Sentences that say too much...

[psychotick]

Hi,

For me the only problem with the sentence is that it starts out as exposition and then morphs into action right at the end. There are two different ideas running through it. I'd probably rewrite it as two or three sentences. Eg:

Adele tipped her freckled face back, exposing her long, pale neck. Then she lifted the ray-ban sunglasses from her emerald green eyes and pushed them into her curly auburn hair so she could see the distant figures. A look of horror slowly came over her face.

"Invaders!"
Cheers, Greg.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I try to keep sentences short.

One of the nice aspects of comedy is that you can describe things in an amusing or rude way and it fits. One line I can't use [too anachronistic] but would be a decent example is: Her eyes were bluer than a drowning smurf.

 

[Hex]

That's certainly much better, Greg, (and the realisation happening separately very much improves it) but for me, there is anyway much too much description of Adele. As people said earlier in the thread, you don't need to know everything about how someone looks -- perhaps this connects to Toby's thread on cinema...?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't know if you remember (or ever knew about) this thread:

https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/42026/

The descriptions people contributed were quite good, and demonstrated ways to describe a character at length and in detail, showing not only how they look but (at the same time) who they are.

 

[HareBrain]

Where I tend to use long, information-heavy sentences, and then have a hard time paring them back, is when writing a query or synopsis. You want every sentence to contain a significant plot event, but often that event can only be understood with background information. A sentence of pure background info in a synopsis looks wrong and flabby, so you have to try to mix it in. It can be quite difficult.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm not sure that you have to use huge amounts of detail to get the important aspects of a character across, and certainly not the kind of detail-dropping that that sentence involves. For me, the starting point with description is that (1) if it's not exceptional, it doesn't need to be described and (2) most things/people are normal for their circumstances. So if we are in an Arabian-Nights type setting, I'm going to assume that the hero is an able-bodied Arabic man of average or slightly better looks and fairly normal dress, of "adventurer" age - so between 17 and 50, say - until I'm told otherwise. But you have to be careful. In the crime novel I'm reading now, a character remarked on the hero having a wheelchair near the beginning, and it took me about 10 pages to realise that he wasn't currently in a wheelchair, but had been when recovering from earlier injuries.

When I started writing Space Captain Smith, I expected to have to put in huge amounts of detail about how everything looked. It just wasn't necessary. Some people may think it's like Victorian steampunk, others that the technology looks a bit WW2, but the aim ("heroic British retro") is still there. Similarly, looking back through The Blade Itself, I found that my mental images of Glokta and the Wests were very different to the actual descriptions. But the differences were in unimportant things - clothing, hair colour, height etc - whereas the important aspects of the characters were as I remembered them.

 

[hopewrites]

I don't think having description effects how a reader sees the character unless it is absolutely vital to the story.

As a reader I can attest to the truth of this statement. The first time I read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I was blonde and identified with Lucy (being close to her age at that time as well as similar in character). Years later when the movies came out and she was cast as a brunette I complained to my mom who looked at me oddly and said "Lucy always had dark hair" to which my initial reaction was 'na-uh!' but on rereading the series with an eye for what characters actually looked like, I found I was wrong.

seemed to be breaking off in mini-tangents every couple of words to fit in description.

The mini-tangents would have been my biggest problem with the sentence in question.

---
As a reader what I want in the way of description is something that tells me about the character. I dont want to know what color their hair and eyes are unless those colors mean something to them. "She was torn between lounging in the shade to preserve her pale complexion, or in the sun to highlight her golden curls." Which tells me this sunbather not only has more time than she knows what to do with, but that most of her unallocated time is spent on her looks.

I agree with Teresa in that the only part of the tangentated sentence that sticks is Ray-Ban because it gives us a sense of who the person is. IMO the use of descriptors for characters is the use stereotypes should be set to. Everything the author tells the reader about the look of a character will be interpreted by the reader as something that defines who that character is. Tall; do they look down on the world or do they come of as aloof without realizing it? Short; of temper as well as stature, or sneaky because they can fit places others cant? Are they self-conscious of that one snaggle tooth, or proud of the broken wandering of their nose? What do those studious brown eyes see beyond the pages of the book in front of them?

In real life all the little things matter, because we dont know if they will mater later or not. In written life the writer only writes about the things that matter (or they want the reader to think matter) because there is far too much of real life to write it all.

IMO the only time a sentence can say too much is when it says more than the reader can carry with them into the rest of the story. I trust writers to put what is relevant somewhere I will pick it up and remember later when I need to.

 

[J Riff]

A good example of this sort of thing might be some of the series we used to read, like Doc Savage. In every book, all 178 of them or whatever there was, there are capsule descriptions of the MCs. I went through and dredged out about two dozen descriptions of 'Monk', just to see how it was done, and usually it was variations on two or three phsical characteristics, like 'rusty nail head, too-long arms' or etc. Very efficient and visual enough to give you an idea, but not much more.

 

[Juliana]

However, I do think if a character is to be described it should as soon as possible or it ruins it for me when I find out later the one in my head is wrong.

Completely 100% agree with this. Also, as a reader, I quite like a very basic sketch of the character's description - are they tall and thin, broad-shouldered, graceful etc and a vague idea of coloring. Just a brief sketch, mind - I like to fill in the blanks myself. When a character (or setting!) is over-described it leaves nothing for me to do as a reader, and that's a) no fun and b) actually harder work as I have to stop and process all the info, then sort it out and picture the character.

 

[Warren_Paul]

It's hard to get the right balance. Yes we do need to get information in there, but it should never be at the cost of the action. There's a right time to slip in some exposition, and that example isn't it. Try to describe too much at once and you've lost the reader.

I usually drip feed the info in, a little bit here and a little bit there. The entire character or scene doesn't need to be described in one sentence, spread it out over the entire page. The reader doesn't notice it when you do that yet before the know it, you've given them a vivid picture of the scene. And don't forget that the actions and attitudes of the characters can also go a long way to painting a picture of them in the readers mind without you needing to say anything specific.

There is also something to say about allowing the reader to create their own image of the characters. It's not always a bad thing.

 

[Dan Jones]

Agreed, it's awful. For me the phrase "ray ban sunglasses" is awfully clunky. Dan Brown is particularly bad for insisting upon adding brand names (and descriptions) to irrelevant items. In this instance, surely you have to get rid of either "Ray ban" or "sunglasses". We know what Ray bans are; you don't need both.

I like a long sentence as much as the next man, but here it's stringing together too many independent actions as to be dramatic. As a result it is very sludgy.

 

[tinkerdan]

I don't know which is best but in the original post I keep wanting to add a line after "Invaders!"

"But at least I look pretty."

 

[Tim Kinder]

When I write, it's all about flow. If it doesn't flow, if it's not smooth, if I can't read it out loud with out stumbling all over myself for complexity, it gets chopped.

My philosophy, people best absorb information from the printed word much like they do food -- in bite sized pieces.

 

[Jason Burrell]

IMO the only time a sentence can say too much is when it says more than the reader can carry with them into the rest of the story. I trust writers to put what is relevant somewhere I will pick it up and remember later when I need to.

I couldn't agree more.

Personally, more for the purposes of rhythm than anything else, I like to write long sentences, punctuated by shorter sentences which carry some punch. However, I also tend to steer clear of overly physical description if it's not going to forward the story.