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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34081
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34081
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Is there like a rule of thumb for these things?

# Three!

I will take "rule of thumb" as meaning a rough measure that does not apply in all situations.

It is actually hard for people to keep very many details in their mind, so when describing a building or room, for example, pick three important details (or sentences) that capture the atmosphere of the room.

Here is Harry Potter, in Diagon Alley, coming to the wand shop. for the outside:

> (1) The last shop was narrow and shabby.  
> (2) Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Maker of Fine Wands since 382 B.C.  
> (3) A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.

For the inside of the shop:

> (1) It was a tiny place, except for a single spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait.  
> (2) Harry felt strangely as though he had entered a very strange library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling.  
> (-) For some reason, the back of his neck prickled.  
> (3) The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

What is the color of the walls? What kind of floor is it? Patterned? Wood? Stone tile? Dirt? How is the lighting done? What does it smell like? What color are the 'narrow boxes'?

You can overwhelm the reader with detail; Rowling tends to pick three images and describe them, though they may have a few combos in a sentence. From the outside, she doesn't describe the wand on the pillow; the wand remains generic (even though we learn here that the type of wood and length matter in a wand). But Rowling mentions the window is dusty and the purple pillow is faded.

'Narrow and shabby' is two bits of information, but we are not counting adjectives, we are counting concepts, and she is trying to give you a sense of this shop being 24 centuries old.

The same thing applies to appearances: Pick three "most important" **images** (or other senses) that set that appearance apart, and describe them. Of course, if it is really one very fetching thing, you can have more impact describing that one thing: **The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.**

Your job is to guide the reader's imagination, and in us humans, it is hard to keep track of very many details in something **new** that we see. (Something we've seen dozens of times is different: I can tell you a dozen details about the front of my house, or dozen things about why my living room is arranged the way it is and how the open spaces are used. But generally you are describing scenes and things new to the reader, so don't overload them.)

> How do you know how much detail is enough?

So **Three** is an average, I'd say one to four is enough, depending on their relative impact. You want enough to constrain the reader's imagination to be fairly close to your own, but in doing that, avoid repetition in the abstract sense: Decide what an image evokes in the reader, and avoid describing _other_ elements that evoke the same sense or feeling. (Rowling doubles up a few times, I think).

You don't have to cover all the senses, but you should at least consider them to see if they are unusual or telling. (smell or temperature or air quality or movement, etc). Otherwise, sight and sound and **emotional impression** are enough.

Remember, you want what you describe to have consequences in the mind and feelings of the character; they interpret what they detect with their senses. This is another way to pick the details; don't take anything the character would not notice: If the flooring is exactly what Harry would expect, we need not mention it; because it doesn't make the wand shop stand apart from any other shop.

Original score: 9