ghastly7 asked:

Hi Neil!

I always seem to struggle with knowing how much I should describe things in my writing (settings, character appearances, etc.) without ending up over-explaining, and so I often end up describing very little and leaving most things up to imagination. How do you find that balance?

Thanks!!!

neil-gaiman answered:

Read.

Read authors who lean into dialogue and only describe things they need to, like Elmore Leonard. Read authors who describe and only do dialogue where they need to (Susanna Clarke’s lovely novel Piranesi for example.) Read authors from long ago who write more descriptions and more dialogue than anyone would these days (Dickens’s Bleak House, say.)

What do you enjoy about the different ways of writing? What don’t you like? Try and do the stuff you enjoy in your own writing.

And remember, there are no rules. A novelist friend of mine writes all the dialogue first, like a play. Then they go in and fill in the descriptions of place and action on the second draft. It works for them.