I have nothing to add to the larger thread, but I just want to say I think we have the same grey goo. It wasn't until I started reading AW and other writing websites that I realized other people
needed descriptions. They needed to
picture the setting, they didn't like white room syndrome, etc.
I don't even know what my own characters look like. Some of them have no face and no body. And white
room? Sometimes I don't even have a room.
That there's more than one of us here with colorless goo probably indicates there are a lot more of 'em out there
I too often have only a vague notion of what my characters look like. I'm more likely to have a strong idea of what a setting looks like, but it arrives out of the blue, not as a result of being described. For whom is it a white room? Evidently not us!
At the far extreme, there's a fantasy series (I think presently 5 books; I wandered away about the middle of book 2) where EVERY description is multi-layered, detailed, and lush, and just about everything is described. It asked that I catalog and subcatalog absolutely EVERYTHING the POV character observed (and he was
very observant!) It wouldn't just describe what someone was wearing; in the same sentence it would describe their garment, its buttons, the button material, its origins, and possibly even reference the people who made it, each with at least a couple well-chosen adjectives. (Very nearly a literal example.) If all this were pared down to what
I find comfortably descriptive reading (or at least into sentences that could be diagrammed without requiring a contortionist), the five books would become one or two. It's lovely as isolated examples, but as a constant barrage it became tedious, and there was too much of it to simply skip, because it was everywhere. So I wound up skipping out... I really liked the MC (even if I didn't entirely buy their society) but the style of description went from unusual to annoying over time, and one day I put it down and didn't go back. (And by now have spaced on the author's name, which is just as well.) But obviously someone likes it, or there wouldn't be five-plus of 'em out there.
Conversely the other day I tripped over some samples of Bulwar-Lytton's work, and was surprised to see that he made fairly dense and comfortable work of descriptions, rather than being the overly-flowery bombast the infamous contest would have us believe. Well, at least as isolated examples. Dunno what I'd think of the whole. I may have to try some.
One may argue that it's showing the bigger picture that should be done, instead of taking elements out of context
But it's kinda like cooking... salt adds savor to food, but salt all by itself tells you nothing about the meal.
...How do you know the cigarette-rolling and slobbering scene isn't hot foreplay from the point of view of a 1930's tobacco aficionado?
Out of context, we don't. If that's what it's about, dandy! If it's really about his career as a bank robber -- we gonna get the same kind of description of his gun as he threatens the clerk?? (I already left that party!)
Back then the 'real' authors of sardonic understated sincerity are Fitzgerald, O'Hara, and Hemingway
And at that other extreme, and it's not because of the minimalism but because of the overall tone -- I find Hemingway boring, flat, tiresome, and excessively fond of his own navel. I can't recall what I've read of the others (probably haven't since high school, over 40 years ago) but Hemingway stuck with me as an evil thing to inflict on hapless students, refreshed by a recent discussion hereabouts where some short of his came up and in a spasm of masochistic folly, I read it so as to grok the rest of the discussion. My brain still hurts.
