Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda
On the whole, novels tend to devote less words to description than they did a hundred years ago.
I've always assumed this was related to the widespread use of photography and film. Once upon a time, the average reader had never traveled or even seen photographs of distant parts of the world. Now, all you have to do is say "downtown Tokyo" and everyone already has a mental image.
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You don't even have to go back that far. It seems to me that even in the last 20 or 30 years there has been a big emphasis on "keep it moving"; books aren't allowed to dally around setting up scenes and characters. For a long time the all-action approach to story writing was considered a bit cheap and trashy, but now it is the norm, and those writing slower paced stories are considered unusual. There are a great many classics, that many still enjoy, that would have trouble finding a publisher these days.
Movies and photography may have reduced the need for description, but I have my doubts if that is a cause of the change. I think all media has been evolving along these lines - cutting things back to the lowest common denominator in attention spans. That sounds more derogatory than I really mean, fast paced stuff can be a lot of fun, but the commercial side of things keeps pushing things further that way so that much that could be very good (movies, books, whatever) never sees the light of day because it's not fast enough.