How much is too much?

[TrickWithAKnife]

I'm working on my first game at the moment, so I'm definitely new to writing.

The problem I have now is that I keep slipping into extreme detail. I've been typing away and then realized I've started to talk about everything. At this rate, I'll be describing every single piece of food they eat, every place go, every person they talk to.

This game is meant to be lengthy. By the nature of it, there will need to be a lot of conversation and different situations.
I don't want to jump all over the place and confuse the players, but I don't want to bore them either.
They will be learning while playing too, so the pacing is even more important. Too much information at once is overwhelming, but it's easy to make the game lengthy to the point that the players will give up partway through.

How to you pace your games, in particular, with very long games?

[fleet]

Unless the thing you're describing is essential for the reader to understand the story, leave out the details. In other words, unless the detail advances the plot (or a sub-plot) I'd suggest excluding it.
Example of unnecessary detail: "He had pancakes for breakfast" ( I think someone previously offered this as an example).
Necessary detail (if the character's sickness is a critical plot element): "The under cooked pancakes he had for breakfast made him sick."

[TrickWithAKnife]

*Deletes the breakfast scene he was working on.*

I'm curious if anyone has some good examples of games where the story flowed seamlessly, staying both interesting but not overwhelming.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

The problem I have now is that I keep slipping into extreme detail. I've been typing away and then realized I've started to talk about everything. At this rate, I'll be describing every single piece of food they eat, every place go, every person they talk to.

In the 19th and early 20th century the prevailing style was to be very verbose and describe everything. If your protagonist boarded a whaling ship, you stopped the story and spent a couple of chapters on the history of whaling and all its details. Partly this was because there was no TV or radio and board games required other people, so entertainment gained from books was meant to last a very long time and be spread out. But it was also because the reading audience couldn't easily look up information about whaling if you used a term or a described a situation they weren't familiar with. Books had to contain their own reference material.

Things have obviously changed in the intervening years. There is an excess of entertainment available, and most people prefer that no single source of it take up any more of their time than necessary. Second, the internet provides an easy research platform for getting up to speed on concepts or topics mentioned in books. Authors can now just describe the information important for the story, leaving everything else for the reader to explore on their own time. For instance, the main character in the Hunger Games lives in a coal-mining town. Coal mining isn't described in the book - all the author needs to do is describe differences from traditional coal mining, or the parts necessary for the story. It is assumed the reader is familiar with coal mining towns, or at least will look up information on them if they care. Knowing the information will make the story RICHER, but it isn't necessary to UNDERSTAND the story.

Mark Twain is still very popular to read for modern audiences because he didn't believe in adding the fluff either.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English--it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."
(Letter to D. W. Bowser, March 1880)

You need to learn how to edit and separate the important information NECESSARY for the story, and that information which merely adds FLAVOR. For instance, is it necessary that we know what the characters are eating, or merely that they ARE eating? Notice in Mr. Samuel Clemen's advice above about making your adjectives valuable by making them sparse. If you provide detail for everything, readers won't know what to pay attention to, and they'll have to pay attention to everything, which will both exhaust them and deprive all your revelations of any punch.

Any details you give should be important for the story - they may not be important at that MOMENT, but they should have a pay-off before the story ends. This is commonly referred to as Chekov's Gun. I.e. if you describe a gun hanging above the mantle, by the time your story ends, SOMEONE should have taken that gun down and fired it. If you describe one of your character's having a phobia of the dark, you should have a vital moment in the story where something important hangs on overcoming that phobia - you shouldn't just be tacking it on to "build character". Also, it is best if you SHOW the reader the character's phobia, rather than describing it. Have the character experience a panic attack when the power goes out at night. Then later when the serial killer cuts the power, we will have real tension and drama, because the reader KNOWS the character is in trouble. If the character then triumphs over that phobia to survive, we have both a more exciting scene and character growth.

This brings up something else - your important details should all be spaced out. All that is important is that the information comes before the reader needs it. In fact, some mystery in any genre of story is good for holding attention. You want your reader asking questions and searching your details for answers. This means they'll hungrily devour ever little tidbit you give out - give too much at once and they'll get sated and full.

How do you know how much is too much? You cut away everything from your story until you are left with its core. You find what the driving question of your story is. For example, in Romeo and Juliet the driving question is "Can these two people find a way to be together despite their families being enemies?" The story is OVER once this question has been definitively answered. In this case - "No. Only in death."

Everything that does not in some way answer or address that principle question is extraneous. You could safely cut it out. This will be your A Plot. Everything else is a different plot - but the really good writers tie their B Plots and C Plots back into the A Plot. These subplots will give insight into the A Plot, or explore different solutions or parallel situations. They can also be used to increase the tension in the A Plot by showing characters dealing with a similar problem - and failing.

Thematically all your plots should go together - each reinforcing the thesis or moral of your story, even if none of them but the A Plot address that central question directly. Take Bioshock for example. The driving and central question is "What happened to the city of Rapture, and who am I?" The THEMATIC THESIS of Bioshock is "What is the nature of free will?" Only the core story events address the central question, but EVERYTHING in Bioshock addresses the thematic thesis.

[Applegate]

*Deletes the breakfast scene he was working on.*

Amusingly, an editor once told me about the "vicar's tea" scene - a scene in which a nun asks the vicar how many spoons of sugar he would like in his tea. "Two," says the vicar. She adds the sugar to the cup, delicately placing the porcelain on the mahogany table in front of the vicar. The vicar stirs his tea, waits a moment, then sips.

She added that the vicar scene as paraphrased above doesn't do anything for the story, and are unnecessary lines added to any story. A breakfast scene isn't entirely useless, as long as during breakfast, it touches on important things. You have something in your signature about learning Japanese - if that is the point of the story, then a breakfast scene discussing food and using words appropriate to breakfast for the Japanese would still serve a role. Moreso if something that is important later on happens during breakfast.

If you worry you are too verbose, just write as you are comfortable and fix it in a second draft. First drafts aren't meant to be perfect, after all. Best to write too much than to write too little.

[TrickWithAKnife]

Thanks for the replies. I've paid very close attention to the advice. I think it will help a lot.

As for the drafts, I'm positive that I will end up rewriting most things, but it probably saves a lot of time to cut out things that will never get used.
With research, writing, photography, photo editing, arranging voice actors, making sure the Japanese is correct, and planning the lessons, time is a precious commodity. But I'm happy to be doing it.