It's All in the Details

 

I've been working on plot lately, trying to tighten mine up, and have found a book called The Weekend Novelist. To be honest, I haven't bought it yet--no time--but have been able to read the section on plot thanks to Amazon's Try This Book feature. (Not to worry: I plan to buy it asap.)

In addition to an expanded section on how to plot, authors Robert J. Ray & Brett Norris have a line about the use of details. They say, "The key to creating word pictures is detail. . . . It's easy to write weak. It's much harder to find concrete nouns and active verbs that capture the essence of the moment. Great writers manage to separate image from action."

To test his theory and because I had thought about reading the novel anyway, I downloaded a book the authors recommended, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and have been listening to it on my MP3 player. I see what Ray means about details. Chabon's sentences are full of details, more than I think I would ever have used for fear of overwhelming my reader. Yet Chabon's use of detail does, in fact, illustrate the separation of image from action, a phrase that fascinates me.

Great writers create memorable, even unforgettable images, but don't drown the reader in description. Who said, "Please, sir, I want some more." Oliver Twist, of course. Who can forget the image of the boy raising his bowl and asking for more gruel?

Chabon uses strong adjectives before the noun rather than prepositional phrases or adjective clauses: Coke-bottle glasses instead of glassed with lenses like coke bottles. That's pretty standard.

But what I really notice about Chabon's details is his use of lists and his specific nouns. (He mentions being influenced by Fitzgerald.) He doesn't say Sammy Clay spoke at comic book conventions in his old age. He names them--three of them, not one. He gives a list of books that Sammy read for self-improvement, and he lists three things of which Sammy understood the inner workings. We know how tall he is: 5'5". All of this information is on the first page and most of it is in one paragraph.

As I have read and re-read this one page, I see how the details bring Sammy alive for the reader and open the vista of a world that the author pulls the reader into right from the beginning. And all by using the sufficient details.