Get to the story

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and where is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

In The Heart's Invisible Furies, novelist John Boyne gives us a minor character who would agree with Alice. In a conversation with Cyril, the main character, about books they are reading, she asks whether Colm Toibin's novels are anything like Jeffrey Archer's.

"'Does this fella tell a story? He doesn't spend twenty pages describing the color of the sky?'"

"'He hasn't so far.'"

"'Good. Jeffrey Archer never talks about the color of the sky and I like that in a writer. I'd say Jeffrey Archer has never even looked up at the sky in his entire life.'"

This wonderfully comic passage goes on, but you get the idea.

We may think of this woman as stupid and Alice as immature, but most of us probably would agree with both of them to some extent.

We all like conversation in our stories. The Boyne passage above is composed entirely of conversation, and it is wonderful. No description is necessary. Most novels don't really get going until a second character shows up and a conversation begins.

As for pictures, we may think we left picture books behind us years ago, but admit it, don't you love to find pictures of any kind in the books you read? The pictures I've discovered in novels by William Boyd, Umberto Eco, Marisha Pessi and others have enriched the reading of all of them. The popularity of graphic novels proves, too, that grownup readers enjoy illustrations with their stories almost as much as children do. When I read a history book, a science book, a biography, or any other kind of nonfiction, I  want there to be photographs, drawings or graphs to break up the text.

Descriptions in novels are intended to take the place of pictures, and the best writers can do this very well. But some take it to an extreme. How much detail do we really need about the sky or the weather or the clothing worn by a character. A phrase or two can usually do the job. Then give us some action. Give us some conversation. And a picture or two wouldn't hurt either.