I started discussing detail yesterday in terms of the personal appearance of characters within the novel. It’s clear that the diegesis of the novel can be significantly affected by detail. Let’s have Joe take a look at a house he has never seen before and see the house through his eyes. “The house was framed by two giant oaks that also appeared to be guarding the house. Joe tried to think of when the house might’ve been built – old. It was also a house that had been much loved. The only thing jarring about the house was one shutter that was hanging on by just one hinge.” The reader should be able to form a picture in their mind of the house. It’s going to be slightly different for every reader, but the most critical point about the house is it either in a state of decay or neglect because of the shutter. Let your readers help you.
You can apply the same ideas to the description of a place, be it a woodland or a town. Let’s turn to Joe again. “The forest was so dense here that Joe couldn’t see more than a few feet. He thought, if it was winter and the leaves were gone, he might be able to see farther.” Again, the reader will fill in details for you. Someone who has always lived in cities will have a very different view than someone who grew up around woodlands. If I turn to my left and look out the windows of this room, I see what life is taught me about that view. I see a dense stand of mature poplars. A few of the older trees have died and would’ve fallen over if not caught by the other trees. The understory is of all small brushy plants. I know that the lifetime of poplar is about 50 years. That means the land was probably cut over in the 1960s because some of the poplars had already died. Do you see, if I were the reader, all of the detail I could supply that someone who lived in a city all their life couldn’t? However, both of us would have a good view of that piece of woodland.
I think it is essential that you enlist your readers’ help by suggesting just enough so they can form a picture in their mind’s eye. You don’t want to slow the flow of your story by endless detail.
