In chapter 6 of On Writing, Stephen King talks about the importance of description in a story as well as the importance of determining if you have too little or too much description. He talks about how having too much description can not only bore a reader, but lose the connection between the writer and the reader. He makes sure to point out that “Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.” Good description, meaning that it has just enough details for you to be able to picture a scene and a little bit of a character, but not too much details to bore you.
One of the things that Stephen King says is “If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to pickle with recognition.” He says this using a different type of word choice, like “pickle with recognition”. He makes some funny prods here and there, such as “If you can’t [use description], you’re going to collect a lot of rejection slips and perhaps explore a career in the fascinating world of telemarketing.” He makes fun of telemarketers, possibly because of the fact they seem to be emotionless and don’t describe your products to you. He also says “We all remember one or more high school losers, after all…” which is just a funny little nod to our peers around us in high school -- or, at least, his peers. He goes into details about how over-description is a bad thing, because it “loses a little bit of the bond of understanding he wants to forge between us.” He adds on to this by saying that good description “usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else. In most cases, these details will be the first ones that come to mind.” He’s saying that you shouldn’t be afraid to go with the first details that you think of, as it actually adds on to the description of your scene better.
As someone who likes to write from time to time, I feel like I have a problem with over-description. At one point, I wrote about literally everything I had packed in a suitcase I took with me to a flight! I even described the entire suitcase. It was very long and obnoxious. I feel like reading this portion will help me to determine what is important to describe and add details in to and what isn’t important to describe and add details in to. I also think that it will help me overcome my bad habit of over-description and to keep me from being under-descriptive.