Description

So being drilled into our heads from day one is show and don't tell, and often the extension of this that I've seen taught is revealing character appearances and the like naturally through the action, rather than spelling it out. Something like, "He combed his fingers through his brown hair," rather than, "He had brown hair."

And this seems fine to me as long as it doesn't sound forced. But it seems like this one thing is really impressed on people learning to write and I don't think it's really so important.

Read someone like Steinbeck, for example, and you'll see that they spend three paragraphs describing the guy's clothes and face before they say or do anything at all and it works out great because you get a nice picture in your head, some nice incidental characterization, and then the rest of the scene isn't cluttered up with sentences talking about their hair.

Do you think either way is better? Or does it matter only on how well it's executed?

It depends on how it's executed, but I like the first one better, since they're being described as stuff is happening, instead of clustering it together while you're waiting for things to happen (which, for me, is an incentive to skip whole paragraphs, unfortunately)

There are no rules when it comes to writing. (This is true for all kinds of art, really.) There's nothing that says "you have to do this" or "you can't do that"; it's just that there are guidelines, conventions, basics.

The thing about "show, don't tell" is that very many novice writers write things like "Hi, my name is Ebony Raven Way, I have long black hair and eyes like limpid tears". So they get told what they need to hear in order to improve. It's not that "show, don't tell" is a universal law that can never be violated; it's just that people often need to improve that aspect of their writing.

It's like with Picasso: before you break the rules, you need to master them!

At the risk of being redundant because this has already been posted elsewhere recently, Negrek once made a post regarding description that pretty much nails it.

Minnow said:

So being drilled into our heads from day one is show and don't tell, and often the extension of this that I've seen taught is revealing character appearances and the like naturally through the action, rather than spelling it out. Something like, "He combed his fingers through his brown hair," rather than, "He had brown hair."

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"He combed his fingers through his brown hair" is worse than "He had brown hair", because it wastes even more words just telling the reader this character's hair color. Making characters run their hand through their hair just so you can describe what color it is is not more show-y than just saying what color it is; it's just a lot more contrived.

It's fine to spend a bit just describing things given 1) it fits into the flow of the story at that point, so rather than suddenly spending paragraphs describing things in the middle of a scene of action or dialogue, you pick a moment when the POV character actually is looking at the thing you're describing and taking note of all these details or there is otherwise a break that offers the opportunity, and 2) the details you're describing are actually interesting and meaningful, one way or another. The way a character is dressed can say a lot about that character - or, alternatively, the POV character's perception of the way they're dressed can say a lot about the POV character. That's great. Then you're showing something interesting about the characters through describing the clothes (which is very much on the show side of 'show, don't tell'). But if you stop to describe clothes just because you think you're supposed to describe everything, even though there is nothing really interesting or meaningful about the clothes, you're just bogging your story down with meaningless padding.

The bit about not interrupting the flow of the story is where integrating description into the action comes in - when stuff is happening, you can't keep pausing the stuff that is happening to describe what things look like, but instead have to weave any necessary or interesting descriptions into the flow of the action in a natural way. Writing in extra actions purely for the sake of describing uninteresting details is grossly missing the point.

And do read that post of Negrek's.

Butterfree said:

But if you stop to describe clothes just because you think you're supposed to describe everything, even though there is nothing really interesting or meaningful about the clothes, you're just bogging your story down with meaningless padding.

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This is something particularly important to keep in mind.

There's this, let's say, myth that you're supposed to paint an image in the reader's mind with words. It was even alluded to in the OP. This is not the role of a description, though. Unless it actually means something to the story, the reader doesn't need to know what the characters look like, what the background looks like, what anything smells or tastes or sounds like, and so on forth. And I mentioned that last one because I've ran across more than one case of people recommending others to stick every one of the five classical senses into a description, which really tends to become unecessary clutter.

This exists because we, as a generation, are used to visual media. It's hard to avoid it; written media consists of little more than books and internet text, whereas visual media spans television programmes, movies, videogames, comics, webcomics, and so on forth. Visual media can (and often has to) dish out heaps of irrelevant detail in the blink of an eye, and the viewer can absorb it all in a single beat, without being bored by it or even making any effort.

People who are used to this will often, and specially if encouraged to do so, try to obtain the same effect with words. It's impossible. Translating all the detail an image can provide into words is bound to produce a wall of text that clogs the flow of narration completely and bore the reader. With a moving scene, it's even worse.

Therefore, creating a clear image in the reader's mind without boring them is a futile endeavour -- only an image can really create a clear image of the sort we usually have in mind when we say "clear image". Description, as already stated, serves not a purpose of providing visual detail, but a purpose of providing relevant detail.

Butterfree said:

"He combed his fingers through his brown hair" is worse than "He had brown hair", because it wastes even more words just telling the reader this character's hair color. Making characters run their hand through their hair just so you can describe what color it is is not more show-y than just saying what color it is; it's just a lot more contrived.

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This is just what I was thinking with regards to those sentences. Not only is it incredibly obvious that this sentence exists only to describe the hair color, it's just too fast of an action to bog it down with description.

I think another problem with beginning writers' descriptions is that they tend to describe only the hair and eye color of a person. But you could have fifty brown-haired, brown-eyed people that look nothing like each other.

