Really long passages of description, no matter how well written, make me skim.

That's the thing. These aren't long at all. They're just good. Telling details that bring the story to sensory life.

What everyone else said about description. I always appreciate someone who can write a brief metaphor that paints the picture in a couple of sentences so I get a clear pic of the setting or the dress, or the feeling, so I can move onto the story quickly. Otherwise I just feel like someone was cheating with page fillers. It's sort of the same reason I'm suspicious of hotdogs, except with hotdogs, you can't separate out the soylent green from the beef.

Maybe marrying Sebastian is one of Anna's flaws. Maybe he was kind to animals, small children, and the invalids in the local consumption hospice as well as being a misogynist. Maybe young Anna thought the good things negated the bad and Learned an Important Lesson. It doesn't take away from Anna's heroism, makes her more likeable, if she made a crappy (yet common) mistake a lot of women make by marrying a jerk.

I'm probably talking out of my ass since I haven't read it, but if Anna is so likeable, and clearly our heroine, wouldn't it be enough to tell the reader that Sebastian was a mistake she regrets? Since they already she her character as "good" then it automatically puts him in the "bad" column.

Am I totally talking out of my ass?

That's the thing. These aren't long at all. They're just good. Telling details that bring the story to sensory life.

The key word here is "sensory". Description is the ultimate show-tool: the reader - and the writer - should feel it.

Here. From Shirley Jackson (bloody goddess, talk about wanting to genuflect and chant "I'm not worthy" ten times for humility purposes), The Haunting of Hill House. Stay with me, I'm trying to make a point:

...the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up the beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil.

and

This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never be meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

Now - a few paragraphs later, when Eleanor has got up the nerve to get out of her car and walk up the stairs and ring the bell:

Trying not to look up at the house - and she could not have told its colour, or its style, or its size, except that it was enormous and dark, looking down over her....

OK. I typed that look at Hill House - seen through Eleanor's eyes - and my palms are sweating. And yet, she herself retained nothing of its so-called description; what she retained was the purely visceral, the sense of menace and evil coming off the damned thing in waves.

edit: damned kitten in lap.

The point I was going for is that description is there for the reader, the writer and the characters to take away what matters. It doesn't matter to Eleanor that Hill House is cream stone, or has black window frames, or leaded glass in the upstairs windows, or whatever: what she, and Jackson, and I all took away from that block of description was that the house is sentient, arrogant, dangerous and bad.

About to disappear for most of the day, so I'm not ignoring points, I just won't have time to respond to them until sometime this evening.

Really, I'm mostly just whining here. I'll get through this, and I'll figure out a way to achieve the effect I want. It's just that I was already feeling daunted by the amount of editing I knew I'd have to do before I got my CPs' comments on this week's scene, so I'm all, "What, you're telling me this part needs a major overhaul TOO? Noooo!!!!"

Because I think the reason my first book didn't sell or land me an agent is largely because I didn't edit it enough. So I know I need to do better this time, but I'm daunted by the magnitude of the task.

OK, being pulled toward the door....

Back when I was writing seriously, a fellow writer told me that writing the book was only the beginning. Editing and rewriting were going to be the major parts of the job, "where you put flesh and skin on the bones." So when I finished a manuscript, I shouldn't feel like I was done; I was just ready to begin.

Her advice may be why I never quite finished that first book. :)

Zenkitty, thing is, not everyone writes that way; I'm in the camp of "editing as I write, listen to input, incorporate as needed, consider all comments, and never turn in a draft" boat. Basically, I've never turned in a draft to my agent or editor; I turn in books. Editing, yep, but that's with the official copy-editor, down the road.

It's not a large boat, but there are a few of us in it. There are really an awful lot of ways to tell the story.

I don't do a lot of rewriting/editing. Which I believe is evident in my work.

I do depend an awful lot on beta readers to let me know when I've driven off the road and into a tree.

If my book sells, I expect the editor to take a hammer to my skull.

Deb, I'm like that, too; I edit as I write. My problem is, I do it too much (I think). I can never get finished because I keep going back to change things as I go. I might actually do better if I "wrote down the bones" first. The only thing I've ever finished is a fanfic (!) and I still find things I would change about it. (I don't change it because once I put it up on my website, I considered it "published," so that I would stop writing it .)

I am editing my first mystery for the third time. I hate it. Not the book, poring over the pages. But I can't have crime fiction with a bad crime. I just can't. But editing is BORING. Episode one boring. Does good things for the pages, though.

Allyson, my non-fiction stuff, book reviews and whatnot? Those I actually go over with a fine-toothed comb.

But with the fiction, no. I'm with you on the beta-readers, the WIP readers, and getting that input. I'd go bonkers without it.

My problem is, I do it too much (I think). I can never get finished because I keep going back to change things as I go.

Ah, got it. No, I don't do that. It's one big benefit of being a linear story-teller, the whole "start at the beginning and go on until you reach the end" thing. I just sent the current version of "Cruel Sister" to the dozen people on my WIP reading list, having just finished Chapter Eight. I've neither looked at the prologue or the first five or six chapters since I incorporated any of the WIP reader suggestions, nor will I, unless something comes up that necessitates inserting something.

But for now, the only edits I'm looking at - and the only chapters I'm looking at - are the two most recent, and the one I'm about to begin.