a quick question (about description)

[Vertigo]

I think there is a natural drift towards purple prose in fantasy and away from it in SF. Don't get me wrong; that is a gross generalisation and I am not saying that fantasy is all 'purple' and SF all technical. However fantasy will I think always lend itself to a more romantic approach than SF.

[I'm not enitrely happy with the word romantic there; I don't mean romantic as in lovers but romantic as in style]

[HareBrain]

Originally Posted by Vertigo

[I'm not enitrely happy with the word romantic there; I don't mean romantic as in lovers but romantic as in style]

I usually stick a capital R on the front. Not sure if that's always right, though.

When I said earlier not to force description, I really meant long passages of it. I hope no one here is going to use my advice to leave it out even when it's necessary for the reader to have the slightest clue what's going on.

[Hex]

It's never necessary for the reader to have the slightest clue what's going on.

Don't mollycoddle them -- they won't thank you, you know, when they read Joyce.

We must be confusing to be kind.

[Bowler1]

As a SciFi reader, the books that I would recommend have at their core a character or storyline that draws the reader in. I will accept I read for the technology and the weird spin that can give a story, but without character then it gets dull very quickly.

Oddly/or not, I don't do much fanstasy, I have read some so I have a little balance to my reading. I find fanstasy has too much plodding around on horses after fair maidens, rubbish - give me LIGHT SPEED and EXPLOSIONS......

[Coragem]

Okay, take Guy Gavriel Kay. He says he likes to vary his projects rather than repeat the same things in order to give readers what they "think" they want.

In actual fact, he tends to keep doing a similar thing -- heroism and romance set in historical analogues.

But would I advise him to change? Maybe do sci-fi, for example?

Probably not.

His lyrical and aesthetic style works really well in musical, poetic, artistic, and historical settings. I don't think it'd work so well in a hard, technological, empirical, pragmatic setting. (… Not that I'm discounting the possibility of poetic or artistic sci-fi, even if I haven't found it to be too common …)

I think Alastair Reynolds does description REALLY well. Amazingly. But it is more firm and precise – painting in precision dots rather than sweeping, expansive, subjective strokes.

All that said, while I write sci-fi I'd say my style and approach to character takes a lot from fantasy. (As I've said before, I very much dislike the sense with some sci-fi that it engages head but not heart.)

Coragem.

[alchemist]

Originally Posted by Warren_Paul

Space Opera: Lighter descriptions, more about the characters themselves, but the characters typically have way more depth to them.

I'm not so sure about this. If you look at Banks or PF Hamilton, they need good description because of the alien worlds, alien ships and, er, aliens. It's probably what I enjoy most about space opera; the imagination.

[hopewrites]

I think the difference goes to the core of the two different types of people there are in academia (because lets face it, bookworms like learning things). I call them Science Majors and English Majors (though I completely understand that not all the BS's in the world have been giving to people studying science and not all the AA's are given to people studying English). Science Majors tend to like math, science, and factual representations of the worlds they enjoy. English Majors like the intricate complexity of languages and want to get the most out of their carefully chosen adjectives. slap-dashed into the least informative comparison, it's a question of whether one prefers a thesaurus to a microscope when being sent to the proverbial desert island.

[Ursa major]

Apart from writer-preference, other factors may affect how much description is included (and who imparts this to the reader).

Basically, I think it's a case of noticing things rather than just seeing them (or sensing them in other ways). If one is writing using a strict PoV approach, a character in their normal environment - normal to them, that is - is unlikely to be describing their surroundings in much detail. Something might catch their eye, and so a related, or contrasting, description might flow from this, but however strange a place they inhabit (strange to us, that is), it won't be strange to them.

One can image a character from some outlandish place arriving here on Earth. So much would be odd to them, that they'd probably be unable to avoid thinking (and thus describing) what would be, to us, the utterly mundane.


This still leaves plenty of scope for description: that farm boy (the one destined to be a great hero) is going to be almost overwhelmed when they first see a big town or city; the engineer on a star ship will have a completely different reaction to an agricultural colony than someone born and bred there.

Any stranger is going to be in a strange land (even if it's mundane to us and the other characters); they will notice the differences. The stranger may not be far from home: a detective working a case amongst the rich and powerful, or in a slum, will be just as much on a voyage of discovery as a space explorer, and the description will reflect this.

[Warren_Paul]

Originally Posted by alchemist

I'm not so sure about this. If you look at Banks or PF Hamilton, they need good description because of the alien worlds, alien ships and, er, aliens. It's probably what I enjoy most about space opera; the imagination.