I'm going to say, omit description unless it is necessary. In the same way that "actions speak louder than words", what characters do influence the reader's perception of them much more than how you describe them. Is the Vulpix anxious? or does the Vulpix twitch her tails involuntarily, raising her head to the moon, howling as through an ancient ritual before dashing off into the forest, leaving a trail in her wake? And six tails/carmine/two feet even? Just leave those out. In addition:

- Avoid using to be or any of its forms when an alternative exists, because when a character acts not, it is not.
- Use strong verbs with strong adverbs instead of adjectives.
- Write only as much as needed. Do not write for the sake of filling up space (unless you are taking the SAT or doing NaNoWriMo)
- Description, when it is necessary, should be written in amounts proportional to the importance of the scene. In addition, when a sentence is short and uses dense language, the reader perceives time as passing slowly. When instead it is long but uses common language, time seems to pass quickly. Both punctuation and uncommon words slow the reader down.

Of course, these guidelines exist to be broken, but, even as guidelines, they serve the writer well.

The fact that each Pokémon has its archetype has rendered much description unnecessary. Write "deep green wood gecko with bright red underbelly" and the rest of the details come to the reader's head, and more besides. In the Pokémon fandom specifically, we have 649 archetypes to draw from. What is the image of Grovyle in your head? Pikachu? Absol? It depends on what shows you watched, what games you played, what fanworks you viewed, but it's generally the same among the Pokémon community. As soon as you see the word "Grovyle", you might associate it with indifferent, lax, loner; and, if you played PMD2, brave, physically capable, and heroic. For Pikachu, you might have emotional, sensitive, capable. Maybe for Absol, you have unfortunate, harbinger of doom, and possibly even a connection to another literary work such as In the Heat of the Night, if you've read fanworks, the majority of which depict Absol as unfairly persecuted (darn you, Blazhy >:( ). Unless the writer specifically contradicts these archetypes, the reader usually assumes them to be so, and if the writer wishes to portray their character as fitting these archetypes, they may omit much of the character's description.

bulbasaur said:

I'm going to say, omit description unless it is necessary. In the same way that "actions speak louder than words", what characters do influence the reader's perception of them much more than how you describe them. Is the Vulpix anxious? or does the Vulpix twitch her tails involuntarily, raising her head to the moon, howling as through an ancient ritual before dashing off into the forest, leaving a trail in her wake? And six tails/carmine/two feet even? Just leave those out.

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That said, this isn't very easy to pull of and should really only be expected from writers of more skill and experience. Not everything can be expressed well this way, too.

bulbasaur said:

Both punctuation and uncommon words slow the reader down.

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With punctuation, not always, and "not always" enough that it doesn't constitute a mere escape from the guideline. I think we're all familiar, for example, with how short sentences and frequent periods speed up the flow. Very much. A lot. Seriously.

bulbasaur said:

- Avoid using to be or any of its forms when an alternative exists, because when a character acts not, it is not.
- Use strong verbs with strong adverbs instead of adjectives.

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Ha! I'd like to see you write a good story while avoiding adjectives and the words "is", "are", "was", "were"...

"[...]when an alternative exists"

There are times when avoiding to be would be awkward or when a verb coupled with an adverb would be jarring or in some cases, insufficient. So, no, I probably wouldn't be able to write a good story without some form of to be or a few adjectives.

Beh, adverbs get overused. A lot.

bulbasaur said:

- Use strong verbs with strong adverbs instead of adjectives.

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Viki said:

Beh, adverbs get overused. A lot.

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To emphasize/clarify/provide an example for this... If you can cut out adverbs and adjectives all together and choose a stronger verb or noun, your writing comes across stronger. For example, "He strolled into the room," gives a clearer image than "He walked slowly into the room."

But, like Music Dragon implied, it's not always easy to do that and it's not bad or anything to use the latter; it just sounds better to use something like the former.

'strolled' doesn't work as a replacement for 'walked slowly', though. 'walked slowly' implies a reluctant or heavy movement, and 'strolled' does neither of those; it's too light and soft-sounding, for a start. 'plodded' or 'dragged his feet as he walked' would be far more effective replacements.

Obviously your point is sound, though. Description is fun, and sometimes you can indulge yourself and describe someone's face because it's relevant! Like if characters are meeting for the first time... hm, I have an example of this somewhere... terribly unedited, but it's a description that doesn't just mention hair or eye colour (and it doesn't mention hair at all, come to think of it):

She does not look much like his father at all. He squints and tries to see any similarity in her face, but finds only scarce traces. Both of their eyes are green – that watery tea shade – but her cheekbones are too high, her face too rounded, her nose turned up slightly in the wrong way. She is young and middle-aged at the same time, the childish roundness of her face giving way to the pulls of ageing.

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Of course I have issues with being verbose, but descriptions like this aren't going to look out of place when you're writing, because they're important to the way you're telling your story. If the description's important? Then don't leave it out because you were told 'show, don't tell'. Rules for writing don't really exist; there are just things that some writers prefer over others, and being told I HAVE BLACK HAIR AND GREEN EYES AND I AM AWESOME is probably a pet peeve for some people.

100% execution, obviously. Good writers will know when the rules they had bashed into their head should be ignored.

Twilight Sparkle said:

'strolled' doesn't work as a replacement for 'walked slowly', though. 'walked slowly' implies a reluctant or heavy movement, and 'strolled' does neither of those; it's too light and soft-sounding, for a start. 'plodded' or 'dragged his feet as he walked' would be far more effective replacements.

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Ah, true. But you get the point. =)