Houses built of cedar

Being a novelist and therefore an avid and hungry consumer of other people's writing, I can definitively say there are two separate schools of writing.

There are those who paint a scene eloquently and laboriously; you know just how the wind was wafting into the room, its fragrance, the direction it came from, and whether or not there were any particles of dust in it. You're also briefed on how the protagonist reacts to the wind... whether she loved or hated it, was comforted by it or not.

To be perfectly frank - at times this level of specificity is not only artistic, but also absolutely crucial to the mood and transcurrence of the scene. This in itself is not the problem. The problem lies in the fact that many writers use such elaborate scene descriptions as filler and substitute for real storytelling. The problem comes in when a good 60% of the novel is made up of such intricate detail.

As for me, I prefer to build large houses of cedar with lots of wide open spaces. I give you the structure. I give you the who, what, when and why. Whether or not the protagonist smelled the faint scent of begonias wafting in the wind should be left to you, the audience - as long as it's not imperative to the plot line.

And this in turn brings us to the subject of pacing and novel length. What's the good in getting through a 1400-page Tolstoy novel if a good 840 pages could have been painlessly edited away without affecting the slightest nuance in plot? Just a little something to keep under your hat.

- Luis

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