Making it significant - Dynamic details - You, the writer

Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Making it significant
Dynamic details
You, the writer

In order for you, the creative writer, to make your reader believe in your narrative, you “show” the reader what happens. To accomplish this, you narrate the story using significant details. In short, you attempt to create a dream inside your reader’s mind, convincing them the story is plausible—perhaps even true—by showing, not telling. Details become significant when they articulate more regarding a person or milieu.

DEFINITION

Significant details are those that suggest something greater about a character or setting, making a narrative more plausible.

Telling statements are often far too vague for their own literary good. For example, “She was angry when she arrived home from work” gives you little significant information. We know the female in question is angry, and you can assume her anger probably stems from something that happened at her place of employment. A reader might empathize with her situation, but they can’t really see or feel her anger with so few details.

You need to show how she expresses her wrath without having her “stamp her foot,” which would constitute a cliché. In real life, most people demonstrate their anger by throwing and kicking things, slamming doors, cursing, crying out, and the like. They often take their anger out on inanimate objects, other people, and—if they are particularly loathsome individuals—children or pets.

I’ll endeavor to make the above character appear extremely angry by supplying a few significant details for her:

She gouged the nineteenth-century mahogany dining room table with her new BMW’s trunk key; shattered the colonial-era corner cupboard’s blown glass with her Pineider Milano briefcase; kicked ineffectually at her registered Siamese cat, Todd; and launched herself onto her Marshall and Stewart Cullinan bed, where she thrashed about, ripping and tearing at her favorite pillow until its goose feathers burst forth and began swirling about the room, many of them drifting up toward the ceiling fan.

While this description is over the top with details, it gives readers a vivid snapshot of this woman’s wrath. More importantly, it shows readers both her anger and the degree of her wealth without telling readers, “She was both furious and rich.”

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

Just like when you employ concrete details, use significant details in conjunction with pacing. For example, the angry woman’s actions constitute a brisk action scene. Even though the reader is told the exact kinds of things she punishes, her physical movements unfold quickly from one sentence to the next.

As with all details, it’s vitally important to describe scenes with enough significant details to make it easy for your readers to see them. Yet it’s equally important not to give them too many. Pick and choose your significant details carefully, and place them exactly where they belong, always keeping the action moving.

You might think describing a house as “beautiful” and “classy” is enough to satisfy readers. But what exactly makes it beautiful? What specifically makes it classy? Add enough significant details to these vague descriptions, and the house will become much more than a house. Here’s an example of a distinguished home from the novel Confederado:

One of the finest houses in Piedmont Virginia, Wildway was built of deep red brick and stood two stories high, though it appeared much larger on account of the fourteen-foot ceilings which defined its spaciousness both upstairs and down. The home was lent additional grandeur by its situation atop a gentle rise of ground with the foundation set in such a way that any individual peering out through a front window looked full upon Piney Mountain, a small shapely peak resting some three or four miles to the southwest. Across Wildway’s front stretched a beautiful portico formed by four massive Doric columns, supporting a heavy roof of Arvonia slate. Opening upon this portico and facing the marble steps was the front entrance, over the door of which spread an ornate fanlight, and on either side of which glimmered curious broad lights, formed by numerous small diamond shaped panels. The brass knocker represented the family coat of arms while the door’s massive brass knob spoke of another time. Inside, a spacious hall promised comfort to the newly-arrived guest; a long stairway ascending, on the side of which hung several skillfully wrought portraits of family personages, some of them bearing more than a slight resemblance to Alvis. The great room lay beyond a wide open entrance to the right, its mantle framed fireplace flanked by inviting mahogany chairs, upholstered in black horsehair. Yet the piece of furniture that most attracted Alvis’s attention on that day as he was ushered into the room by Bocock’s favorite house servant, Perkins, was a large, marble-topped table upon which stood a considerable candle stand, distinctive for its richly figured globe and cut glass pendants. As Alvis took his place in one of the chairs, a gentle methodical sound drew his gaze away from the candle stand and toward a corner of the great room where stood the large, dark-polished grandfather clock from England, whose quiet constant tick and melodious periodic chimes measured out the lives of all the Bococks and their people.

Once you’ve used significant details to welcome the reader into a scene, transition from describing to significant action and drama. If, for example, your main setting is a house such as Wildway, describe it once in detail but don’t describe it in detail again, unless it meaningfully changes in some way. In the case of Wildway, for instance, the ravages of war destroy its splendor and transform it into a defunct shell of its former grandeur. In a later chapter, readers receive a much different set of specific details that describe the now-rundown home.