Descriptive Narrative
When reading a book there’s nothing I enjoy more than ten pages of descriptive narrative. I want to read how the quivering leaves of the deciduous vegetation is lazily stirred by the tepid mid-summer night’s breeze. I like it more when ambient description goes on seemingly forever. This enables the author to capture me in his richly-visualised and articulated landscape.
If a story moves too rapidly I feel confused and disorientated.
Better to patiently build the tension, playing out a little line at a time, feeding the story with plots almost entirely buried under a lush backdrop of description. I need to understand if the bedroom door is desiccated mahogany from pre-Roundhead times used as a skiff on the Thames by Roman slaves. I feel cheated if there isn’t a paragraph or two dedicated exclusively to the quality of the wood grain.
If the protagonist walk into a building, the story flows better for me if I know how many stories it is, the architectural style, year it was built, who designed it, whether it’s hot or cold, what the flooring material is, whether footsteps echo or not, how many feet the foyer stretches, the height of the ceilings, what odours are present, the condition of the paint – and preferably the brand and number of coats.
