Since I've started querying my first novel, I'm going through it and trying to read it from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the story or my characters or this world. It's set in the real world - no fantasy element - but I made up a private school and set it in a real town that I've never been to.
I always thought I was particularly good at writing dialogue. I was even complimented for it by my creative writing teacher back in college. Now I wonder if I might be too good at writing dialogue and action and not good enough at writing descriptions. I seldom include vivid details of rooms people are in, smells they experience, distant sounds, clothes they're wearing. Unless those details directly matter to the plot, I naturally omit them.
Is that a problem? Will readers have a hard time getting sucked into the world if they don't "see" it the same what that I do? I know what everything looks like, smells like, sounds like - I've lived this story for a couple of years now. I want to make sure my readers can experience it as well. But descriptive writing doesn't come easy to me. Sometimes it feels forced, and I worry that it looks forced when I include it out of context to the action. So, where's the line between description for description's sake, and description that advances the plot?
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