FtQ chapter—specifics make description work

Here, from the Description section of my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. is the second chapter, “Use specifics to deliver what you intend”

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I enjoyed immensely The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop by Stephen Koch, a noted teacher and author. One of the reasons is that he talks about storytelling in ways that resonate with the way I approach it.

One point he made that sparked for me is that we (the authors) haven’t actually told our stories until someone reads them. Koch writes:

To be sure, the reader follows the writer’s lead; but only the reader’s imagination, collaborating with the writer’s, can make anything happen on any page. It’s the reader who visualizes the characters, the reader who feels and finds the forward movement of the story, the reader who catches and is caught in the swirls of suspense, rides the flow of meaning, and unfolds the whole kaleidoscope of perception.

Our readers can do that—must do that—to experience our stories. Or, rather, their version of our stories. Each reader will add shades to the meanings of words and expressions and actions. They’ll never read the story we’ve imagined.

Still, we hope a reader will experience our stories the way we feel them, and we can get ‘em close, damn close, close enough, with strong craft. One aspect of craft, in particular, is the tool we need: specific, concrete details and imagery.

It’s what author and teacher Oakley Hall in How Fiction Works, calls “specification,” using concrete words and images rather than abstract words and generalizations. Here are wrong/right examples he gave.

1. He was a big man with a beard.
2. He filled the doorway, his beard glistening with curls.

1. It was cold in the kitchen.
2. She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her hands together against the chill in the kitchen.

1. The crowd passed in the street.
2. The street brimmed with the jostling of men in cloth caps and women in babushkas.

1. It was raining.
2. He drew his hand inside and licked raindrops from his fingertips.

Specificity makes your visualizations vivid and alive. And probably you “see” an image much closer to what the author imagined. Of Oakley’s examples, the one about the cold kitchen does it best for me.

Without specific, concrete images, your reader might imagine something you never intended, and thus stray far from the story you wanted to tell. And it’s important to make sure it’s your story, not a walkabout made up of random associations to vague language.

Specificity has to do with writing for effect. Or maybe I should say writing to affect, to make sure the things that go on in your reader’s mind are as close to your original thought as possible. Keep in mind the stimulus/response paradigm. What you put on the page—and only what you put on the page—kicks off neural responses in your reader that affect what she thinks, imagines, understands, and feels.

For what it’s worth

Ray

© 2010 Ray RhameyTweet