Finding a Balance in Description

Along with grammar mistakes, a story with little description in it is one of my least favorite things. One of my favorite things about writing is putting an image into not only the writer's mind, but the reader's. I adore details, and I love when I find details in stories that have rarely-used words to describe things. But, there can also be a little too much description. So how do you find a balance between the two?

Too much description, I think, is just as bad as no description. When I'm reading a story, I want to be able to use my imagination and dream up the details of a setting, a character, an event, or even a scene. Trust me; you do this more than you think. While reading a scene, a lot of times, you imagine the scene, while adding details the story doesn't provide in the picture in your mind.

Having little to no description may make your story flat, unappealing, and hard to read. A faint outline of what you think as the writer will help form and mold the image in the readers' minds to get the gist of what you're talking about, so they can have an understanding, with room for their thoughts to come in.

For an emphasis on heavy description, the two most common ways to achieve it are large paragraphs describing everything, or smoothly spread out details as the scene goes on. From what I've seen on Mibba, it seems that the latter is preferred so the readers can take in the information as the scene moves along, instead of trying to remember everything at once.

To find an equal balance, I'll give an example of a very heavily described scene and a scene with no description.

The girl in front of him was absolutely beautiful. She had stunning gray eyes that glistened in the sunlight, her smile bright and flawless. Her dirty blonde hair fell just a few inches below her shoulders, the waves curving perfectly onto her face. Her skin was fair and pure, her jawline firm, and her build broad.

That was an example of a heavily described scene. Do you see how it targets all the key points that a reader would like to imagine for themselves? It leaves barely any room for the imagination to kick in.

The girl in front of him was very pretty. She had dirty blonde hair, gray eyes, and fair skin.

I see that too many times in stories. When describing a background character, this is, of course, quite acceptable. But, when describing a character that appears several times, you want to know what the author thinks so the character doesn't appear boring if it's not supposed to be.

The girl in front of him was stunning. Her hair fell just below her shoulders, a dirty blonde color and curving in perfectly to her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were bright, despite their grayish color, and her skin was fair and smooth. She had a pure smile, and you could feel the happiness radiating from her.

While the length of that paragraph was about the same, it talked about several different things instead of going into detail specifically about the character's eyes, hair, and smile. It made it easier to read and gave a vague outline, along with room for the readers to imagine some of the other details.

In writing, finding an equal balance with the two can be hard. Just ask yourself if the description is overwhelming or not. You can tell that by seeing if any of the other parts of the description come into play in your imagination, or if you are trying very hard to try to get to know what the author's saying. And then, once you've found the middle ground, you can use that to make it easy to read description in your stories.