'Hearing' the words vs. seeing...
This came up yesterday at our work day at the Legion. Imagine if you will, a bunch of grumpy old men taking a break and sitting drinking Navy coffee... :-)
Talking about the 'old days' before everything got transmitted via satellite... There was this antique thing known as 'radio', as in AFRTS. It was also transmitted on HF, Upper Sideband- Diego Garcia was 12,579 kHz daytime and 4,319 kHz nighttime. That one, a few of us remembered, having spent time there...LOL
That was how most of us on deployment or at sea got our sports...
That led to a discussion about books. RAH, E.E. Smith, Louis L'Amour, Robert E. Howard, Asimov, Spillane, Zane Gray, et al and how they painted 'word' pictures that, in conjunction with our imaginations, put us 'in' those scenes.
And it brought back even more memories of my grandfather out in his shop, a radio on listening to either baseball or football. He followed the Yankees (Mel Allen), and listened to Dizzy Dean and Peewee Reese, because he'd seen them play and knew they 'knew' what they were talking about.
Another memory was the family get togethers, especially in the fall, when the men and boys would be outside, crowded around one of the cars with the radio turned up to catch the college football game while the women did whatever they did inside the house (after they kicked us out).
Did replace actually going to the game? No. Seeing was always better than hearing the announcers, but the words they used, along with your imagination, could put you 'there'...
As writers, we should be doing that with our writing. That begs the question, how much is too little, or too much that can put our readers 'in' those scenes? I don't have a good answer, and I believe each writer has to find what works best for them.
I know I tend to write 'sparse' descriptions of the situation, environment, and characters, expecting the reader to 'fill in the blanks' if you will. I also tend more toward 'showing' action and less 'telling' what happened. Am I right? I don't know, but that's how 'I' do it.
What say y'all?
My favorite writers all share the quality of putting you "there", and I have tried to live up to that example in my own work.
I like what Harvey Stanbrough says about it: You need as much description as the character tells you he/she needs. A cop character is going to give different descriptions than a farmer character. Someone with a scientific background is going to describe things differently from a beautician.
You need the descriptions that the character would notice, as we (the reader) are riding on their shoulders, like a newsy camera from the future or a First Person Shooter. We see what we are pointed at.