What are some examples of the "simple but vivid" description that Chekhov talks about below?

That's certainly a fair point. Most readers of English would balk at a one-to-one translation of the entire paragraphs and even pages of text that can roll by in Spanish where everything is in passive voice. Part of my job doing a translation would be to correctly render all that into active voice syntax where possible in the English product. In a hypothetical conversation between two Spanish writers, the advice they would be giving one another on the topic of passive vs active would not correspond to what one hears in English.

Again, my post was meant only to answer the question that I fully admit no one asked, if that's really what Chekhov said in Russian, and it is. I don't necessarily agree with the advice at all. My own personal dogma concerning descriptions (which I proselytize rather constantly here, I admit) demands a few contextual questions be answered first to which people seem to have a strong tendency to not want to give an answer, and why that should be is beyond my ken. I can't personally agree that there's any one way to deploy descriptions that doesn't take into account the narrative mode (1st person, 3rd person, what flavor of 3rd person), who is the observing party, who/what is the observed party, what is their relationship if any, etc.

What I can add is that later in the same letter, Chekhov advises against the portrayal of a particular character that he says is ruining an otherwise good story. His reasoning is that though readers may love that particular character archetype, he thinks the readers that do like it are lowbrow and talentless, so they should not be catered to. His advice is that this kind of character should never be portrayed and to delete the character altogether. He mentions that his dislike for the character archetype (an unsympathetic section/district chief/boss) is likely akin to his dislike for flirting in narrative, and that he admits the possibility exists that this is just his opinion, but then goes on to state that he's pretty sure he's right regardless. All of which comes off as rather heavy-handed, personal preference based advice.

 

To my memory, no, Mankell's writing pretty much stays like that. And yes my style diverged from his greatly in time. But I can still see the influence another book that greatly influenced me was the Children's Book of Verse, which Marc thinks is why my writing has a poetic feel to it. I feel like I basically combined both of these. Now Mankell's writing is almost too plain for me - but at the time when I was a teenager, I was immensely impressed that he could convey feelings with so few words. I still rather like it now, though not as much as I used to.

I am flattered you seem to prefer my writing over Mankell's, the internationally successful bestselling author

 

Well, I've been wrong before.

 

I've not read Chekhov, but he sounds arrogant. For me also, a good writer should show self-awareness that enables him to identify or at least admit when something is just a style preference.

I wanna see an example of the Spanish Vs Spanish translations!

I am not sure I quite understand what you mean about questions that don't tend to be answered in the context of descriptions?

 

Here in the forum when members post "Help me describe this person" posts. I come into the post and invariably the structural elements of the story have not been mentioned. Descriptions that may be perfectly ordinary in 3rd omniscient need some context in 3rd limited or 1st person, and may not be permissible at all in 3rd objective.

Me - "Which narrative mode have you chosen? What's the POV?"

Them - *no answer or answers to everyone else but me*

Me - "So, no answer? It's a simple question."

Them - "3rd."

Me - "Which 3rd? There are several."

Them - *no answer*​

It happens with great regularity, and in the meanwhile there is a proliferation of responses that disagree wildly with one another because it's very clear that this person is answering from a 1st person mindset, and that person is clearly using 3rd omniscient as their filter, and this other person is possibly using objective...

 

Fair enough

 

It's probably because they were caught flat-footed and didn't know about all those POVs or the rules for them, and they don't want to admit it, or just refuse to believe it gets that complicated.

 

I think I agree with @Xoic - likely they didn't even know about those POVs or the rules about them. But the truth is, anyone asking for help to describe a character is probably not too experienced to begin with.

 

Bank shots are less impressive than swish shots but easier to score points with. Bank shots and swish shots are worth the same number of points. If you score enough points, you win the game.

Like @Mckk said, it's not any one sentence that makes a novel, it's all of them. Like bank shots, simple sentences increase your chances of getting your point across, even if their flash potential is less. It depends on your skill level and how long you want to wait for your novel to succeed.