Last week someone asked me to explain why I had twenty-four apples when they only showed that I had twenty-three. The answer was simple from my perspective. Because last time they asked, I only had twenty-three, and I didn’t realize they expected to be updated if that changed. I came clean, though: I have twenty-four apples now.

Except that then they asked me again later in the week why I said I had fewer than I actually do. And then asked me again this morning. This is following on the heels of a dream I had last night that left me in a hating Monday kind of mood. In the dream, I was stuck on the phone with my old employer for two hours explaining things to them that I told them before I left the company. And getting yelled at for not telling them sooner.

I have chocolate-toffee coffee now. I am hoping it will chase away the grumbles. What will really chase away the grumbles is when everyone agrees that yes, I had twenty-three apples a month ago, but now I have twenty-four and I never meant to hide that from anyone, I just didn’t know it was being used for in-depth research. The census only happens every ten years. you have to figure somewhere along the way my answers are going to change.

This is my bane in writing. I’m anti-in-depth. Not a good trait for a data analyst to have, btw. I figure if I can see the subtleties, everyone else can. I have yet to figure out why people can’t just read the appropriate thoughts out of my head to make sense of my statments. Okay, not really. Well, not completely. So I’ll say something two or three or four times, and each time think I’m being very specific, and each time leave out that one little tiny detail that would make the story make sense if I’d thought to include it.

Which is why I adore my critique group (which isn’t where this was going, but, eh, tangent). Some of those people are actually psychic as far as I can tell. They have this way of putting things that makes me go ‘oh, that’s what I’m missing’.

/tangent

I’m horrible with story description, though. That’s the point of all of this. I never know how much to include because I hate weighing people down with the unneeded, so instead I err on the side of sparse. Sweetie is just the opposite and errs on the side of too much. It’s like…Orson Scott Card versus David Brinn. Oh, I’d put odds on that fight…anyway…

There’s got to be a middle ground. Any thoughts/suggestions/hints on when and how to know how much description to add? (Keeping in mind, of course, that different people have different preference levels).