In Writer's Digest, I just read another writer saying that it's all in the details--things about your character that make him real, true-to-life for the reader. This is such foundational advice, I've been aware of it since middle school creative writing classes. And yet, how long can it really take to master this art?
"Meaningful Specifics." That's what novelist Susan Gregg Gilmore called those details at the mid-winter retreat I attended last month. As an exercise, she showed us photographs of houses and people and had us describe them, picking out, or making up, the details that characterized the personalities. Pretty simple stuff. And yet I can write thousands of words and know so many details about a character I write that I've lost sight of what are really the essential details. I have to ask myself--of the list of details I know, what are details that really define him: that played soccer in high school, that he loved grilled cheese sandwiches, that he wanted to be an illustrator but couldn't succeed in college art classes, or that he's perpetually late?
I read another article, in The Writer, about how to draw the details that give you maximum mileage. It included an exercise to draw, in a single sentence, a description of the essence of a few closest friends. I did, and I found it came down to a story I'd heard that, for me, defined how they were in their essence.
Here's one, I'll call this friend P:
"When there was no food left in the house, P concocted a soup for her siblings and parents that has lived on in legend." To me, the essence of P, what I most admire about her, is her resourcefulness, her ability to create art when everyone else sees nothing of worth. And her ability to survive hard circumstances.
Here's another, I'll call this friend H.
"Despite how difficult it was, and how everyone expected her to quit the nasty job of dealing with fish entrails for a suburban restaurant, H. refused to quit." That white-knuckled determination won my respect early on, so I've carried around this story for years.
I realized that in both instances, what encapsulated my idea of these friends existed in a story, both from a rather distant past, that for me defined who I saw they had been or become. I realize that for my characters in a novel or story, the "meaningful specifics" are the details of the same variety. SO, for my character Ash, is my knowing that he played soccer really that important? maybe not. What about grilled cheese sandwiches? Well, I know that he loves them because his mom made him ones with 3-slices of grilled cheese, out of guilt, when he was a chubby, isolated boy, and that is a foundational story for his link between food and love. He's never made it as an art major because his mother, an artist, criticized his lack of "eye," and his supportive girlfriend isn't with him in college to counteract his lack of confidence in the face of tough professors. Maybe that detail is important. I know his being late certainly is. He was an hour late picking up his date for the senior prom because he spent the time consoling a friend who never got a date and was on the verge of something extreme. His lateness is a "meaningful specific" because it reveals, upon further inspection, that its rooted not in lack of character or respect for others, but instead, a respect for others so deep that he cannot leave someone in need, no matter what obligations he'd previously assigned to himself.
I still feel like I'm wading though a swamp sometimes, when it comes to my novel. I've got so many ideas, words, pages. I see that my revision stage will be about carving out those meaningful specifics from all the other "stuff" I've collected over the years.
I feel encouraged by an epiphany of how to apply this business of specifics. In an opening chapter, Asher describes his wife for the reader: what she wears, her shoes, etc, all of which reveals her personality. And then I have a scene where he comes home and sees her sitting at her computer. I remember I have her wearing bed clothes and bedroom slippers--only because it was evening and it was a practical choice. but I realized the other day, I should combine the two things--the description of her clothing habits and the scene of her at he computer. I should simply have Asher describe her sitting at the computer in clothes and shoes typical of her personality--saves words. There was nothing wrong with her being introduced in bedroom slippers and sweatpants, and yet, it does nothing for the story and wastes words. It's a simple thing to realize, really. And yet I hope I'll continue seeing my manuscript through such eyes--seeing how I can economize every detail and word, to get the most mileage out of each. And thereby reduce my word count!
Other things I write:
Choices for Your Best Birth: Five women share what helped them most, and what they wished that had done differently for their deliveries.
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Thirteen Reasons to Avoid It
How to Determine If Your Child is Ready to Begin Kindergarten
100% Wheat Bread with Honey or Molasses, for a Bread Machine
Lyme Disease and Autism Patients Prescribed Diets Free of Genetically Modified Foods
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