Going Into Excessive Detail

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When I am explaining something I tend to go way into detail. I start giving background information and just related information that deals with my point and then I'll make it later. I like people to fully understand the way I think and why. Or fully get the reason why somethings are so. There are hardly ever an easy and short explanation.

Yeah, this. This is similar to what I was getting at. I feel like people need to know what I know as a framework for what I want to communicate.

Exactly. The idea being that people won't be able to see what I am describing unless I give them all the data.
Then again, people don't visualise much and they dismiss all this as unnecessary detail.

Last edited by Severus on 19 Jan 2011, 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just came across this bit in an intro Temple Grandin wrote for a book about ADHD and Autism. I am not sure I agree with how she came to her conclusions, but it was interesting to stumble across it:



I don't relate to how she describes categorizing animals but that first sentence was interesting to see after starting this thread the other day.

Regarding cats and dogs: I prefer to refer to them by their breed (or apparent breed, or at least color) rather than simply as cats and dogs. I talk about my red point siamese, not my cat.

That must be from Thinking In Pictures. I admit I haven't seen the way things are until now and God, it's obvious. She also talks about categorising and eliciting of patterns which are also inherent to my own way of thinking.
It is basically the same, I am fully capable of making an abstract concept but I have to go from the concrete to the general, not vice versa. That's what calls for too much detail.

No, it was the foreward to The ADHD - Autism Connection: A Step Toward More Accurate Diagnosis and Effective Treatment (I found it on google books after looking for "literal interpretations and ADHD". She probably makes the same points in Thinking in Pictures, though (which I haven't read yet).

It was kind of a shock to see it written out in print, though, because my first post was about how I had to go from the specific to the general, and while I didn't mention it I do categorize and look for patterns. I just don't categorize in the same way, and it's easy to get bogged down in specific details trying to reach for a generality. Also, I think for me (thinking more on what I said to Anbuend yesterday) some abstract concepts (not all) are a pain to deal with, and slippery because it feels like there's a gap between the practical and concrete and the abstract concept I'm trying to grasp - it requires taking too many things on faith or just seems to be a too abstract way of making what should be a concrete and easily accessible point. Or I'm going up the wrong tree to make the wrong connections. Also, I think sometimes (for me) it's more like building up a lot of specifics to build categories of specifics, rather than actual generalities.

And sometimes my categories need revision before I can make sense of something.

Last edited by Verdandi on 19 Jan 2011, 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i love writing with excessive detail...even in general posts I tend to do this but who cares really? If I'm trying to write a story I'll probably write it with excessive detail first then go over it again to simplify it. I think oversimplifying would be just as bad. It just takes a lot of writing practice to find the perfect balance.

All of this.
It's not that the idea I'm trying to get across is necessarily complex - but unless I can fill in as many "information holes" as I can see before getting to the point, then what I've said always seems much too thin and I really doubt the other person has understood it fully. They can't have done - far to much necessary information was missing...

I sometimes speak in sets of nested parentheses - where one point branches off into explaining the background for that, which branches off into explaining the background for that, and so on - before suddenly switching back to the original point like a cork popping up from under water.

I often edit my posts to remove all the parentheses. There are so many and the digressions are so long I can just work them into the post.

I used to be so much worse about this because I would nest things (like this - and this/that other thing - all the time) but for what should have been a full paragraph by itself. It took me a while to catch on and try to get it under control. All that saves me from using square brackets and brackets is that they don't always display in forums and such. I could use curly braces, but I view them as a mathematical or programming thing, and they don't work for me around words.

I often feel like an Ent.

In Tolkien's writing, Ents were sort of like walking trees (they herded trees). They didn't naturally have a language, but the Elves gave them language because back then they were always talking to things and trying to get them to talk back. So they didn't end up using language the way other people did.

For them, what in English would be a word, is a story. Like each hill is the story of what a hill is and what that specific hill is and so forth. And that's because they perceive the world in this very rich detailed way that doesn't quite mesh with regular language. Communication with an Ent naturally takes forever, even when they're using what they consider overly rapid ("hasty") language.

