Description 101

I remember when I was in school that the teachers used to make us do something called 'descriptive writing'. We would pick a room or a person or anything and describe it. It would have to be one sheet of A4 paper. Then, we would have to incorporate this description into our stories - describe everything: touch, taste...all those senses. If we didn't, we wouldn't get a very good mark. 

Forced description is a bad thing. If I read a book and feel the adjective sitting there on the page just for the sake of it, I'm not happy. There are many types of writers and some don't describe at all. For a long time I firmly believed you should describe every character. Stephen King argues - and I now completely agree with him - that why do you need to describe a man named Bill? Or even describe your main character who is a forty-year-old male? Surely the reader can imagine what he looks like for themselves? Now if this was fantasy then I'd describe because the characters would be weird and I'd make them different - their details would be needed but in a 'literature' book, why?

Now you have a writer like J.K. Rowling or even China Mieville. Rowling laces her writing with very in-depth descriptions - little quirks that add to the story but doesn't over-do it. Mieville writes beautiful descriptions - just read the opening to his novel The Scar, I was blown away by the wonderful way he described the beast and the water and the nature. 

Be safe with description, that's my advice from my very limited storage of it. When I was at Yale I decided to read of the tutor's from my University's book Diamond Star Halo and fell in love with the writing. I've mentioned it before, I know, but the simple use of the language, the very gentle word choice worked marvelously. It is very stripped back prose and the little details really add to the whole situation and feel of the novel.