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While you were driving
These were my mistakes
In my grandmother's house
I'm thinking of …
Write about a summer fling
You are lost
What you see in the distance
You thought nobody noticed
This is what you need for the journey
Write about sleeping
How to get started writing? Write.
Write about the best of intentions
Write about a time you wanted to leave but couldn't
You're waiting...
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Details, truthfully rendered, bring your writing to life and create connection points for the readers.
"But, Judy, you told us it writing from the senses that would bring the writing to life for the reader."
Yes, yes. Sensory details, telling details, the "divine" detail, this is where the truth lies. Not in the facts.
Fact: We had dinner at 6 p.m.
Detail: We had dinner of roast chicken, boiled red potatoes, corn on the cob, and tomatoes. It was a little early for the corn; that, which she bought at the Farmer's Market earlier in the day, probably came force-ripened from some greenhouse in the middle of the city. Certainly not a farmer's field.
Single, telling details skillfully wrought relate more about a character or a place than a thousand more general aspects.
Pulling a book from my shelf, LADIES START YOUR ENGINES, for reference, I open to a story by Norma Harrs, "In the Driver's Seat." This is her opening paragraph:
"It was the first funeral in ten years that Emma had been to without Fran. But in a way Fran was there, even if she was laid out in the other room with rosy cheeks like one of those alabaster Virgin Marys sold in religious shops. How they'd done it was a mystery because in real life Fran had skin more like wax paper that had been done to a turn in the oven."
I don't know about you, but I can see Fran's skin, both before and after, as it were. What a lovely choice of detail, to describe Fran's complexion as a way of giving us the first, telling details not only about the characters, but the tone of the story as well. I sense irreverence coming on and I like it.
As you are writing your first draft, reach out and grab a detail as the pen rolls along. A detail that moves the piece forward, a detail that more finely renders the scene or the character, a detail that deepens or gives texture to a sentence.
It is possible in capturing all these details you run the risk of including so much it's like swimming through seaweed to reach shore. Never mind. In rewriting you will choose the most powerful detail, the one "telling" detail that gives the piece the truth. Also in the rewriting, you will notice the need for more details - certain, specific details - that you will add like seasoning as you cook up the stew of your story.
Hemingway said, "There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity." When choosing the details, write their names. This is a way of honoring people, places and things, and of being specific at the same time. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Adriatic Sea, Billy's Lunch Counter, the Chinook blowing in off the northwestern Pacific. Wednesday afternoon. Four-door Chrysler. Samuel Gompers Junior High.
As you read your favorite writers, take notice of the details they chose to render the piece honest and alive. If you don't want to mark up your book with notes and underlines, use your notebook as a place to jot down those details are fresh, which help you see the picture more clearly, which reveal character or solidify place. Go back through some of your own writing and see where the addition of a detail makes a difference. Or see where judicious weeding allows the piece the space it needs to reach its full flower.
Details, when you take the time to choose them carefully, are like the focusing apparatus on a pair of binoculars. Just a slight turn of your wrist and you've brought the scene into clear, sharp focus.
"I try to go for the detail that lights up in me like a neon light," said Spalding Gray. This is what I urge you to do. Each day for a week, write in your notebook a paragraph that begins, "This morning …" and go for the details that glow phosphorescent inside you.
Notes on Writing >>>
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