On my walk in the sunshine yesterday, as I took in all the colours and new life around me, I mused about the start of my 2nd novel. I realised it was lacking description. My characters are on a brand new planet, the reader needs to know what it is like; how it looks, feels and sounds and how it effects those characters. The trouble is lengthy description can also be a chore for the reader and they can tend to skip through it in order to get to the action. If it's at the start of the novel, they may even put it down and not pick it up again! I think one way to avoid this is to drop snippets of description into conversations and action, another is to use words that are descriptive and imaginative in themselves, so they tell you much more about something in much less time. I try to build a balance between description, action and dialogue - it kinda works.
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