{"id":2058,"date":"2014-06-22T10:32:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T14:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2058"},"modified":"2014-06-22T10:48:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T14:48:48","slug":"you-know-where-the-devil-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2058","title":{"rendered":"You Know Where the Devil Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the details, right? Writing my brief review of the nonfiction book Spycraft<\/em> this week started me thinking about details, because that book provided them in encyclopedic proportion (bad choice for an audio read; I should have bought a dead-tree copy instead). In my own writing and in reading the work of some twenty-five or thirty other newish writers, I\u2019m well aware of the many ways details trip us up.<\/p>\n

Writing description is a tightrope walker\u2019s game. Authors have to include enough detail to put a picture (the right one) in the reader\u2019s mind without being tedious. In the Victorian era, readers loved detail, and that\u2019s part of what makes reading those novels hard for many people today, living life in the fast lane. Victorian detail came in long loopy sentences, but less ornate approaches can stimulate pictures in readers\u2019 minds equally effectively. Read Cormac McCarthy to find starkly simple detail, yet surgically precise description: \u201cThe night was falling down from the east and the darkness that passed over them came in a sudden breath of cold and stillness and passed on. As if the darkness had a soul itself that was the sun\u2019s assassin hurrying to the west, as once men did believe, as they may believe again\u201d [The Crossing<\/a><\/em>]. (McCarthy also teaches the subtle power of \u201cand.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"tightrope<\/a>

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

When the writer\u2019s balance gets off\u2014too much, too little\u2014problems such as these occur: Pure decoration<\/em><\/span><\/strong>\u2014a lot needs to be happening at different levels when moving a plot along, and it can be distracting when writers stop the action to explain that a particular weed was \u201cno more than knee-high and had white, daisy-like flowers, each the size of a dime and centered with a bold dot of eggyolk yellow, and erupted in drifts along the dusty roadside,\u201d if those weeds are never going to matter in the story. In Ordinary Grace<\/a><\/em> by William Kent Krueger (recent winner of the 2014 Edgar award), he describes in detail a young punk\u2019s Deuce Coupe, black with red and orange flames painted along the sides. The punk and the car figure prominently in the story, and, in subsequent mentions, all Krueger needs to do is mention the flames and the whole image\u2014in all its symbolism\u2014is brought back.<\/p>\n

The irrelevant detail<\/em> (or \u201cChekhov\u2019s gun\u201d)<\/strong><\/span>\u2014Anton Chekhov famously said, \u201cRemove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it\u2019s not going to be fired, it shouldn\u2019t be hanging there.\u201d I hate finishing a book with that \u201cWhatever happened to\u2014\u201d feeling about some vividly described character or thing. Yes, authors can include red herrings, but they ultimately have to be understood as such. At the same time, the groundwork for the resolution of the plot\u2014and in mystery-writing, the clues\u2014must be artfully laid so that the ending seems true, not a deus ex machina<\/em>, nor totally predictable. Scott Turow\u2019s first book, Presumed Innocent<\/em>, gave such a neon-lit early clue that I knew the killer\u2019s identity from that page on. Disappointed.<\/p>\n

Other common problems are:<\/p>\n

\"red<\/a>

(photo: christmasstockimages.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

The misplaced detail<\/em><\/span><\/strong>\u2014It\u2019s jarring to read a long description of a plate, a car, a dress\u2014its shape, material, use, whatever\u2014and then, five pages or paragraphs later, after the reader has formed a firm picture of this plate\/car\/dress, provide the additional information that it\u2019s red. All such basic descriptive details need to be in one place. And should include the shade of red: cherry, scarlet, maroon<\/a>. You may ask, what difference does it make whether the damn plate is blue or red? Color matters<\/a>. I will assume the author made a thoughtful choice.<\/p>\n

The lack of sensory detail<\/em><\/span><\/strong>\u2014to engage readers, details need to vary\u2014not always to appear as if the writer was copying off the character\u2019s driver\u2019s license\u2014and to appeal to more than the sense of sight (\u201cI saw her cooking\u201d). They need to describe characteristics that demand our other senses, too, those we can feel, hear, taste, and smell. Was Mom in the kitchen cooking, or did the clattering pans reveal Grandma had arrived and the rich aroma of sizzling chicken fat mixed with the burnt-sugar smell of caramel assure Sunday dinner would be a feast?<\/p>\n

Details about characters<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u2014my writing coach, Lauren B. Davis<\/a>, gave the perfect summary of what to aspire to in describing a character. What to aim for, she said, are details that don\u2019t just tell how a character looks, but who he is<\/em>. Two examples from Margaret Atwood: \u201c(She wore) penitential colours\u2014less like something she\u2019d chosen to put on than like something she\u2019d been locked up in.\u201d Or \u201cHe\u2019s a large man, Walter\u2014square-edged, like a plinth, with a neck that is not so much a neck as an extra shoulder\u201d (both from The Blind Assassin<\/em>).<\/p>\n

To sum up, while details brings a story to life\u2014writers need not too many, not too few, and just the right ones, Goldilocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the details, right? Writing my brief review of the nonfiction book Spycraft this week started me thinking about details, because that book provided them in encyclopedic proportion (bad choice for an audio read; I should have bought a dead-tree … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,174,185,51,29],"tags":[28,414],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-first-draft-blog","category-language","category-words","category-writing","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-xc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2066,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions\/2066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}