Lowry Updates: Put clothes on him. But not too many.

What's the bit of advice from Elmore Leonard? Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. But what do you think of character description? Clothing? How much is too much, or too little?

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A reader has asked this question in a comment to a previous blog post, and it's an interesting one, so I'll copy it here. Also it provides a distraction from the book section I'm currently working on, which benefits from my taking a breather to re-think now and then!

It's important, I think, for a reader to be able to visualize a fictional character or scene. But each reader will see something—or someone—differently, and that's as it should be, because it's what makes reading such a personal and individual act.

Many years ago, in a book (one of my favorites actually) called RABBLE STARKEY, I wrote a scene in which a 12-year-old girl, who had led a life till then of cultural deprivation, is read aloud to for the first time. A friend's father read from Steinbeck's "The Red Pony" to her, her best friend, and the friend's younger brother. I don't have the book here so can't quote it exactly, but the young girl, the first-person narrator, describes the experience, and says that the author, Steinbeck, tells you about a dog named Smasher, how one of his ears stands up straighter than the other, which had been chewed by a coyote. So we could all see Smasher, she says, and then realizes: but we each saw a different Smasher, built of all the dogs we had ever known.

I think that's the important thing, that the author give enough details that the reader can begin to formulate the picture in his mind......but leaves just enough out, so that each reader fills in the rest from his own imagination and experience. Describe the professor's tweed jacket and his pipe, and the reader can fill in the elbow patches and the wrinkled corduroy pants.

Some years ago I went to Nantucket with friends on a summer weekend. Spur of the moment, and there were no hotel rooms available, but the chamber of commerce directed us to a local couple who made room available in their house and served breakfast as well. It was an experience I have never forgotten and wouldn't have missed for anything. There were rusted car bodies ringing the dirt-packed yard where breakfast was served. The wife, our hostess, shuffled outside with coffee, wearing a flowered housecoat and curlers in her hair. She had a partially smoked cigarette attached to her mouth.

Okay. I just gave you four details about that breakfast and the woman who served it. You'll fill in others: the chipped china, the folding aluminum chairs with broken webbing, the fuzzy bedroom slippers, the mangy cat...whatever else makes the scene complete for you.

It does a disservice to the reader—insults his imagination and experience—to describe too much. But you have to choose the right details so that the reader sees something close to what you want him to see.

Hope that helps.

Comments

I agree completely for the books I'm reading for plot. There are others that I'm reading to relish the writing. For those books, the more description the better.

Posted by: Tracyene | July 07, 2010 at 07:09 AM

I just picked up a copy of Rabble Starkey this weekend. I read many of your books as a child (probably most), but if I read this one, I don't recall it. Also found a copy of Starring Sally J. Friedman as herself, which I definitely read as a child, and I remember Blume saying is one of her more autobiographical book. It's fun to read these books as an adult and see how my perceptions change. There's also usually stuff that I realized I missed entirely as a child. I find your books hold up very well for adult readers.

Also reading the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy, which is getting a lot of deserved attention. You might like to read them sometime.

Posted by: Kate | July 07, 2010 at 07:36 AM

Often, good fiction writing 'depends' on what is left out by the writer for the reader to 'fill in' in her mind.

An extreme example of writing that gives readers the maximum latitude for conjuring up worlds, feelings and emotions while savoring language is 'Poetry.'

Recently, I ruined the experience of imagining a character while reading a book when I saw the face of the actress who plays this character in the movie. (I saw it while web surfing) Now all I see is someone else's interpretation of what MY main character looks like, darn!

Cheers!

Posted by: ojimenez | July 07, 2010 at 07:42 AM

Lois, I truly enjoy your writing here on this blog. I could not agree with you more about the fine line between too much description and not enough. A writer who over describes comes off to me as insulting, taking away from me what I so enjoy as a reader. Thanks for sharing!

Posted by: Brigrd5 | July 07, 2010 at 09:24 AM

Just thought I would say that I appreciate the title of the blog post and some of your other ones as well. Very cleverly written as well as humorous (some of them).

Posted by: Jennifer Elliott | July 07, 2010 at 09:35 PM