Is Complexity, and a lot of small Detail in the descriptions in a Novel a good thing?

I disagree with Dryriver on one point: From what he's written here, it seems that he thinks "detail" refers to detailed description of the physical environment - what color the toaster is, for example. I find that dull, unless there is some significance to it. Maybe the kind of dress Ellen wears to try to get the job says lots about her character, and how her potential boss reacts to that dress may make or break Ellen's future. So it's fine to describe the dress. But the color of the toaster won't have any effect on whether or not she gets the job, so it's an irrelevant detail that can be safely left out.

I said I love "lush, detailed" fiction, and by that I mean thoughtful and challenging fiction, not just fiction in which every object is described in excruciating detail. I enjoy interior monologue. I enjoy philosophical discussion. I enjoy a complex but rewarding play of symbolism. But, as I've kept saying in these forums over and over, to me it's all about focus, focus, focus. If you're going to describe something, it should have some meaning in the story. The details you include should strengthen and clarify character, plot, and theme. If you're just including details willy-nilly, you're clouding up the reader's envisioning of the scene and the story, and very likely boring him.

 

Not if you are writing "detailed" prose. =) The toaster is present when she is in the kitchen. She operates it to make toast, and is probably thinking about something or the other while she touches it. She sees it every time she uses her kitchen, so one might as well tell the reader what colour or make it is, what it looks like, and what sound its spring-loaded mechanism makes when toast comes popping out of it.

Btw... The Ellen story is something I made up in about 10 seconds to illustrate my point about slower & detailed, versus faster and highly economical writing.

I don't really write in that style. =)

 

This is dreadful. I hope that you don't write stories in this fashion.

 

To me, even your original example has too much detail, because the relevance of the details isn't clear. If I were to write the low-detail bit, I'd make it _low_ detail:

The next morning Ellen dressed in the best of her old office finery and drove into the city to convince Carlos to give her another shot at the job.​

This leaves us with a very small number of details: The office finery. The mode of transport. The city. Carlos. The job. With so few details, I feel confident that each one is important, and that causes me to form a more detailed picture in my mind. I _see_ Ellen in clothes that she's not comfortable in, warily navigating a car on unfamiliar roads into an unfamiliar place, nervous about the reaction of this Carlos person. Is my picture right? I have no idea. But it's more detailed than a picture that I'll form if I'm given a lot of details and no clues as to their relevance.

Most of the things that you say are missing are also irrelevant-looking details. I'd say that the way to improve the low-detail versions is not to add more apparently-irrelevant details, but to decide which details are relevant and make that relevance apparent. Not in an obvious way ("Ellen chose to do X because...") but by drawing on what the reader already knows about Ellen, and through the way that the details are presented, and possibly by doing a little backtracking and laying the ground for anything that is important and not well-established.

For example, if the reader already knows that Ellen usually turns down the water heater for frugality, but sometimes turns it up when she needs a morale boost, then the warm shower could be relevant. Otherwise, I'd say that we don't much care. If they know that she usually wears comfortable sloppy gardening clothes and isn't interested in girly grooming, then the light-colored pantsuit and eyeliner are relevant and maybe the bun is, too - the readers are watching her drearily comply with the world's expectations, with the severe hairstyle being a sign that she's taking no joy from it.

Of course "the job" is relevant; I would assume that that was already established earlier in the story. Leaving it out doesn't make this an efficient page-turner, it's that annoyingly coy strategy of leaving out highly relevant information that the viewpoint character knows all about, for the sake of false suspense. It's a strategy that should almost always be avoided, but IMO it has nothing to do with the level of detail in the work.

If Ellen's usually frugal with coffee and food then the fact that she had some coffee and some butter may be relevant, or it may just make the same point that's already been made with the water heater. Or maybe she usually has a big joyful breakfast with homemade biscuits and eggs from her ducks and vegetables from her garden, and the small quickly-made breakfast with purchased bread reflects the compromises that she'll have to make to get to work on time if she gets this job.

