Detailed

It’s May! And I’m (mostly) moved into my new home and RAD’s new office. All this means it’s time for a new series, something really fun for the month of May. Since Dwr will be out this month, I actually have some really exciting stuff coming up in a couple weeks, but we’ll talk more about that next week.

Right now, I’m thinking about writing. I’ve nearly taken two weeks off from writing, and I swear my brain feels like it’s about to explode. I need to get some writing in. But I would prefer to get some good writing in, to get some words on a page that will actually be decent enough to (mostly) keep. And to that end, I thought we’d do a series on the elements of writing, and why they’re so important—from the point of view of a reader, a writer, and an editor. I am all three of those things, after all. ;-)

Why do we need…

Detail?

You know that whole “show, don’t tell” thing? That’s where I got the idea for this one. Detail is one of those things that either eludes a writer or is far too prevalent. But it’s so important, so key, that I wanted to make it the first thing we discussed.

From the point of view of a reader…

Detail is what hooks us, it’s what gets us excited for the story, what really allows us to see the characters and setting and to fully understand what’s going on. Detail is what makes the story come alive, what connects us to this fictional realm, and what prevents us from getting confused between this world and the real one. So for readers, we need detail. We like to understand: we don’t like being left in the dark, unable to see, to make sense of the story itself. We want to see it like the writer saw it, and for that, we need detail.

From the point of view of a writer…

Detail is the fun part! Okay, at least for me it is. Detail is what I enjoy writing the most, what I come back to over and over again if I don’t quite know where I’m going yet. I just start describing everything, and I’ll cut it down to the right amount later. But writing detail is what allows me to see what’s going on, and to get a better idea of what this world is like, what these characters might see or feel based on their surroundings, or even what the characters themselves act and look like. Without that, well, it’s just boring.

From the point of view of an editor…

I want to know that my writer knows what they’re doing when it comes to detail. I want to see that you, the writer, know how to describe any given situation from any given angle. If I read a scene and need you to put it into a different character’s POV, I want to know that you can do it with the same vivid detail, from a separate set of eyes. If you can’t do that, if I don’t see that the first time I read through your work, you might not be someone I can easily work with when it comes to detail, which ends up being more work for me. Long story short, get better at writing detail, and your editor will like you a lot more.

No matter what angle you come at it from, detail is one of those things that we need—no matter what. So don’t skimp on it. If it needs to be cut down later, that’s not a big deal. It’s harder if you need to add it during the editing process. Trust me on that. My older work was seriously lacking in detail… you should be glad you’ll never read it. So are my editors.

[love]

{Rani D.}