Reader Question: How consistent should the tone in scene description be?

GooseRats asks:

Should detail in description be consistent throughout, or is it okay to lighten the touch once the world and tone has been established?

While consistency is important, it’s really a subset of a larger consideration and that’s what I call Narrative Voice, the approach a writer takes to writing scene description, reflected in they style, should come from a specific point of view tied to the story’s genre:

Genre + Style = Narrative Voice

In effect, Narrative Voice is an invisible character in your story, an attitude you — the writer — have to all the scene description you write.

So the consistency of how you handle detail — more of it, less of it, darker tone, lighter tone — needs to be grounded in the nature of this Narrative Voice ‘character’ who is in effect telling the story.

Here are two examples of screenwriters establishing Narrative Voice early on. In fact they start the process before the story actually hits FADE IN.

In the screenplay Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, written by William Goldman, on a page before the title page are these words:

“Not that is matters, but what follows is true.”

Right there you get an immediate sense of the wry sensibilities of the NV as well as a sort of folksy, intimate attitude toward the reader. Then on P. 1, here is how Butch Cassidy is introduced:

A MAN 

idly walking around a corner of the building. He is
BUTCH CASSIDY and hard to pin down. Thirty-five and bright,
he has brown hair, but most people, if asked to describe him,
would remember him blond. He speaks well and quickly, and
has been all his life a leader of men; but if you asked him, he
would be damned if he could tell you why.

Again wry, folksy, intimate. Those sensibilities are consistent throughout the script.

Turning to the screenplay for (500) Days of Summer, screenwriters Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber do this:

Title page: (500) DAYS OF SUMMER by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, First Draft 2006

Next page: NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Next page: ESPECIALLY YOU JENNY BECKMAN.

Next page: BITCH.

A slightly different NV than Butch Cassidy, edgier and funnier, but a similar approach to creating an immediate intimacy with the reader. And like Goldman’s script, Neustadter and Weber continue with that NV throughout their script.

So should the approach to detail and tone in scene description be consistent? Yes, but that is a choice determined in the context of your story’s invisible character — Narrative Voice.

Tomorrow’s question: Is it worth it to go to pitch fests?