March 17, 2008
Details matter in writing. One of the first, best suggestions is to over-report what you see, hear, smell and touch. When you go to a scene, walk into a room, visit a store, meet an interview subject, write down all the detail you can – not because you’re going to use it all, but because such reporting will produce the telling detail that will pull the reader inside the picture you’re drawing.
Perhaps because your Write Stuff correspondent has driven southern highways and byways for 56 days and 8500 miles, I was struck by the detail in Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the tale of a family road trip that does not end well. The family’s grandmother is a bug for detail:
…they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890…she pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother had gone to sleep.