The Detail Whore

So many writers starting out, have been in a place where you wanted your work to be so amazing, so real, that you stuffed it full with as many details and metaphorical abstract words as humanly possible.  So much so, in fact, that you feel like you should be a philosopher in order to read the damn thing.  That method of writing has so far worked for one person and one person only... JRR Tolkien.

You see, we try so hard for our writing to be perfect that we start inserting crazy long words in the place of other words that are better suited for the sentence, just so that the context has more volume.  But what we fail to see is that, that volume is sometimes 90% nonsense.

The idea that "more detail is better" is a myth.  Detail can be one of the most useful and powerful assets to a writer if used correctly.  If used incorrectly, it makes him/her out to be a naive, pompous ass who has an enormous ego to stroke.

Like the sentence: "A blackened sky did null but gully attention to a homicidal half-circle."

Yes, someone actually used that exact wording in a sentence. What the hell does that even mean?  It's code for this: "The night sky didn't draw attention to a half-circle of killers."

The point is, do readers really want to work so hard to decipher each sentence?  I know I wouldn't.

But another tactic that many of the same authors use is hiding of essential details.  These are things to clue us in at what we're actually looking at.  Saying an eye cries, and then refusing to tell us which of the ten people you're talking about is confusing as hell.  "She" is another word that can be equally misused.  When you're talking about a group of people and don't explain which one is actually a boy, a girl, or a kid, and then say "she cried," your reader is going to stare at the page and scratch his head, asking himself if he missed something.

In the end, it all comes down to asking yourself a few simple questions:

1. If I you left this alone for a while and came back to it six months later when you've forgotten the bulk of the story, would you still be able to understand what was going on?  If the answer is no, your story writing style isn't working.

2. Do you talk like you write?
Almost everyone can admit that they don't write the same way they talk, which means that the writer's job to create a believable environment is that much harder.  Writing something tangible isn't the same as writing something that pukes details.

3. Can I visualize it in my head?
A good general guideline to follow is that stories are good when you can visualize them, but they aren't getting hooked up on the details.  In other words, A) the context makes sense, and B) it's written well enough so that you can immediately see yourself in the environment with the people.

Here's a wonderful example of good writing (p. 8 from Memoirs of a Geisha):

"In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a 'tipsy house.'  It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing.  As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze--which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray."

little fishing village = we already know approximately what type of location we are in.  We know what kind of village it is: small and reliant on fishing, which already gives us a distinct feel.

It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing = We now know the location of the house, what kind of landscape is around it, and the normal weather patterns of the area.

Don't forget to have fun.  If you enjoy the story that you're writing, it will reflect later when it's read.  So, to sum it up, when using details, use them wisely and proudly, but sparingly.