Oh yeah, I wasn't saying there was no detail at all to the world - all books need detail. Just that compared to 'hard sci-fi' it's lighter, because hard sci-fi gets bogged down with scientific expositions, where space opera gets on with the world and characters in it - deals with the story, not how things work.

[Galacticdefender]

Originally Posted by springs1971

So, sci fi and fantasy - do they differ in the type and level of description and pov?

Or is there a best practice that applies regardless of genre?

I often find sci fi a little more remote, a little less personal, perhaps colder in its approach . On the other hand I find fantasy pads out description and story.

So, is it that they're a genre bound, or is it just that the genres require a different approach?

No. I've read scifi With wonderful descriptions, with amazing scenery, and interesting environments, and I've read fantasy with cold, barely passable descriptions. I'm a scifi writer/reader mainly, and in my works, I definitely go heavy on the descriptions, though a hard(ish) scifi Space Opera universe sort of requires that.

I mainly read and write space opera, so I don't have much experience with other subgenres, but from what I have read, it can vary widely, and does not depend on the genre.

[Galacticdefender]

Originally Posted by Warren_Paul

Uh oh... the quick word...

Do I run away now, or later?

Your book is space opera I think, which is lighter on the detail, based around adventure and action, but you still need some detail otherwise the reader isn't drawn into the world. It's about making the reader believe the dialogue by fleshing it out with background details, which is what I'm learning to do recently.

This is not always true. A Space Opera can be any work of scifi that takes place on many different worlds and locations. Space Opera does not necessarily imply soft science fiction. One example of a more hard scifi space opera is Revelation Space.

Also I write Space Opera that is a bit harder in terms of science, so I'm kind of defensive when people say space opera is pretty much just epic fantasy in scifi form.

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by springs1971

So, sci fi and fantasy - do they differ in the type and level of description and pov?

Or is there a best practice that applies regardless of genre?

I often find sci fi a little more remote, a little less personal, perhaps colder in its approach . On the other hand I find fantasy pads out description and story.

So, is it that they're a genre bound, or is it just that the genres require a different approach?

SFF is a difficult genre to persuade people to read beyond the first page. Even if it's good, people have a reaction: 'Oh, it's SFF, life's too short to spend my valuable time reading this stuff.' Books like Lord of the Rings and Dune hit the right spot with the Woodstock generation. But modern readers don't seem to approach SFF as in any way a serious genre with any real depth.

It's sad really, that SFF has painted itself into a corner as a parody-type niche genre, because SFF in the past has come up with a lot of serious thought, especially in the classic era of Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury etc, when it was actually an important and formative part of ... well, not 'literature' perhaps, but still worth reading. Books, in other words, that made you think, and that stayed with you. Orwell's 1984 is sci-fi, with a message? That's literature.

It's a pity the 2nd half of 20th century was unable to throw up a Solzenitchyzn (please don't ask me to spell it) or Norman Mailer of SFF (fill in your choice of influential writer here) to draw serious attention back to the genre. Nan Rice's highly believable vampire stories, perhaps? JG Ballard? Tolkein may have come closest. Perhaps the early 21st century will be more successful. C'mon guys, must be one of you out there?

SFF descriptions are more difficult than for 'ordinary' writers, who can simply create believable description from the real world around them. We have to invent it all.

[Warren_Paul]

Originally Posted by Galacticdefender

This is not always true. A Space Opera can be any work of scifi that takes place on many different worlds and locations. Space Opera does not necessarily imply soft science fiction. One example of a more hard scifi space opera is Revelation Space.

Also I write Space Opera that is a bit harder in terms of science, so I'm kind of defensive when people say space opera is pretty much just epic fantasy in scifi form.

Yep, well I might be wrong about the genre definitions. I was just trying to show that Sci-fi also had sub-genres that reflect the same as fantasy in all aspects, and vice-versa; that there are sub-genres of fantasy that are light on description too.

So was saying in a long drawn-out example like way that detailed description is not genre bound.

probably would be easier if I just said that from the start...

[Bowler1]

I'm trying to bring more characters in SciFi and I like to write from the POV of the ordinary person in the setting of a space opera and/or major event. I do agree that SciFi is lacking character development and emotion sometimes. There are exceptions but SciFi is at risk of becoming type casted as boring and technical.

I don't aim for anything more than commercial print - as in - literature is not my aim just good story telling. However I accept you challange RJM Corbet, wish me luck - I'm going to bloody well need it!!!