The Reader's Mind: A Closet of Characters and Scenery

Something I work on in my own writing and with clients is to learn to trust the reader. It's common for writers of all stripes to feel as if they have to explain everything down to the last detail or the reader won't get it. The scene is a long list or piece of prose logging each object in the room or plant in the garden. Each character, their appearance, traits, lengthy back-stories, clothes, finger gesture, etc., is described to exacting detail.

What this does is pull the reader out of the narrative (and the plot) and they get bored and don't remember what you wrote anyway because they start thinking about grocery lists. No need to be so controlling with the reader.

Readers, all of us, carry a ready made closet of characters and scenery from which to draw upon as we read. This is the result of memory and every other media experience we ever have. All you have to do as a writer is give the precise and right detail to allow the reader to pull the proper character and scene from that closet.

With characters, you then add a single idiosyncratic detail to give the reader something to really hang their hat on. The reader can imagine the rest and you can continue to add idiosyncratic elements to each of your characters as the narrative unfolds and as it serves the plot.

This is an act of Word Choice. It is better to spend twenty minutes searching for the right word than it is to write one-hundred boring and beside-the-point bits of casting and set direction.

For example, rather than a lengthy description, Steinbeck writes in The Long Valley of one character: "His mouth was sweet, shapely as a girl's, and his chin was fragile and chiseled." Or, Tony Morrison writes in The Bluest Eye there was  "... A rich autumn ripeness in her walk." Or, Steinbeck again, "Mama moved forward like a ship..."

As always, one word or phrase does far better than 100, as long as it's the right word to pull the right character from the closet.