Details

Details are key to writing.

Does your character always lock their car, or leave it unlocked. Always locking a car may suggest a cautions personality or a paranoid one. Never locking a car may suggest a trusting soul or one who doesn’t understand that the world is a threatening place. My parents disagreed on this point. My father was very cautious person and always locked his car door. My mother was a trusting person and never did. They argued about it for a while then reached a compromise. He would always lock the driver’s door — He did all the driving. She would never lock her door. You can make of that what you will.

Details are everything. Is the cat big, small, fluffy, soft, heavy, slim, nervous? Does the bad guy fidget, pace, sit quietly with his legs crossed? Is your ex-spouse pudgy? Slim? Pretty? Tall? Does your heroine talk with a lisp? Does your rival constantly scan the restaurant as they talk? Do they insist on sitting at a table by the door? Do they look like they’re expecting something to happen? Is the restaurant cramped, crowded, spacious, loud? Does she drive a Mercedes, Toyota, Cadillac, BMW, an old rust-bucket? Does the snow crunch under her feet?  

Details put the reader in the story. They move story. They communicate character. They set the scene. They build anticipation in the reader. A good real estate agent, if he can get his client to go along, always stages the house. They manipulate the symbols of good living. Furniture, pictures on the wall, colors of the rooms, etc., so that the prospective buyers can imagine themselves into the house. Too much furniture is a turn-off. Too little furniture doesn’t stimulate buyers’ imagination.

Details must be consistent throughout the story, or if they change, the reason for it must be clear and make sense. Over time your character’s hair can gray. They can sell their Toyota and buy a Lamborghini.  But your character can’t be 6’5” in one scene, and 5’3” in another scene. Van Gogh can’t have cut his ear off in one part of the story then have it back in the next. Maybe your character gets a face transplant in one scene, but if so they can’t looked the way he used to in a later scene.  

Details have to be the right details to stimulate the reader’s imagination, deepen character’, and drive the story forward. Say you’re dining in a Mexican restaurant. The band playing must be a Mariachi band not a German um-pah band. The pictures on the wall must be of Mexico City or some Aztec ruin, not of a Swiss Alp. The slogans on the walls must be in Spanish, not Japanese.

One thing you can do. Go to someplace where you can sit undisturbed. Focus on a person near by and think about that person and what they might be like. How are they dressed, business suit, or blue jeans and work boots? Are they working on a laptop or reading a book or newspaper or sitting staring into space? Do they look angry or sad? Then think what about the details you can see leads you to that conclusion.  

Reread something by one of your favorite writers. Think about what details they include and how they used them. How would you write it better.

And don’t over write. Use just the details you need to communicate. Let the reader imagine the rest. Leave readers space in order to imagine themselves into the story.

Next – plot and character.