This from a Lord of the Rings wiki:

"Originally, the Ents had a language of their own, described as long and sonorous; it was a tonal language (like Chinese). It is unknown if a non-Ent could even pronounce Old Entish correctly: it was filled with many subtle vowel shades, and was very longwinded. Only Ents spoke Old Entish; not because they kept their language a secret, as the Dwarves did with Khuzdul, but because no other could master it. It was quite an alien language to all others. The Huorns and trees of Fangorn forest could understand Old Entish and converse with the Ents and each other with it. The only extant sample, a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme, the word for hill (or possibly even just part of the name of a specific hill), was described as a very inaccurate sampling. Even the Elves, master linguists, could not learn Old Entish, nor did they attempt to record it due to its complex sound structure. The grammar structure of Old Entish was also quite bizarre, often described as a lengthy, long-winded discussion of a topic. There may not even have been a word for yes and no: such questions would be answered by a long monologue on why the Ent in question did or did not agree with the Ent who asked the question. The Ent Quickbeam was regarded as a very "hasty" Ent for answering a question before another Ent had finished: the end may only have been another hour away. Ents as a rule would say nothing in Old Entish unless it was worth taking a long time to say. For everyday language function, they usually resorted to "New" Entish."

That's just perfect!

Yeah. My alarm bells tended to go off at about the third parenthesis level in - in the one sentence.
Then I had to tear it all apart and try again. It's definitely a good thing to get out of though and after the initial struggle for restructuring, gives a much more linear flow for an idea.

Anyone here who's noticed the posts I tend to write here knows that I have issues with this. I don't try to communicate anything too complex verbally because it's too difficult to adequately organize my thoughts in that situation. I always prefer to write an e-mail to communicate certain kinds of information. Thus, it's not often an issue when I'm talking to people. I'm more inclined to just not bring up information most people would share because (A) I can't determine an appropriate time to bring it into the conversation and (B) Explaining things just seems like too much trouble, especially when social situations are difficult enough to navigate without that component brought in.

Writing is a whole other story. I just can't seem to determine which details are necessary to the point I'm trying to make, and which aren't. That probably does at least in part stem from a difficulty in grasping the "big picture." That's why so many of my posts here are walls of text. Even if I went over it before submitting in an attempt to trim some unnecessary fat, I don't think I'd be able to determine what to cut and what to keep. I'm often too mentally tired to go over everything after I post, anyway.

Aside from my compulsion to include far too many details, I also type very slowly due to abysmal motor skills. Additionally, my thoughts are such a jumbled mess, it takes some time and effort to organize my thoughts enough to be able to convert them in a format coherent enough for them to be written out in a manner others can understand. It's been a very long day, and right now, I'm too exhausted to even attempt to fix that last sentence.

These things take me forever to write, and by the time I'm done writing a post, I'm so sick of it, that all I want to do is submit and get it out of my sight. Even so, I'm compelled to write and write and write and write and...

Last edited by OuterBoroughGirl on 19 Jan 2011, 7:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I like this comparison. It's nicely poetic and makes a lot of sense. I don't relate to all of it. I do relate to not having a word for yes or no. There are many things I can't just give a yes or no answer to (although there are many things I can). And just plain having to provide every detail about something just to talk about it.



Doing this kind of thing verbally is one of the reasons I can get lost in what I'm trying to parenthetically say and completely forget what I was trying to actually say.

My editors would get annoyed with me when I did this in writing, which helped with the habit professionally. It took longer to deal with it informally.



That last sentence? Happens to me frequently. Someone suggested I needed to proofread more elsewhere because I tend to make minor grammatical errors (word substitutions, omitted words, occasional punctuation issues) and ignore them before posting. So I tried to proofread, and... well, I can proofread, I'm not going to lie, but proofreading my own work like that was a big mistake. I spent probably an hour on 1,000 words of text revising and rearranging and editing well beyond anything I needed to do? The longer I was at it, the more anxious I was. So I just post rather than worry. I don't have the energy. If something stands out I can fix it later.

And yes, I relate to not always knowing what belongs and what doesn't. It's sometimes easy to get wound up in irrelevant information without realizing, even in text. Like I started a post about how I tend do deal with my pet's names and it turned into "but I am also a visual thinker" as well as some stuff that was a bit preliminary to my post here. All over the map, but tons of explanation.

The Ents were based on C.S Lewis. He liked trees and he had some AS traits.
Hoom hum, don't be hasty there J.R.R.

I always loved the Ents. I even mimicked them for a little while. Drove people mad.

Oh, right. They were good friends and both were involved in the Inklings.

Anyway:

I just had to fill out an eight page form for social security, and:

My left hand hurts, both arms hurt. I think my handwriting is maybe decipherable, but I am biased. I had forgotten how often I reverse two letters or drop letters, or make vague letter-like shapes that could be any of a half-dozen possibilities. My phrasing is much simpler and with much less explanation than when I type.

I keep forgetting how much of a godsend computers were for expression. I didn't manage to get along with typewriters until I had already learned how to use a PC.