post again Sandra.
You're right, David, flash doesn't leave a lot of room for description but some writers still try to fit it in. I like to use one or two words to describe a person and let the readers fill in the gaps.
I think when people do a lot of research they tend to overload their stories, too.
I like some description, Charles, but if a writer tells me someone is six feet tall, I generally want to know why that's important to the story. Just one of my quirks.
In my reading experience, I find that straight description, while economical, is not as effective as sprinkling descriptive details into action and dialogue. The straight "here's a paragraph describing how someone looks or dresses" is boring to me. And like you said Sandra, that's the part you're tempted to skip. Also, i find it hard to remember details given that way. To me, it is all part of the old rule about showing not telling. I like details that are a part of action, that provide the visual makeup of a character, but done in such a way that they are mixed in with action that is drawing me along. William Faulkner was the master at blending it all together. It seems to me, in Flash Fiction, character description is not as important as other elements. I'm in it for the final twist or revelation or ah-ha moment at the end.
You're right about flash, Frank. All those little details that flesh out books and longer stories aren't necessary in flash. You just have to keep it tight and on point while you tell the story.
I remember one gentleman in another flash group who'd get upset if a charater stood up. As he said, "If he's standing, there's no other direction to go." Tips like that, help you cut a lot of unnecessary words.
I find that character descriptions (or any kind of description for that matter) one of my decent strong points, so I enjoy writing good detailed (but not overloaded) characters.
It's very tough to find that good balance between too much and too little, but I find it to be quite rewarding when I can hit the mark.
I agree, G, finding that bit of description that perfectly depicts the scene without boring the reader to tears is hard to find some days.
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