A Step Deeper

Authors don’t think in terms of stuffing their novel full of details, but that is the end result. Descriptions set the stage in different scenes. Background information, short and long, enhance characterization. Given the multiplicity of scenes and characters, all those details add up. More important, the quality of the details can create larger flows that either sharpen or dull the overall reading experience. 

How do you make sure, amid the sheer volume of details, that your reader stays alert? A favorite word of mine is the often misspelled “pique,” as in piquing someone’s interest. What stimulates a reader? In my experience it is complexity. For instance, a complex character holds the reader’s interest more than a cardboard cutout. When applied to a detail, this multilayered approach derives from how long an author stays on that one point.

Let’s look at a single example to see how this process works. I’ll start with a corporate lobby in a city skyscraper that is filled with Frank Stella sculptures. Anyone who knows Stella immediately thinks of garish colors and weirdly cut pieces superimposed on each other. Okay, you could write that. That does describe his artwork. But let’s dig deeper.

How does a character walking into that lobby feel? The first thought might be about the corporation that picked the art. Is it trying to make a statement about how sophisticated it is? Or the thought might be directed at why interesting art was placed in such a sterile setting, with all the smartly dressed people rushing in a timely fashion. The artwork might be perceived as intimidating, since the character is nervous about what awaits on the 14th floor above. In all of these cases the physical appearance of the object is given a sub-layer of a character’s reactions to the object. 

A more difficult feat is using a metaphor to describe an object. George Orwell’s comment “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket” makes no pretense of literal accuracy. Instead, a detail is likened to another idea that describes it obliquely. These parallels, if truly apt, are famously the best ones of all.

What matters is how much time an author spends revolving the concept, turning it this way and that to gauge how to reveal its essence. Even a more pedestrian “The faded billboards indicated the fortunes of the town” still has the ability to make a reader stop for a click to consider the deeper meaning. When you fill up an entire manuscript with riches created by your trying harder, you don’t have to wonder why readers remember it.

Exercise: Review the manuscript looking only for descriptions. Have you put enough time into making each one stand out, even if only a little? A “dingy” white picket fence tells the reader more than just a “white picket fence.” When you add details that indicate personality, the reader benefits from what you infer.

“A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.” —Groucho Marx

Copyright @ 2023, John Paine