Writing Lesson One: Specific, Concrete Detail


 Focus, meaning, action

Readers will automatically focus on what they see and hear, what hits their senses and makes them wonder

 Vodka bottle and hershey’s kisses, making a sandwich while readingKundera.

Get them to focus on something that stands for your message or leads them towards it.

 Comedians use it for callbacks

Repetition “I have a dream” while adding new details of the dream

“She doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.” 

When they focus on something, and you guide them towards seeing that object as meaning a particular thing, then they respond with an action.

That action may simply be to believe you

It may be just to trust you enough to listen further–which is when you move on.

It may be to take the first step of a process

It may be to change their emotional state–to get angry, suspicious, excited, hopeful, or compassionate.

This is why great writers choose the details they put in front of the reader’s senses carefully. 

How to be specific

Not a kind of thing, but as specific a name as possible. It should describe very few or perhaps even just one thing or person. 

Vehicle

 car

 honda

 civic

 white

 1994

 dent on driver’s door

 Gore/Lieberman bumper sticker, faded, corner torn off so it says Lieberma

 my uncle’s old

 given to me for college graduation

 sort of, i had to repaint his house, too

You use the level of specificity your story needs

There are 100 million cars on US roads today, consuming a quarter billion gallons of gas a day.

When Darlene Philips drove to college in her uncle’s white, ’94 Civic with the dented driver’s door and the torn Gore-Lieberman sticker (which she’d tried to remove) on the bumper, she hardly expected to be a millionaire by the time she graduated. He’d given her the car as payment for repainting his house. It took three weeks, but gave her the idea that would make her rich.

But as a start, learn to be very specific, maybe too much. 

Turn adjectives and adverbs into nouns and verbs. Give them something sensory. 

Adjectives are gaps for them to fill

Nouns and verbs fill the gaps for them, in the way you want

Practice seeing things from the reader’s point of view

What do you want them seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and feeling? What will give them a true idea of what you’re describing to them?

What emotion do you want them to feel? 

Are you giving them these things?


Metaphor

Can only come with an eye for “the resemblances between things” genius

With it can make motifs and arcs

fountain pen on black lined paper
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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