Everything had to be just right for Goldilocks: the temperature of the porridge, the hardness of the chair, the comfiness of the bed.
James Clear popularised the Goldilocks Rule in his book Atomic Habits: peak motivation is experienced when tasks are neither too hard nor too easy. They must be just right enough to match current abilities and ensure challenges are manageable and engaging.
Rather than the Goldilocks Rule, I use the Goldilocks Principle to help me decide how much descriptive text I should use so that readers aren’t left drowning in endless details, nor gasping for clarity in a barren landscape. There should be just enough to paint the scene.
Let’s look at a possible crime scene in a gloomy alley:
This is too much for me:
The alley stretches for 22 yards, as long as a cricket pitch, flanked by stained moss and algae covered brick walls. A solitary cat, with fur that looks like burnt toast and eyes the colour of freshly mown grass, slinks past seventeen rubbish bins, each marked with a different council sticker. The pavement is covered with a patchwork of chewing gum, cigarette butts, and a puddle that reflects the lamplight at an angle that suggests recent rainfall. The perfect spot for secrets to linger.
This is too little:
The alley is dark.
Maybe this is about right:
The alley is dimly lit, a narrow passage cloaked in a patchwork of shadows cast by flickering streetlamps. The cracked pavement glistens after the rain. A place where danger still hangs out in the enclosing gloom.
Another problem with too sparse a description is that there is nowhere to add that innocuous detail that reveals its true significance later. Or the red herring of misdirection.
The secret, of course, is knowing what to leave in and what to mercilessly chop out. If Andy is about to discover a killer hiding in a wardrobe, he won’t be bothered about the grain of the wood. But if the wardrobe is stuck in front of a hidden door, and the killer is on the other side, perhaps it deserves a little stage time.
In the end I must decide which details really matter and be generous with those. The reader must be in the character’s head and notice just enough to see the world through that character’s (Goldilocks’) eyes.
