When I submitted my manuscript to an interested publisher he replied as follows:
I’ve taken a good look at the manuscript for Discovery but I don’t think it’s right for our list in its current form. You have some very strong story ideas here, but I didn’t think the writing was nearly immersive enough. You relied heavily on dialogue, and you rarely got into the characters’ heads or spent much time establishing pictures for the reader.
I struggled with his review. Was it not clear that Gloria was jealous and that was due to her strict and pessimistic parents and upbringing? Did I not make it clear that Jason lied as a way of avoiding conflict? What about Mitchell and his gregarious and insecure personality did I omit? Did we not totally get him when he was getting drunk due to believing his cherished career was over? But, okay. I doubted myself. I opened up to this critique and spent a year making revisions, submitting the revised version to Booklife for review, and had several Beta Readers give me their opinions and edits.
By the way, that publisher had published several books of his own and I purchased the best rated among them. I couldn’t finish it.
After nearly two years of fine tuning my manuscript I sent it back to the publisher, as I had been encouraged to do, and never received a reply, even after following up about a month later. Ghosted.
Now I’m an active member in a local writers critique group. I’m submitting chapters from my sequel for their appraisals. There are two things I have noticed based on the written feedback from this group of anywhere from 8-12 participants. The consensus is that my descriptions are good but too much. Indeed, when hearing Chapter 1 being read aloud by someone else I thought, ugh – that is way too much. They also tend to be very supportive of my excessive use of dialog.
I’ve learned some things from all this. First, I will never make changes again based on other’s opinions – even a fancy pants publisher – unless those changes feel right to me, too. I must stay true to myself if I want it to sound true to others.
Next, I’m wondering if there are readers who love description – I mean, I love Dickens as much as the next gal! – and readers who don’t. And even more, I wonder if readers today tend to like their material clearly but quickly stated. One recent reviewer in my group provided this feedback to me, “…there is a lot of description here to say the room is messy”. When I wrote it, I wanted to be clear that the character, Mitchell, is as messy at the office as he is at home. But I appreciate this helpful critique. I will tighten up the description and make sure it pings back to book 1 for people who haven’t read that book. So, I can paint a picture of a room but do I need to? Apparently not in great detail.
Next, I’m a slow reader. I have been ever since I took education in Voice Over acting. I will read novels as if I’m reading them aloud. (This is great for finding errors, btw.) At least, until recently. I’m trying to speed read again. Particularly when I check out a book from a library and only have two weeks to finish it. I’ve noticed that I tend to speed through descriptions but slow down on dialog unless it is a writer of more classical material; for example, 19th or early to mid-20th century writers. It makes me wonder how many others are like me. How many readers, particularly avid ones, speed their way through their reading list. I even created a Substack post with a few poll questions. Please take a moment and help me out there… (Thanks in advance!)
Here’s something I discovered recently. When Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining came out I decided to re-read The Shining before reading Doctor Sleep. The Shining had so much more description and was so much more immersive than Doctor Sleep. King had gotten faster in his descriptions and storytelling in the sequel. I enjoyed both but I enjoyed The Shining much more. So, what does this say about descriptive writing? You tell me.
Do we read more speedily now because we have so many additional media choices? Not because of the choices but because of what fast media has done to our attention spans? Is it harder to spend hours reading a book than it is to binge Lord of the Rings movies (non-extended versions, haha!!).
Has our evolved attention span had an impact on what we like to read?
I don’t think so. I want to believe that if we are immersed in a beautifully, well written book we still want to take in every word and not speed through it to simply get to the end.
Speaking of ‘the end’, I recently participated in a local book club where one of the members stated they always read the ending very early on. This boggles my mind. That’s just an aside. I don’t really have a point to make with it.
I have come to accept that my style is brief descriptions and lots of dialog. Someone close to me told me I should write plays. Yeah, no. I don’t think so but I get the point. My goal is to make my descriptions as short and concise as I possibly can. But, I suppose, that is kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it?