Oh I totally agree. Everything should serve a purpose. It's a good goal to work for in a piece of writing. But I am concerned that some readers can get so hyped up about brevity and cutting detail that they forget one important thing. The purpose to a scene or a bit of description isn't always obvious AT FIRST. I am a big believer in trusting the author. If the author puts something in, it probably DOES have a purpose. The purpose might not be clear till later on, or even till the end of the book! Of course, if it turns out there was no purpose, then I might not trust that author again. However, when I think of the extra detail and purposeless scenes that got included in The Lord of the Rings—and then also remember it has recently been voted the most popular story on the planet—I think maybe we put too much stock in this lean, mean approach. I think folks can forgive a bit of extra stuff, if it's interesting enough to read, doesn't distract from what is happening, and if the overall story is engaging enough. It can be a mistake to include more than the story needs, but it's not always fatal.
i think things need to be there for a few reasons 1) plot / story 2) character development 3) themes/motifs 4) description number 1 is easy, 2 is tricky especially if it is 1st person--you want to put your reader in the shoes of the narrator, you want to show things that this narrator would be interested in---like all the lists and reviews in american psycho. yes you could take out the pages of huey lewis and genesis reveiws but you would lose something 3 is very important and overlooked too much. you want to create an atmosphere. you want to see how this whole story is related to certain themes 4 this is a variable things. are you Tolkein creating a fantasy world? or do you just want to describe the museam in cathcher in the rye. it really depends on what genre you are writing in.
