There’s currently a lot of discourse on social media about readers skipping descriptive passages and only reading dialogue. Some authors seem genuinely alarmed by this.

Readers have been skipping chunks of text for decades. Long before BookTok, Instagram, and Threads, people were admitting they skimmed descriptions, bypassed songs in Tolkien, or jumped ahead to the good parts. The difference today is that social media amplifies everything. A few readers confessing they skip descriptions doesn't necessarily equate to the death of prose.

That being said, I do think reader expectations are changing. Many younger readers grew up in a world of constant content. They don’t have to wait a week for the next TV episode. They don’t stare out a bus window imagining stories because they have an endless stream of entertainment on their phones. Information and stimulation arrives almost instantly.

I don't believe the current discourse reflects readers no longer caring about description, but rather their limited span to invest time reading words that don't carry any emotional weight.

While it has always been true that description should make readers feel something, not just see something, now more than ever, authors should pay attention to their descriptive paragraphs and ask themselves "Is this truly related to the story's main character?" "Is this carrying emotional context?"

People don't skip description because it's description. They skip it because it isn't making them feel anything.

posted by Sandra L. Rostirolla on June, 01