I've always felt that description gives more insight into the describer than it does the described. I don't feel that mouse was wrong when she thought kill/kidnap, just that she over jumped the conclusion. To stop and minutely analyze the change made to a persons whole character is not the move of someone without motives/interest in that person to begin with. and as her minute gives complement begrudgingly and criticism freely to take the last thought of relief that said person wont be around much longer to a context of being the one to remove them from their present life (permanently or temporarily) is only a matter of over stepping what the character giving us these descriptions is capable of doing, not feeling.
As part of my job I read a lot of doctors chart notes. There is no emotive context to these notes, they are about a persons health not a commentary on their personality. At first I only noticed how a persons life shaped their health, something I had always known and found fascinating, but the more I learn about writing, the more I learn about the way I read things and soon found that I was getting to know the doctors I worked for by the kind of notes they gave. The words they used to describe the ailments they were notating soon told me more about them than their patients, and gave me a feel for their opinion of their work.
I have the good fortune to be able to compare my assumptions of their character to themselves, which I could never do with fictional characters. (one simply does not run into literary characters where I live. made me sad for much of my life actually) In some cases I found I was wholly wrong, and in others that I was more insightful than I had thought. That, too, shaped how I read their notes.
Of course for reasons more than law I keep what I learn to myself and employ my faulty memory heavily over the details of the peoples lives I am intrusted with, and find it interesting the balance between comfort and discomfort they have when I have trouble remembering details such as their name and birthday.
One thing I have started trying is to reread what I write from different perspectives than my own. Find out what insight I am giving away about myself and my opinions when I think I am presenting something unbiasedly. Check the mood I am in by the tone of descriptors that come to mind.
I love the way that language offers us many ways to describe something so that we can convey, not just a sense of what it is, but a sense of how we feel about what it is that it is to us.
In the OW section it has been pointed out that the pacing set gives it a languid feel, that the way things are described foreshades the characters that will inhabit the set. By slowing the pace one feels that one is walking slowly through a place drinking in all the sights scents and sounds of it.
Again in the paragraph AMW put up the slowing down to give attention to detail gives a sense that the narrator of this detail is distracted by it, that she has taken more than just a passing glance or glossed over view of the thing she is looking at.
I would agree that settings need to be as carefully attended to as characters, because it is a kind of character. But like a secondary or tertiary character, one that sets up the story and moves it along without taking up much of the spotlight.
Something that can be accentuated with succinct as well as loquacious descriptions, provided both are concise to the feeling one wishes to create.
I feel that wordy descriptions fail when they fail to give insight and character to the whole of the situation they are describing. Why should we care that the trees are sailing away in twilight, except that it gives us a sense of loss? Why do we need to know of the gardens outside Basil's studio, except that they play a part in shaping Dorian's life?
These are examples of good writing not because they are a decadent delight for a rapacious imagination, but because in being so they add depth and character to the story they are within.
And you definitely don't need an A-Level to do it!
