In a post on the Stage 32 blog, editor Rosalind Winton urges writers to embrace descriptive writing. While writers may believe that too much description will bore their readers, Winton says the opposite is often true. “Not enough description will bore readers more than too much and that this is where the ‘art’ of writing comes in, otherwise everyone would be doing it and making a success out of writing,” she says. “If there is too much description, it can always be edited down.”
To draw you reader into your story, you have to take them into your world, and that means helping them visualize your settings. “Imagine Gone With The Wind with not a lot of description, Harry Potter, or Alice In Wonderland with not a lot of description,” Winton writes. “These books and of course, millions of others, would not make it without plenty of description, so that we know where we are, what we are seeing, hearing and what the characters are feeling and thinking.”
Bare description allows your reader to imagine whatever setting they like, but it won’t bring them into your story world. Winton describes the action of your story as the heart and your description as the arteries that feed it. “If you don’t give your readers something to visualize, they could lose interest in the story and stop reading the book/screenplay,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to let go when you write, don’t hold back, nothing bad is going to happen.”
