The Story Is In The Detail

Thinking back on the days when I used to read (it’s been well over two months now) one incident with a stack of pages; printed, bound and covered with a curiously misleading wrapping stands out.
A book I was offered to jump in turned out to be a bottomless pit of depressing detail. My doom was paved with monotonous explanation after monotonous explanation.

One popular solution a writer might give to another is that of knowing all the detail (as the storyteller) of any story one writes. Great advice, as long as you approach with more caution than an alcoholic exercises when walking up to a bottle store.

This book I had a run-in with, yes we’re back to that now, was action packed with so much dreary and mind-numbing detail that less than eight pages into it I gave. No more. I’ve never seen that book since, and I must admit that there’s no love lost between us. I call back on this experience as a belt notch-collector would call back on a run-in with a nameless lover – without fondness or favour.

Just because the writer must know all the details of the story does not mean that all these details must be told to the reader (eg: the cream shawl which looked white once upon a time lay scrunched up on the chocolate corduroy l-shaped couch on the far east corner of the room, opposite the small television set that had become the live-in substitute of the 47 inch flat screen that had grown a mind of its own and had walked out on the legs of a burglar and his cronies).  Yho.  That’s a blemmin’ long sentence. In real life people who speak like this spray it (when they should say it) and have followers and virtual friends (none of which have invited them to a social gathering of any sort, ever).

Don’t tell the reader that the sun is hot (“the sun was hot that day”), show them (“eighteen ice-cold dumpies of lager later, Sue was still sweating like a pig, but now she was out cold”).

As a reader I know I don’t care much about the chequered or striped t-shirt hanging on the chair, not unless it’s the murder weapon or a kinky play thing. In other words, does it do anything for the story? Does it drive it ahead or does it poison the whole river? Is your gift of giving vivid detail killing your story or helping it? Know when to just glaze over the details.

Not every story must be 1000 pages long.

Namaste