Pet peeve #1
One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to novels is too much description. In my view, it's even worse than too little description, because while I'll whine about it if there's not enough, I'll at least finish the book. Nothing bogs me down and discourages me from reading faster than page after page of gratuitous description. I do not need to know what every individual leaf in the forest looks like in explicit detail. I have no desire to have each step of the hero's journey spelled out for me, complete with special notes each time he lifts his foot. A good book is a place you can lose yourself, where the characters and their world come to life. Long and frequent descriptive passages do not achieve this. They're distracting and they slow down the action, and in a book that uses them often, I tend to find myself skimming them to get back to the story. I may have the attention span of a gnat, but I can't be the only person on the planet who gets annoyed by this.
Know who's really bad for long, unnecessary descriptive passages? TOLKIEN. I realize it's somewhat sacreligious for me to read and review genre fiction (especially fantasy) and diss Tolkien, but I cannot handle reading him. I'm sorry, I know people will get upset over this, but he goes on for chapters just describing the nearest tree. Or what Frodo's feet look like. And then as an afterthought, someone might actually say something. But then we go back to the trees. I tried to get through Lord of the Rings, I really did, but I had to stop about halfway through The Two Towers. After three chapters of Aragorn and company travelling to Helm's Deep and never actually arriving, just passing by trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and water... yeah, I was done. I don't mind a long novel if occasionally, things happen. It helps if the characters speak to each other once every so often, too. Trees and rocks are great and all, but I can see them out my back window.
I realize authors have this whole new world to introduce us to and all, but your best bet is to sneak the details in when I'm not looking, rather than a huge infodump. I promise, after twenty pages of telling me exactly what the meadow looks like, I am not visualizing exactly what you had in mind. Instead, I am visualizing what the book would look like if I tore all those pages out so I could get back to the actual story. Y'know, the reason I picked up the book in the first place?
Because let's face it, nobody picks up a novel with the idea in mind to wade through descriptive passages. A little goes a long way.
Know who's really bad for long, unnecessary descriptive passages? TOLKIEN. I realize it's somewhat sacreligious for me to read and review genre fiction (especially fantasy) and diss Tolkien, but I cannot handle reading him. I'm sorry, I know people will get upset over this, but he goes on for chapters just describing the nearest tree. Or what Frodo's feet look like. And then as an afterthought, someone might actually say something. But then we go back to the trees. I tried to get through Lord of the Rings, I really did, but I had to stop about halfway through The Two Towers. After three chapters of Aragorn and company travelling to Helm's Deep and never actually arriving, just passing by trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and water... yeah, I was done. I don't mind a long novel if occasionally, things happen. It helps if the characters speak to each other once every so often, too. Trees and rocks are great and all, but I can see them out my back window.
I realize authors have this whole new world to introduce us to and all, but your best bet is to sneak the details in when I'm not looking, rather than a huge infodump. I promise, after twenty pages of telling me exactly what the meadow looks like, I am not visualizing exactly what you had in mind. Instead, I am visualizing what the book would look like if I tore all those pages out so I could get back to the actual story. Y'know, the reason I picked up the book in the first place?
Because let's face it, nobody picks up a novel with the idea in mind to wade through descriptive passages. A little goes a long way.