Above plot, character development, theme

 This strikes me as a basic human impulse: A person sees something and, returning to friends, tries to describe it.

Patricia Hampl, who loves a good description, studied Henry James and talked about his tendency to carry on.

 

Carrying on, I was discovering, is what it is to describe. A lot. At

length. To trust description above plot, past character development,

and even theme. To understand that to describe is both humbler

and more essential than to think of compositional imponderables

such as "voice" or to strain toward superstructures like "narrative

arc." To trust that the act of description will find voice and out of its

streaming attention will take hold of narration.

 

That paragraph says a lot about a certain kind of reader. Why, for example, a reader like me would think Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain was one of the great books.

• Source: Patricia Hampl’s “The Dark Art of Description” was presented as the keynote address at the Bedell NonfictioNow Conference on Nov. 1, 2007 and published by the Iowa Review:

https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/iowareview/article/16503/galley/124902/view/