HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

"The most important advice I would suggest to beginning writers:  Try to leave out the parts that readers skip."  Elmore Leonard (In Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life)

The current book series that is topping the best seller list is the late Stieg Larsson trilogy:  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  The books have been translated from Swedish to English, and while they are very captivating stories - they were filled with pages and pages of stuff that I skipped.  At first I thought it was because I was simply an impatient reader - and then I thought it was because there were too many details about the police force, etc. in Sweden, but then, I decided that it was simply a matter of the author choosing to put every bit of research he had done onto the page. Okay - and maybe it was also because he had a bazillion characters with names I could not pronounce.

That said, I understand the temptation to include too much detail.  As a writer - we must visualize everything so clearly that we can see tiny details in a scene or in a character, but including all of this is not necessary to convey what our reader wants most from us....to simply tell a damn good story.

When I was in college, I had to memorize the life-cycle of the fluke worm.  I do not even know what a fluke worm really is - and I have never been able to work that bit of info into a conversation.  It was simply useless...that is, until now when I can use it as an example!  When doing research for a book, I studied reams of material about body decomposition...about the various bugs that appear to assist in the process, etc.  For a few weeks, my mind was filled with some of the ickiest details ever - and when it came time to put them in my story, I realized that a tiny bit of information goes a long way.  Yet, I believe that all that research was time well spent.  It enabled me to have confidence in my writing.  I was certainly not an expert, but I had knowledge that helped me pinpoint time of death with a moderate degree of confidence. 

My objective in writing is not to impress anyone - but to entertain...to tell a good story...as simply as possible - and hope that the reader doesn't feel a need to skip over any of my words on the page.  If you do, don't tell me.