Several times here I've discussed how important description is when writing about your world. Most notable I've noted you can overdo it or do it wrong.

In this and the next column I'm going to explore the two extremes of worldbuilding and description - providing too much information and providing too little. I figured it's time both of these issues get their own column.



TMI:
TMI stands for "Too Much Information," and is a slang term meaning someone has said too much.
...

So, you just wrote your first science fiction novel. Your friend read it and told you that you were the next Ray Bradbury or Gene Roddenberry. Your fertile mind fantasizes your name up there on a Borders’ wall poster right next to images of Isaac Azimov and Jules Verne. Before going off the deep end and equating yourself with Hemingway and Steinbeck, give your ego a stiff reality check.

Few of us mortals are literary Mozarts that can plop down in front of a computer screen and author a perfect manuscript ...

It's a nightmare.

Your world is forged and designed, documented and mapped. You have characters and histories and mysteries and ecologies. Everything's perfect, right? It's time to write, and . . .

. . . what are you going to write about? Wait a second, you've got a world, but where the heck's the story? It was there when you started this . . .

Or, you have your world, and you've written a story and . . . the well is dry. You know your world, but there aren't any tales to tell! What happened?

A strange paradox ...

Remember that really weird dream you had about Legolas? You might call it a fantasy, but write it down, it becomes "fan fiction." ...

John Brunner

Plot Summary:
In the not too distant future the earth has started to plunge into environmental disaster. Based on the lives of over a dozen characters, Brunner follows as Americans come to realize they are on the verge of ...