If she rarely drives that car, and has to move a bunch of muddy flowerpots to get to the driver's door, being careful not to get dirt on that light-colored pantsuit, then that's relevant. Otherwise, I don't care where it's parked. If the traffic provides an opportunity to subtly communicate her mood, that's fine; otherwise, I'd say it's irrelevant too. The period during which she parks the car and walks up is, IMO, not relevant due to the details, but due to her thoughts, probably her increasing stress as she approaches the appointment. So the architect of the building is a distraction here, unless _she's_ thinking about the architecture in order to calm herself.

And so on. Details are fine and good, but there should be some relevance. The writer shouldn't present a catalog of every little thing, hoping that a pattern will emerge. He is responsible for bringing out that pattern - subtly, not spoonfeeding it to the reader with a lot of explanations, but nevertheless he needs to show the pattern.

And it may well be that Ellen's capitulation, her abandoning her old life for this new job, is _best_ shown, has the most impact, with the lowest possible amount of detail. Maybe the last two or three chapters have been a highly-detailed depiction of Ellen's struggle to maintain her preferred way of life, and all the things that went wrong, and the last prosaic disaster that made it obvious that she would not succeed. In that case, then anything more than the bare, cold facts may be pounding the point in too hard. If you know that the character is dying, do you really need to show every drop of blood? You might finish an entire section of the book with:

The next morning Ellen dressed in the best of her old office finery and drove into the city to convince Carlos to give her back her old job. She got it--forty hours a week, mandatory overtime during tax season, and a dress code requiring suit jackets and nylons. She even got an advance on her first paycheck. She drove home, paid Mr. Jenkins the rent, sat down on the bench by the duck coop, and cried.​

A day's worth of activity in one paragraph, but there are times when that can be just right.

But Ellen - the viewpoint character, I assume - is not likely to be thinking about the toaster. When she goes into the kitchen, Ellen probably doesn't think, "I'm going to make some toast in my slightly dusty aluminum toaster with red trim." She knows the toaster. She's already had her first (and secod, and third, and tenth) impressions of it. It's background, now. Only if something new, some thought or change, draws her attention to it is she likely to think about its details. And even if you're writing in third person omniscient, with no viewpoint character at all, there should be a reason for mentioning the color of the toaster.

What kind of reason? Well, Ellen might be pleased to see the brand new expensive Easter-egg-blue toaster that she just bought yesterday. Or she might be dismayed to see that that same toaster is now starting to get a little worn looking. Or she might have been thinking a lot about her finances, and be annoyed at being so broke that she has to use the same ancient sometimes-sets-the-toast-on-fire toaster that she bought at a garage sale ten years ago. Or with the scenario that I've painted, she might be dismayed to have no time to make biscuits, to instead be pulling spongy purchased bread out of a gaudy package and pushing it into a dusty, rarely-used toaster.

But these are all emotions, and most are about something bigger than the toaster. The toaster ties the feelings to the scene. That, IMO, is what details are for. If the reader trusts the writer, then the writer can provide apparently irrelevant details and the reader will trust that their relevance will come out in time. If the detail is nothing more than a detail, if even the writer doesn't know what makes it even a little bit relevant, then IMO it doesn't belong in the text.

ChickenFreak

 

Complexity and details that serve no purpose only wastes the reader's time.

 

No, no, the reader most definitely should not find the book difficult to read. Difficult to read books are ok if they are an experiment (Joyce for example) but most of the time, it is a sign of clumsy writing. I read lots of "heavy" literature, and most of it was very easy to read. Reading Nietzsche or Sartre or Rousseau or any of the philosophers can be challenging to the mind in the way that every paragraph I might have to stop and think how do I feel about what is said, do I agree, can I find examples to the contrary, but that is because the concepts are new and origiinal, not because the narrative is difficult to follow.

Same with fiction prose. Take Dostoyevsky for example. Read it in Russian, or find a good modern translation, and his works will be one of the most un-putdownable books you'll ever read. Riveting. So even the most complex, rewarding narratives should be easy to follow. All good writing is easy to follow.

In terms of details, yes, I like lots of details but in terms of storylines, subplots and characters in my books, not overt descriptions, these bog down the story, making it tiresome, boring and irrelevant.

ps. I totally agree with ChickenFreak