Tavia Chalcraft wrote:

Someone (Neil?) raised the question of description in fanfic. Do people prefer people and backgrounds to be described, and in how much detail? How overt does this have to be before it gets annoying? Does anyone have any useful hints?

Ouch! That varies widely by reader. I like to read what I consider to be a moderate amount of description; not long passages, but at least a couple of sentences to sketch in the background, and a 'peg' to hang OCs on, so that I can remember which character is which - I don't want long descriptions of OCs, since I'm not very visual.

Of course not being visual, writing description is very tough; this last piece I worked on, I made a real effort at it - two of my early readers raved about the detail, one said there wasn't enough, and one chastised me severely for too much, so tastes do vary.

The one thing I'm fairly certain of is that quantity of detail isn't what a writer should be after, but rather the pertinent details - instead of a complete description of a room, for example, just the two or three details that reveal something about its owner. I could write, say, 'there were three chairs - one nice and two broken; two desks - one new and one dilapidated; a metal file cabinet and some old metal shelves, and a CD player atop an old typewriter cart,' or I could write, 'The computer and its user huddled among a dozen precarious stacks of mismatched boxes that reached far overhead, throwing shadows across the monitor. The only sounds were the chattering of the keyboard, and the whoosh of the central air as it sent a heart-shaped balloon dancing across the ceiling,' and they'd both be true, but the second gives a much better feel for my office, IMO.

So I guess my answer is, put a little description in, but make it work _hard_.

Mistral